The Coral Island
A Tale of the Pacific Ocean
R M Ballantyne (1858), Dean & Son Ltd, London.
248 pages, price unknown.

Question 9 in The Times Daily Quiz for 24 February 2025 read, ‘Which 1858 boys’ adventure novel by R M Ballantyne is narrated by Ralph Rover?’  No idea.  My wife immediately answered, ‘The Coral Island’.  ‘How did you know that?’ I replied, somewhat surprised.  ‘Because I read it years ago’ and within two minutes of checking our bookshelves, she handed me the very copy.  And so I started to read it.

The overall storyline
It is a classic Victorian children's novel about three would-be seafaring boys, who were shipwrecked, but managed to land on an island, Coral Island, in the South Pacific.  Its 35 chapters are filled with the sort of derring-do adventures reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, Moby-Dick and Treasure Island.  Indeed, the author of the latter, Robert Louis Stevenson, so admired the story of The Coral Island that he based portions of his Treasure Island on themes found in Ballantyne’s book.

Ballantyne introduces these juvenile adventurers as, ‘Peterkin Gay was 13, Ralph Rover was 15 and Jack Martin was 18 years old.’  ‘But Jack was very tall, strong, and manly for his age, and might easily have been mistaken for twenty.’  On the other hand, Peterkin was ‘little, quick, funny and, decidedly mischievous.’  Ralph, the book’s narrator, is both practical and resourceful.  Together they were shipmates, castaways, then islanders, exploring and subsisting, even sometimes living grandly, ‘with no other implements than an axe, a bit of hoop iron, a sail-needle, and a broken penknife.’  Overall, these three young heroes rely on Christian wisdom, common sense and plucky courage to overcome dangers, while surviving and outwitting pirates and cannibals.

The book consists of two rather distinct sections.  The first is real Boy’s Own stuff – ships, storms and seafaring.  The second part is more sinister – bloodshed, flesh-eating and death.  Yet the whole book retains that grand style of Victorian writing typified by grammatical sentences, words, spelling and even punctuation.  For example, on p. 87, Ralph comes to regard one of Jack’s plans as ‘very sound and worthy of being acted on.  So I forthwith put his plan in execution, and found it to answer excellently well, indeed, much beyond my expectation.’

The undergirding theme
Furthermore, the whole book is undergirded by a distinctively Christian theme – there are Bibles and churches and conversions.  Other reviewers have noted this motif and used it to expound the general civilising effects of Christianity, as well as 19th-century imperialism, and the importance of hierarchy and leadership.  But The Coral Island also has a more personal, evangelical, gospel content.

And so specifically, I want to trace that Christian root that sustains the entire story.  It starts on p. 13, just as Ralph is about to leave his parents and board the Arrow bound for the South Seas.  ‘My mother gave me her blessing and a small Bible; and her last request was, that I would never forget to read a chapter every day, and say my prayers; which I promised, with tears in my eyes, that I would certainly do.’

The voyage does not go well.  Yet, in the early days of being washed up on Coral Island, Ralph’s thoughts ‘again turned to the great and kind Creator of this beautiful world.’  Then remembering his promise to his beloved mother that he would read his Bible every morning, ‘it was with a feeling of dismay that I remembered I had left it in the ship.  I was much troubled about this.  However, I consoled myself with reflecting that I could keep the second part of my promise to her – namely, that I should never omit to say my prayers.’

Yet the distractions of survival and the lack of a daily routine caused the boys, at one point, to forget dates and times.  ‘I say we were much alarmed on this head, for we had carefully kept count of the days since we were cast upon our island, in order that we might remember the Sabbath-day, which day we had hitherto with one accord kept as a day of rest, and refrained from all work whatsoever.’

Both creation and the Bible speak of God through general and specific revelation respectively.  And Coral Island was certainly created delightfully and from time to time, Ralph had to admit that, ‘It came into my mind to consider how strange it is that God would make such wonderful and exquisitely beautiful works never to be seen at all, except, indeed, by chance visitors such as ourselves.’  And on another occasion, among the white coral reef, he confessed, ‘Oh, it was a sight fitted to stir the soul of man to its profoundest depths, and if he owned a heart at all, to lift that heart in adoration and gratitude to the great Creator of this magnificent and glorious universe!’  And, even in the wake of a most terrifying storm, ‘I thanked God in my heart for our deliverance from so great a danger.’  ‘In our own Coral Island we had experienced every variety of good that a bountiful Creator could heap on us.’  ‘I pondered these things much, and while I considered them there recurred in my memory those words which I had read in my Bible – the works of God are wonderful, and His ways past finding out.’  [Romans 11:33].

