Adrift in a Boat

Adrift in a Boat is a classic sea story set during the time of Napoleon in which two English boys are washed out to sea, picked up by a French pirate, wrecked in a West Indian hurricane and land on a deserted island.William Henry Giles Kingston (28 February 1814 – 5 August 1880), often credited as W. H. G. Kingston, was an English writer of boys' adventure novels.William Henry Giles Kingston was born in Harley Street, London on 28 February 1814. He was the eldest son of Lucy Henry Kingston (d.1852) and his wife Frances Sophia Rooke (b.1789), daughter of Sir Giles Rooke, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Kingston's paternal grandfather John Kingston (1736-1820) was a Member of Parliament who staunchly supported the Abolition of the Slave Trade, despite having a plantation in Demerara. His father Lucy entered into the wine business in Oporto,[1] and Kingston lived there for many years, making frequent voyages to England and developing a lifelong affection for the sea.He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and afterwards entered his father's wine business, but soon indulged in his natural bent for writing. His newspaper articles on Portugal were translated into Portuguese, and assisted the conclusion of the commercial treaty with Portugal in 1842, when he received from Donna Maria da Gloria an order of Portuguese knighthood and a pension.His first book was The Circassian Chief, a story published in 1844. While still living in Oporto, he wrote The Prime Minister, a historical novel, and Lusitanian Sketches, descriptions of travels in Portugal. Settling in England, he interested himself in the emigration movement, edited The Colonist and The Colonial Magazine and East India Review in 1844, was honorary secretary of a colonisation society, wrote Some Suggestions for a System of General Emigration in 1848, lectured on colonisation in 1849, published a manual for colonists entitled How to Emigrate in 1850, and visited the western highlands on behalf of the emigration commissioners. He was afterwards a zealous volunteer and worked actively for the improvement of the condition of seamen. But from 1850, his chief occupation was writing books for boys, or editing boys' annuals and weekly periodicals. He started the Union Jack, a paper for boys, only a few months before his death. His stories number more than a hundred.He published translations of several of Jules Verne's stories from the French (see below on the actual translator), and wrote many historical tales dealing with almost all periods and countries, from Eldol the Druid (1874) and Jovinian, a tale of Early Papal Rome (1877) downwards, and undertook some popular historical compilations such as Half-Hours with the Kings and Queens of England (1876).He rewrote Richard Johnson's 1596 book The Seven Champions of Christendom to bring the language into more contemporary English.His writings occupy nine pages and a half of the British Museum Catalogue. They were very popular; his tales were quite innocuous, but most of them proved ephemeral. Feeling his health failing, he wrote a farewell letter on 2 August 1880 in touching terms to the boys for whom he had written so much and so long, and died three days later at Stormont Lodge, Willesden, near LondonOn 4 August 1853, Kingston married Agnes Kinloch, daughter of Captain Charles Kinloch of the 52nd Light Infantry who had served in the Peninsular War as aide-de-camp to General Sir John Hope. Their honeymoon was spent in Canada, where Kingston acquired the background for many of his later novels, and they spent their first Christmas at Quebec City with the family of William Collis Meredith, Chief Justice of Quebec. Agnes Kinloch was privately educated, as was the custom of the time. She sang well, was an accomplished musician, studied art and languages in Europe, and spoke both French and German fluently, a skill which was to be of benefit during her husband's later financial troubles.