Merlin Theodore Minshall (21 December 1906 – 3 September 1987) was a British naval officer and adventurer. He is often claimed to have been one of the inspirations behind James Bond, the fictional spy created by Ian Fleming. Minshall worked for Fleming during the Second World War, as a member of the Royal Navy's Naval Intelligence Division. Life Son of Colonel Thomas Herbert Minshall, DSO (1873–1872), a well known consultant electrical engineer and newspaper proprietor and Theodora Minshall née Wigham-Richardson (1871–1932), he was educated at Charterhouse and University College, Oxford. Upon graduation Minshall trained as an architect at London University, before embarking on his boat the Hawke (formerly known as Sperwer, which is Dutch for Hawke, and on display in the Netherlands in the indoor museum of the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen) on his quest to be the first Englishman to sail across Europe to the Black Sea. Minshall acquired the Hawke in Bosham, from Gerald Hulse in 1931 in exchange for a sports car. Hulse had only purchased the Hawke the year before from Dr. Marmaduke Fawkes who had owned the boat since 1926, having brought it over from the Netherlands. Minshall was accompanied by his first wife, Elizabeth, but they separated during this trip and were later divorced. The subsequent encounter with the German agent, Lisa Kaltenbrunner came while sailing down the River Danube. She hitched a lift on his yacht – but it was no coincidence. She had been sent to discover whether he was charting the river and investigating oil storage depots for British intelligence. Having seduced him, she attempted to poison him, but Minshall survived, and the knowledge he had gained did indeed prove useful to the British in a subsequent operation during the war. Minshall was also well known as an amateur racing driver, who specialised in the kind of road races that are generally illegal today. A two time competitor in the Monte Carlo rally, his greatest trump came in 1937, when he was presented with a trophy by Benito Mussolini for winning the 1937 Italian Foreign Challenge Trophy – a three-day, 4,000-mile road race between Rome and Sicily. It involved over 400 cars, and led to the death of four drivers. He also was the first man to drive an air cooled vehicle north to south across the Sahara desert. At the outbreak of World War II, he was recalled to duty