Percival Lancaster (24 February 1880 – 25 October 1937) was a British civil engineer and a writer of boy's adventure fiction, whose progress was derailed by the First World War.

His father was William Joseph Cosens Lancaster (23 May 1843 – 10 June 1922),[2] a civil engineer better known as Harry Collingwood, a writer of boys' adventure fiction, usually with a nautical setting.

His mother has Kezia Hannah Rice Oxley (January 1848 – 18 April 1928) who, like her husband's two sisters, the 1871 census shows as working a draper's assistant in Liverpool.

[5] Lancaster then began work for Sir John Jackson on the extension of the Keyham Yard at Devonport Royal Dockyard, near Plymouth.

The extension cost three to four million pounds and was, up until then, the largest work, apart from the Manchester Ship Canal[note 1] ever let in England as a single contract.

[note 2] Lancaster was invalided home from South Africa in late 1905 or early 1906 and began writing stories.

[7] Lancaster married his maternal first cousin, Evelyn Mary Hall Oxley (January 1882 – 21 June 1967), in a registry office in Devenport.

The Bookseller and Stationer of February 1911 gave notice of the formation of the Waverly Book Company of Canada, of which Lancaster was one of the principals[11] and was shown as the manager in the Toronto City Directory.

This magazine asked for contributors to write about their real life experiences, and authors commonly stated how they were aware of the story.

In the preface, Lancaster describes the book as "a modest attempt... to show that under certain conditions and even in time of peace the naval service of to-day affords as much opportunity for dashing and romantic adventure as was to be found afloat in the stirring days of Drake and his fellow Elizabethan heroes."

The book was favourably received: In 1909, Lancaster wrote a short story, "Ship of Silence: A Tale of the New Canadian Navy" for MacLeans Busy Man's Magazine.

[4] Lancaster's third book, Chaloner of the Bengal Cavalry, a tale of the Indian Mutiny, was published by Blackie in October 1915.

In 1925, Sampson Low finally published In the Power of the Enemy which Lancaster had written together with his father and which had appeared as a serial in 1912.

In 1933, Lancaster wrote Vanished Lands: Atlantis and Lemuria,[note 4] a very short essay, for the New Zealand Herald.

[21] The Dardanelles Committee meetings of 7 and 17 June 1915 assigned this division along with the 10th and 11th to the Gallipoli campaigns, trying to reverse the failure of the first landings to proceed beyond the beachheads.

A naval medical officer wrote "The nervous strain of being under shellfire day after day, week after week, and month after month might be expected to cause a large amount of mental depression and even insanity among the troops..."[23] The Gallipoli Campaigns petered out in early 1916, but Lancaster had ended his military service before this, resigning his commission with effect from 22 December 1915.

On 2 April Lancaster was found in the Great Western Railway station in Glocester in unspecified "suspicious circumstances".

The court was told that he had on 3 June presented a worthless cheque in payment of cocaine which the chemist had dispensed after Lancaster had stated that he was a Doctor Hamilton from Edinburgh.

After initially claiming to be Hamilton, Lancaster admitted his real name and said that he had been taking a large quantity of cocaine.

[29] Lancaster's father died suddenly at his paternal aunts' house in Chester on 10 June 1922,[34] leaving the relatively modest sum of £866 11s 8d to his widow.

The tide was running out, but a strong wind blowing on-shore led to his shouts being heard and he was rescued after two hours in the water.