William Brown Meloney (1878–1925)

In 1896, when he was eighteen years old, he became a shipping news and political reporter in San Francisco and also started writing fiction and verse and "resolved to do what he could to further the establishment of a powerful American merchant fleet.

Meloney testified before the city's police commission, and the evening after his testimony was finished, he and another Bulletin reporter were beaten by two men in a saloon at 206 Sutter Street.

In 1910 he was appointed executive secretary by newly elected Mayor Gaynor,[6] after which he wrote several novels and plays but concentrated on a history of shipping, The Heritage of Tyre.

When his book was published, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane praised it as the "best thing ever written on shipping," and Theodore Roosevelt wrote that Meloney "had the vision of one of America's great needs.

[3] Meloney also wrote about sea shanties, in a work that was published first in Everybody's Magazine in 1914, then in book form as The Chanty Man Sings.