John Masefield, the poet laureate who died on 12 May, 1967, was a prolific writer of poems, novels and letters.

His most famous poems were Sea Fever and Cargoes and for many people his verses were their introduction to proper poetry:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky …

and

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days…

He is also remembered as the author of the children’s novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights , and the novels Captain Margaret and Multitude and Solitude .

John Edward Masefield was born on 1 June, 1878, in Ledbury, Herefordshire. His mother died when he was six, giving birth to his brother, and he was sent to live with his aunt, where he attempted to escape his unhappiness in books.

After an education at King’s School, Warwick, between 1888 and 1891, he went to train at sea on HMS Conway . Instead of kicking his addiction to books, he found life at sea gave him plenty of time for reading and writing.

It also gave him a new interest — sea tales, picked up from storytellers onboard.

In 1894, Mr Masefield boarded the Gilcruix, destined for Chile, and he recorded his experiences while sailing through bad storms: his journal records flying fish, and a night-time rainbow. Most of all it gave him an appreciation of the joys of nature — particularly extreme nature.

The following year, he returned to sea on a windjammer for New York City. But this time it was too much and the urge to become a writer overcame him and he jumped ship in New York and lived as a vagrant.

When he returned to employment, in a carpet factory, he returned to reading, buying up to 20 books a week —his favourites being Malory, Dickens, Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Chaucer, Keats and Shelley. One day he would be writing as much as he was reading.

In 1901, Mr Masefield, 23, met his future wife, Constance Crommelin, a cultured school teacher 11 years older but a perfect match. They had two children.

The next year some of Mr Masefield’s poems were published in Salt-Water Ballads (including Sea Fever ). He then wrote two novels, Captain Margaret (1908) and Multitude and Solitude (1909). In 1911, he composed The Everlasting Mercy , a narrative poem about a reformed wastrel that caused something of a literary sensation and gave Mr Masefield an even wider audience.

At the start of the First World War he went to the Dardanelles as a medical order with the British Red Cross; on his return he published Gallipoli (1916), one of the finest accounts of modern warfare. He also went to the United States , under official sanction, to explain the British war effort, and in 1917 he received honorary doctorates from both Yale and Harvard.

Mr Masefield’s most popular poem, Reynard the Fox , appeared in 1919. He was also writing plays, his most successful being The Tragedy of Nan (1909), and a prolific novelist, particularly vivid action stories including Lost Endeavour (1910) and Dead Ned (1938). His reputation also remains as the author of such children’s books as The Midnight Folk (1927) and The Box of Delights (1935).

He was also an indefatigable letter writer: one scholar has estimated that he wrote up to a quarter of a million letters.

Best of all, he was a poet who sold. By the end of his life his Collected Poems had sold more than 200,000 copies — showing his popularity among ordinary readers.

His common touch remained even after 1930, when he was appointed poet laureate upon the death of Robert Bridges and in preference to Rudyard Kipling. The poems he composed in his official capacity were sent to The Times — and the laureate always enclosed of a stamped envelope with each so that his verses could be returned if judged unacceptable for publication.

Mr Masefield died in 1967, at Burcote House, his home in Oxfordshire, and his ashes were left at Westminster Abbey. His memorial was his courteous gentle life and prolific output, but his epitaph might have been from his poem Biography :

When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts

Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts.