From his boyhood he was always hunting trouble; he dearly loved a fight, and gravitated into the British navy as inevitably as a duck to water.

He was scarcely more than an urchin when he became a fighting sailor, and indeed one could expect no less, for both his father and grandfather had been officers in the service, and goodness knows how many lusty Warrens before them! For our friend Peter was a Warren of Warrenstown, of the County Meath just west of Dublin, and let me tell you that meant something! The Warrens got their estates in the days of "Strongbow," and held them through all the vicissitudes of olden Ireland.

They were a house called "English-Irish," and "inside the pale," which means that they stood high in British favour, and contributed heroes to the army or navy from each of their hardy generations.

They had no title, but to be The Warren of Warrenstown, Meath, was to be entitled to look down with disdain upon upstart baronets and newly created peers.

Sir.
Christopher Aylmer's daughter, Catherine, was honoured to marry Captain Michael Warren, and her brother, Admiral Lord Aylmer, only too glad to take charge of her boy Peter later on.
Peter was the youngest of a family, composed with one exception of boys, and the most ambitious of the lot.