A short novel filled with sea adventures by 19th century adventure writer W. H. G. Kingston. This author is mostly forgotten nowadays, but was rather popular at the time. In fact, he is one of the three writers cited by Robert Louis Stevenson in the epigraph at the beginning of Treasure Island, along with R. M. Ballantyne and Fenimore Cooper:

TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER
If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons,
And buccaneers, and buried gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of today:
--So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie!

Anyway, this is the first Kingston story I have read, and I enjoyed it. A previous reviewer in goodreads says that this book is not among the author's best novels. I can't comment on that, as I haven't read any other to compare it with. However, I feel that the two previous reviews are harsher than the story deserves.

Plot (adapted from https://www.historicnavalfiction.com): Several families have met together to have a picnic on a pleasant local beach. To everyone's delight they are joined by Harry Merryweather, a midshipman home on leave. Harry and another youth, David Moreton, go for a wander round the rocks, but are cut off by the strong tide. The weather then turns very nasty, but the boys are able to swim to a passing boat containing an old man, Jefferies, and his young grandson, Tristram. The weather is now so bad they can't get back to the local harbour at Penmore. From there, a succession of adventures and tragedies befall the young heroes, including terrible storms, abandoned wrecks, rafts, French privateers, sinking ships, deserted islands...

Let's see: This is a very short novel (41K words, barely longer than a novella). It is certainly not boring, which is the first thing we require of an adventure story: it is fast-paced and a lot of stuff happens. I think it's entertaining and good at making the reader feel the dangerous plight of the two main characters.

On the other hand, the story is probably too short for all the things that happen. Sometimes giving the reader time to breathe is a good thing in an adventure story. When you get to share quiet time with the characters you appreciate it more when events speed up.

Also, in the last part of the story it gets convoluted, with too many coincidences. The characters continually encounter French privateers, and also the ship where the midshipman character serves, plus an abandoned ship, a desert island... the girl one of the characters likes makes two sea voyages with her father, and both times their ship is attacked by French privateers, and both times the main characters happen to be around by chance... it just makes the sea seem too small with all the chance encounters. This is mostly an issue in the last part, as I said, because until then it was fine.

There are religious references that might surprise some modern readers, from the characters praying and taking comfort in religion to a character who is introduced as non-believer and because of that is presented as prone to despair.

The British characters tend to be presented in a positive light while most of the enemies (French) are presented in a negative light. Not all of them, and it's justified by the fact that the French characters we see are privateers, but it does come across as a bit jingoistic.

Despite these issues, the novel is a rather entertaining sea adventure. Not a big classic of the genre, but a very serviceable story for those of us who enjoy 19th century adventure novels. ( )