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As so often with Ballantyne's books there are really several tales all
told in parallel in this book. There is the story of the seaman Gaff
and his son Billy, there is the story of Mrs Gaff, there is Haco
Barepoles, there is Captain Bingley and his son Gildart, there is the
Stuart family. All these characters are very well drawn, and their
lives merge together and move apart to a surprising degree. With a
fundamentally Christian message, this book also depicts the work of the
Shipwrecked Mariners and Fishermen Institution. Although there are
incidents at sea, most of the action takes place in the small fishing
village of Wreckumoft, and the town of Athenbury. One of the great
values of Ballantyne's books is the insight he gives into life in
Britain in the nineteenth century, not just the day-to-day lives of the
actors, but the motives that propel them, and the upbringing that these
actors had. We are, however, mystified by the title, which made one
think that the book might be something to do with ballooning!
Robert Michael Ballantyne was born in 1825 and died in 1894. He was
educated at the Edinburgh Academy, and in 1841 he became a clerk with
the Hudson Bay Company, working at the Red River Settlement in Northen
Canada until 1847, arriving back in Edinburgh in 1848. The letters he
had written home were very amusing in their description of backwoods
life, and his family publishing connections suggested that he should
construct a book based on these letters. Three of his most enduring
books were written over the next decade, "The Young Fur Traders",
"Ungava", "The Hudson Bay Company", and were based on his experiences
with the HBC. In this period he also wrote "The Coral island" and
"Martin Rattler", both of these taking place in places never visited by
Ballantyne. Having been chided for small mistakes he made in these
books, he resolved always to visit the places he wrote about. With
these books he became known as a great master of literature intended for
teenagers. He researched the Cornish Mines, the London Fire Brigade,
the Postal Service, the Railways, the laying down of submarine telegraph
cables, the construction of light-houses, the light-ship service, the
life- boat service, South Africa, Norway, the North Sea fishing fleet,
ballooning, deep-sea diving, Algiers, and many more, experiencing the
lives of the men and women in these settings by living with them for
weeks and months at a time, and he lived as they lived.
He was a very true-to-life author, depicting the often squalid scenes he
encountered with great care and attention to detail. His young readers
looked forward eagerly to his next books, and through the 1860s and
1870s there was a flow of books from his pen, sometimes four in a year,
all very good reading. The rate of production diminished in the last
ten or fifteen years of his life, but the quality never failed.
He published over ninety books under his own name, and a few books for
very young children under the pseudonym "Comus".
For today's taste his books are perhaps a little too religious, and what
we would nowadays call "pi". In part that was the way people wrote in
those days, but more important was the fact that in his days at the Red
River Settlement, in the wilds of Canada, he had been a little
dissolute, and he did not want his young readers to be unmindful of how
they ought to behave, as he felt he had been.
Some of his books were quite short, little over 100 pages. These books
formed a series intended for the children of poorer parents, having less
pocket-money. These books are particularly well-written and researched,
because he wanted that readership to get the very best possible for
their money. They were published as six series, three books in each
series.
Re-created as an e-Text by Nick Hodson, October 2003.
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