James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century whose historical romances depicting frontier and Native American life from the 17th-19th centuries created a unique form of American literature. He lived for much of his boyhood, and the last 15 years of his life, in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father. He was enrolled at Yale University aged 13 but, following a series of pranks, was expelled in his third year without completing his degree. In 1806 he found work as a sailor and at 17 joined the crew of a merchant vessel. By 1811 he had obtained the rank of midshipman in the fledgling US Navy, having married in January that year at 21. The Coopers had seven children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Having decided to try his hand at writing fiction, in 1820 he published his first novel, Precaution, anonymously. Whilst this first work was a tale of morals and manners, his second, The Spy (1821), was an action adventure centring on spying and skirmishing between US and British forces. It became the first bestseller at home and abroad to be written by an American, requiring several reprintings to satisfy demand. This success spurred him on to write The Pioneers (1823), the firstof his Leatherstocking series featuring an inter-racial friendship between Natty Bumppo, a resourceful American woodsman, and Chief Chingachgook of the Delaware Indians. Bumppo was also the hero of Cooper's most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Throughout his career Cooper published numerous social, political, and historical works of fiction and non-fiction with the objective of countering European prejudices and nurturing an original American art and culture, and he became one of the most popular 19th-century American authors, his work greatly admired worldwide. Jack Tier, or the Florida Reef (aka Captain Spike, or the Islets of the Gulf) was first published in book form in 1848, having been serialised in a Graham's Magazine under the title Rose Budd in 1846. Set against the backdrop of the Mexican-American War, this seafaring adventure tells of how Captain Spike, under cover of a respectable shipping enterprise, is smuggling gunpowder to the Mexican government for use against the US. Aboard ship, taking a voyage for her health, is Rose Budd who falls in love with first mate, Harry Mulford. Harry is against the smuggling operation but too loyal to the ship to quit. He rescues Rose from the advances of the Captain, aided by seaman Jack Tier, who it transpires is the Captain's abandoned wife who has served on the ship in male garb for twenty years, a fact that is not revealed until near the end.