Westerman, Percy F.: - English author Percy Francis Westerman wrote a lot of children's books. He was born in 1876 and died on February 22, 1959. A lot of his books are action stories with military or naval themes. He was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1876 and went to Portsmouth Grammar School. When he was twenty, he got a job as a clerk at Portsmouth Dockyard. It was in 1900 that he married Florence Wager of Portsmouth. They loved sailing so much that they spent some of their vacation sailing in the Solent. John F.C. Westerman, their son who was born in 1901, also wrote boys' adventure books. He had to leave his houseboat for dry land because of a fall when he was 70 years old, but he kept writing quickly. He died at the age of 82, and his last book, Mistaken Identity, came out in 1959 after he had died. He is said to have started writing after he and his wife bet sixpence that he could write a better story than the one he was reading to their sick son at the time. He wrote his first book for boys called A Lad of Grit, which came out in 1908 with Blackie and Son Limited.