Nicholas, Lord Ramage was the fictional character at the centre of a series of sea novels written by Dudley Pope. Ramage was an officer in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.
Nicholas Ramage was born in 1775 at Blazey Hall in Cornwall, the eldest son of the Earl of Blazey. Nicholas' father was a Vice-Admiral who was court martialled (some sympathetic colleagues felt unjustly so) and Nicholas is burdened by this legacy. Ramage's mother was fond of traveling and took Ramage to Tuscany to live in 1777, when his father departed to assume naval command in North America. They returned to England for his father's court martial in 1782 and because of the notoriety surrounding his father's court martial returned to Tuscany in 1783 where Ramage remained until he joined the navy in 1788 at age 13. Despite the his father's disgrace, Ramage retained significant patrons within the navy enabling him to be promoted to lieutenant at age 20, the earliest age possible.