JAMES EDMOND MACDONNELL was born in 1917 in Mackay, Queensland and raised in Toowoomba and went on to become one of Australia's most prolific writers. As a boy, he became determined to go to sea and read every seafaring book he could find. At age 13, while his family was still asleep, he took his brother's bike and rode eighty miles from his home town to Brisbane in an attempt to see ships and the sea. Fortunately, he was found and returned to his family. He attended the Toowoomba Grammar School from 1931 to 1932. He served in the Royal Australian Navy for fourteen years, joining at age 17, advancing through all lower deck ranks and reaching the rank of commissioned gunnery officer. He began writing books while still in active service.
In 1948 he joined The Bulletin to write the "Personal Items" page. He apparently contributed articles about wartime issues to The Bulletin and other articles of a similar type certainly appeared in The Australasian Post, The Australian Journal, The Sydney Morning Herald, Woman, The Australasian, The Adelaide Advertiser, The Western Mail and Pocket Book Weekly. Stories by MacDonnell also appeared in the annual Australian War Memorial books that were issued during and after World War 2.
His first book, Fleet Destroyer - a collection of stories about life on the small ships - was published by The Book Depot, Melbourne, in 1945 while MacDonnell was on active service as a Petty Officer.
Constable London published Macdonnell's first novel, Gimme the Boats, in 1953, followed in the same year by Wings off the Sea and subsequently by Jim Brady, Leading Seaman (1954), Commander Brady (1956) and Subsmash (1960). Macdonnell began writing full-time for Horwitz in 1956, writing an average of a dozen books a year.
In 1988, he retired to Buderim on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland his wife Valerie in 1988. He died peacefully in his sleep at a Buderim hospital in 2002. He is survived by his children Beth, Jane and Peter.
Macdonnell's naval stories feature several recurring characters: Captain "Dutchy" Holland, D.S.O., Captain Peter Bentley, V.C., Captain Bruce Sainsbury, V.C., Jim Brady, and Lieutenant Commander Robert Randall.
