: My First Voyage to Southern Seas by Kingston William Henry Giles Pearse Alfred Illustrator - Voyages and travels Juvenile fiction; Oceania Juvenile fiction

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Illustrator: A. Pearse

My First Voyage to Southern Seas, by W.H.G. Kingston.

This is one of Kingston's earlier books, but is very much in the style for which he became famous. The theme is that the father of a family, a well-to-do merchant in London, dies suddenly. His eldest son had gone off to sea, but had not been heard of for some time, and by some was presumed dead. The second son is our young hero, who goes to sea as a midshipman. The book is thereafter filled with his adventures as he finds his way through rumour and chance to rescue his brother from where he is in captivity.

It's quite a long book, but the action never drags, and there are some interesting descriptions of the places visited, specially Ceylon.

As always with Kingston the seamanship is excellent. The action takes place in the 1850s, and we are in the age of sail. There are pirates, drunken captains, shipwrecks, strange coincidences, indeed all the usual components of a good Kingston novel.

MY FIRST VOYAGE TO SOUTHERN SEAS, BY W.H.G. KINGSTON.

MY ENGLISH HOME AND FAMILY--MY BROTHER GOES TO SEA--HEAR OF THE LOSS OF HIS SHIP--MY FATHER'S DEATH--WE ARE REDUCED TO POVERTY--RESOLVE TO VISIT MY GRANDFATHER, AND TO SEARCH FOR ALFRED--KINDNESS OF MY SCHOOLMASTER AND COMPANIONS--MY DOG SOLON.

Ours was a very united and a very happy family. We lived in the neighbourhood of London, near Blackheath, in Kent, on the elevated ground which overlooks Greenwich, its noble hospital, and the river Thames. Our father was a merchant, a thoroughly upright, industrious man, an honour to the profession to which he belonged. No man could be more attentive to business than he was, and yet no one enjoyed the country and the pursuits of the country more than he did. With what pleasure did we look forward, when we were children, to his return in the afternoon and even now I think I hear his cheerful laugh, and see his bland smile, as he took us up one by one in his arms and kissed us, and then often, though he must frequently have been tired and harassed, had a game of boisterous romps with us, seeming entirely to have forgotten all his cares and troubles. It was considered the privilege of little Kate, or one of the other young ones, to look slily into his pockets when, by a well-known significant gesture, he let us understand that they were not altogether empty. He had a little hand hamper or basket, such as many another paterfamilias possesses, which travelled with great regularity up and down nearly every day, and out of which all sorts of wonderful articles used to appear; and if a friend accompanied him unexpectedly down to dinner, our mother never had to complain that she was taken unawares and had nothing fit to offer him. The hamper, however, did not always contain eatables. Often our mother, or one of us, had been wishing very much for something which could not possibly have got into his pockets, and before many days were over, it was very nearly certain to make its appearance, when the top of the hamper was thrown back, imbedded in straw or paper. That dear old hamper always put us in mind of some magic chest in a fairy tale, only I doubt if any magic chest ever afforded so much pleasure, or produced so great a variety of articles as it did. I do not know if our kind father ever was out of humour; if he was, he left the appearance of it behind him in the city. Out of spirits he seldom or never was in my childhood's days.

The time was coming when a sad change was to occur. I mention these traits, trivial though they may seem, because I think that they speak well of my father's character. At the same time that he was a most affectionate father, he never forgot the necessity of correcting us for our faults; while he was deeply sensible of the importance of fitting us for the stations in life we might be destined to occupy, and of placing clearly before us the object of our existence on earth, and our duty to God and to our fellow-men. He watched over us with the most anxious solicitude during every moment he could spare; he took us out to walk with him, and had us constantly in his room, never wearying, apparently, of our society. This he did, I have no doubt, not only because he loved us, but that he might ascertain our different characters and dispositions, and at once eradicate, as far as he was able, each budding tendency to evil as it appeared.

Such was my father, a fine, intelligent, gentlemanly, handsome man; and though his hair was perfectly grey, his complexion was yet clear, nor had his eye lost the animation of youth. It is with great satisfaction that I can look back and picture him as I have now faithfully drawn his portrait.

Our dear mother, too, she was worthy to be his wife,--so amiable, and loving, and sensible, a pious Christian and a perfect gentlewoman, thoroughly educated, and capable of bringing up her daughters to fill the same station in life she occupied, which was all she desired for them. Indeed, we boys also received much of our early instruction from her, and I feel very certain that we retained far more of what she taught us than we acquired from any other source. To her we owed, especially, lessons of piety and instruction in the Holy Scriptures, never, I trust, to be forgotten, as well as much elementary secular knowledge, which probably we should otherwise have been very long in picking up. My mother had no relations of whom we, at all events, knew anything in England. She was the daughter of an Englishman, however, who had, when the Mauritius first came under the dominion of Great Britain, gone out there as a settler and planter, leaving her, his only child, to be educated in England.

Mr Coventry, my grandfather, was, we understood, of a somewhat eccentric disposition, and had for some years wandered about in the Eastern seas and among the islands of the Pacific, although he had ultimately returned again to his estate. He had transmitted home ample funds for his daughter's education, but he kept up very little communication with her, and had never even expressed any intention of sending for her to join him. The lady under whose charge she had been left was a very excellent person, and had thoroughly done her duty by her in cultivating to the utmost all the good qualities and talents she possessed. That lady was a friend of my father's family, and thus my father became acquainted with her pupil, to whom he was before long married.

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