While some people are content to read about adventure, Bermuda resident Captain Aylward Edward Dingle went looking for it.

During a lifetime spent on the sea the English-born sailor encountered real pirates, was shipwrecked by hurricanes at least twice, and was virtually blinded on a voyage.

And his many adventures were the inspiration for more than 35 books written between 1913 and the 1940s, a lot of which were written under the pseudonym 'Sinbad'.

His fiction includes 'Fathomless', 'The Flying Kestrel', 'Gold of Celebes' and 'The Petrels Path', and he also wrote two works of non-fiction his autobiography 'A Modern Sinbad' and 'Salt of the Sea: Red Saunders', a biography of his friend.

Although Captain Dingle, who lived from 1874 to 1947, moved back to England later in life, his daughter Muriel Gauntlett and her children Bessie Daily, Ted Gauntlett, Judith Wilke and Janet Percy still live on the Island.

Captain Dingle decided to move his family to Bermuda based on the flip of a coin.

In an earlier interview with The Royal Gazette his daughter Muriel Gauntlett, now 100, said the family was living in Staten Island, New York, when Captain Dingle moved them to Bermuda.

It was at the end of the First World War and fuel was short.

"It was very cold during the war," she said. "We couldn't get coal, and we were very cold there on Staten Island. My father said, we won't have any more of this, we'll go somewhere warm.

"He thought either Florida or Bermuda. I think he chose Bermuda because it was a British colony."

Captain Dingle was born in St. Ebbe's, Oxford. His father made ropes for church bells and although he wanted his son to join the family business, Captain Dingle longed to sail the seas.

"He did at the age of 13, against his family's wishes," said granddaughter Janet Percy. "He just loved it. He was crew on several sailing ships. At least two of them were ship-wrecked and sank and he had to be rescued.

"His sailing life ended with a total shipwreck in the Bahamas in a hurricane. He had all his possessions on that boat. He lost everything he had."

He lost his vision while sailing around Cape Horn which prevented Captain Dingle from ever being master of his own ship.

"He was put on watch on a perilous journey around Cape Horn," said Mrs. Percy. "The glare damaged his eyesight.

"After that he was virtually blind but he would not wear glasses. Eventually, he did wear glasses when he wrote."

And one solo trip he did take almost ended in disaster.

"He came down on a small leaky boat that was not very strong called The Gauntlet. (Later on my mother met and married my father Ernest Gauntlett.)"

Captain Dingle was possibly one of the first people to sail from New York to Bermuda alone.

Unfortunately, on the way he and his faithful little dog, Trixie, were swept off course by a hurricane and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard.

He left New York on August 13, 1918, and was towed into Hamilton Harbour by the Coast Guard a month later.

"He was near starvation," said Mrs. Percy. "His food supply was all but depleted, and he had no water apart from the juice contained in the meager supply of tinned goods that he and Trixie shared during the last few days of their epic voyage. He had about 400 of his books on board, but most of these were unfortunately reduced to pulp during his great struggle with the hurricane."

Trixie was stained red from the waterlogged red boat cushions.

His family, wife Marian and two daughters Doris, five, and Muriel, three, arrived later on a ship outfitted for the war.

While living in Bermuda he would write in a small house on one of the islands in the Sound.

"My mother and aunt used to row out to visit," said Mrs. Percy. "He went out there to write where he had peace and quiet."

While living in Bermuda, Captain Dingle was often visited by famous writers such as Alfred Noyes, who wrote The Highwayman, (a favourite poem of his daughter Muriel), poet John Masefield, and Jack London.

Mrs. Percy and her family now collect many of their grandfather's books through antique bookstores and the Internet.

"They were very exciting sea stories," said Mrs. Percy. "I got interested in them fairly recently, in the last ten years or so. My daughter who lives in California use to spend a lot of time on the Internet researching him and finding his books.

"We get books that say three and six pence on the cover and you can pay well over $100 for them now."

She said many of his books are now hard to find. If you can find one with a dust jacket, it is a real treasure.

Mrs. Percy is retired but makes paper-mache fish and knitted dolls. One of her fish creations was recently featured on a Bermuda stamp.

"One of my biggest regrets is that I never met my grandfather," said Mrs. Percy. "My older sister Betty met him when she was just three-years-old.

"He passed away in 1947. My cousin said he sat down in a chair to read a good book and just slipped his moorings."

Some of Captain Dingle's stories will be rereleased shortly by a small publishing imprint called 'Black Dog Books'.

The company releases collections of public domain fiction reprinted from early 20th century magazines.

"Black Dog Books is not a livelihood for me, only a sideline," said publisher Tom Roberts, of Normal, Illinois.

"I simply enjoy keeping this type of forgotten adventure fiction (which is my own reading preference), from disappearing entirely from the book market."

This month he plans to release 'Old Sails: tales of Adventure' by Captain A.E. Dingle.

People wishing to read some of Captain Dingle's work can also read 'Gold Out of Celebes' for free on the Project Gutenberg website at

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25917 .