Continuing a family naval tradition, Walter James Jeffery served in the Royal Navy and the merchant navy from the age of 15 until he migrated to Australia in 1886. There he embarked on a career as an eventually highly respected journalist, first joining the staff of the Evening News, then becoming sub-editor and later editor of the Australian Town and Country Journal, and finally returning to the Evening News as managing editor in 1906. Jeffery's interest in maritime history manifests itself not only in his novels, but also in the publication of a historical work, A Century of Our Sea Story (1900).
A successful collaboration with Louis Becke resulted in a number of jointly written novels and stories -- among them the first novel published by Angus & Robertson, The Mutineer (1899), a history (The Naval Pioneers of Australia, 1899), and a biography (Admiral Phillip : The Founding of New South Wales, 1899). The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature suggests about this literary collabaration that in general 'Jeffery did the research and rough drafts of these works; Becke did the polishing and negotiated with publishers'(1994, p.407).
