Biography
Ralph Richard Armstrong was born in Walbottle, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland on 18 June 1903. He was a blacksmith's son who left school at thirteen to work in a Tyneside steelworks. He spent three years there, starting as an errand boy and progressing to greaser, labourer and crane driver. His book Sabotage at the Forge (1946), set in a steelworks, is highly regarded for its accurate and effective description of a boy's experience in such an environment. Similarly, The Whinstone Drift (1951) is convincingly set against a Northumberland coal-mining background.
After the First World War he went to sea in the Merchant Service and for seventeen years sailed in many types of vessel, gaining the experience which he later put to use in his books about seafaring. In 1937 he left the Merchant Service and pursued various occupations before concentrating on writing. His first published book was The Mystery of Obadiah (1943), an adventure novel set in Tynedale and featuring Thias Stringer, a 13-year-old boy. Sabotage at the Forge was its sequel, featuring Stringer at the steelworks. Later he drew on his wide-ranging experiences at sea, writing about, for example, cargo steamers (Passage Home), oil tankers (No Time for Tankers), and whalers (The Secret Sea).
Armstrong had a son, John, to whom he dedicated his book Sailor's Luck. He died in 1986.
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