James Edmond Macdonnell attended the Toowoomba Grammar School from 1931 to 1932. He served in the Royal Australian Navy for fourteen years, joining at age 17 reaching the rank of commissioned gunnery officer. the publicity biography on the back cover of Command! (1959) staets that 'he began with novels in 1942'. Macdonnell wrote stories for the Bulletin under the pseudonym 'Macnell' and from 1948 to 1956 he was a member of the Bulletin staff. MacDonnell began writing full-time for Horwitz in 1956, writing an average of a dozen books a year.
The covers of his novels declare him 'Australia's leading novelist of the Navy' and 'Australia's greatest novelist of the sea'.
