The African Trader; or, The Adventures of Harry Bayford, by W.H.G.
Kingston.
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This is rather a short book, only 120 small pages in book format. Harry
is a young chap, just about ready to leave school, when his father
suffers some business losses, and the stress kills him. Harry is left
with some sisters, and he does not want to be a burden to them so he
gets a job on board a trading vessel, and off they go to Africa.
Here many of the crew catch the Yellow Fever, and die. The captain is
ill, but appears to be surviving. An African seaman is a senior rating
aboard the vessel. With a rich cargo, and badly under-manned, the
vessel sets off for home. There is a fire in one of the holds, to which
the vessel succumbs. Harry and the African seaman make themselves a
raft, but the captain perishes. They are picked up almost at once by a
slave trader, but a Royal Navy man-of-war appears and gives chase. The
slave trader delays the chase by chucking slaves overboard, who then
have to be picked up by the pursuer. It all gets sorted out, and
Harry's cousin is an officer on the man-of-war. The African seaman is a
religious man, and it actually turns out that he is the very person
Harry had been asked to look out for by his old nurse. So there is a
happy ending, as far as Harry is concerned, but there certainly were a
few casualties on the way.
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THE AFRICAN TRADER; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY BAYFORD, BY W.H.G.
KINGSTON.