Eventually, in the second part, this tale turns dramatically.  Enter other islands, savage cannibals, native Christians and members of the London Missionary Society.  As a crewmember from another ship, the old salt and piratical Bill becomes Ralph’s good friend and explains the situation, ‘We find that whenever the savages take up Christianity they always give over with their cannibalism, and are safe to be trusted.’  Yet Bill admits, ‘I never cared for Christianity myself.’  And he tells Ralph, ‘I wish that I had the feelin’s about God that you seem to have.  I’m dying, Ralph, yet I am afraid to die.  I feel that there’s no chance o’ my bein’ saved.’  ‘Don’t say that, Bill’, countered Ralph.  ‘But I can’t remember the words of the Bible that make me think so.  Is there not a Bible on board, Bill?’  Apparently not – the previous captain had found a Bible and flung it overboard.  ‘I now reflected and, with great sadness and self-reproach, on the way I had neglected my Bible; and it flashed across me that I was actually in the sight of God a greater sinner than this blood-stained man; for thought I, he tells me that he never read the Bible, and was never brought up to care for it; whereas I was carefully taught to read it by my own mother, and had read it daily as long as I possessed one, yet to little purpose that, I could not now call to mind a single text that would meet this poor man’s case, and afford him the consolation he so much required.  I was much distressed and taxed my memory for a long time.  At last a text did flash into my mind and I wondered that I had not thought of it before.  ‘Bill’, said I, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”’  [Acts 16:31].  But Bill continued to insist, ‘It’s not for me.  I’ve led a terrible life.’  ‘Tis of no use Ralph; my doom is fixed.’  ‘Bill’, said I, ‘though your sins be red like crimson, they shall be white as snow.  [Isaiah 1:18].  ‘Only believe.’  It all seemed too much for Bill, and ‘he sank back with a deep groan.’  An approaching heavy squall interrupted their conversation.  Then Bill said, ‘Ralph, Let me hear those two texts again.  Are ye sure, lad, ye saw them in the Bible?’  ‘Quite sure’ Ralph replied.’  At last, the storm abated and Ralph recalled, ‘I laid my hand over his heart, and sat for some time quite motionless; but there was no flutter there – the pirate was dead!’

And so the narrative twists and turns from ideal idylls to dystopian disasters.  For instance, there is an island village occupied mainly by Christians, plus a nearby encampment of heathen savages, a wicked chieftain named Tararo, and even the rescue of an imprisoned Christian ‘dusky maiden’ called Avatea.

When a native Christian teacher reported to Ralph the positive outcomes of biblical evangelicalism and of subsequent conversions, with pagan converts burning their household gods, and the changed natures of even the despotic chief Tararo and his villagers, Ralph ‘could not refrain from exclaiming, “what a convincing proof that Christianity is of God!”’  Ralph also recalled that this native teacher ‘pressed us more closely in regard to our personal interest in religion, and exhorted us to consider that our souls were certainly in as great danger as those of the wretched heathen whom we pitied so much, if we had not already found salvation in Jesus Christ.’  The teacher continued, ‘if such be your unhappy case, you are, in the sight of God, much worse than these savages, for they have no knowledge, no light, and do not profess to believe; while you, on the contrary, have been brought up in the light of the blessed gospel, and call yourselves Christians.  These poor savages are indeed the enemies of our Lord; but you, if ye be not true believers are traitors!’

On yet another occasion, the teenage trio suffered imprisonment at the hands of some local savages.  Indeed, they even wondered if they would ever see, let alone live on, their Coral Island again.  And then, while still imprisoned, …. they saw the native teacher approach.  He declared, ‘Oh, my dear young friend, through the goodness of God you are free!  Free to go and come as you will.’  He continued, ‘A missionary has been sent to us and Tararo has embraced the Christian religion!  The people are even now burning their gods of wood.  Come, my dear friends, and see the glorious sight.’  ‘We could scarcely credit our senses.’  And Avatea?  ‘She is to be married in a few days to her tall, strapping fellow.’

And so, in true Disneyesque finale style, Jack declared, ‘Now, then, Ralph and Peterkin, it seems to me that the object we came here for having been satisfactorily accomplished, we have nothing more to do now but to get our schooner ready for sea as fast as we can, and hurrah for dear old England!’

And so it was, ‘The missionary and thousands of the natives came down to bid us God-speed and to see us sail away.  We heard the single word “Farewell” borne faintly over the sea.  That night, as we sat on the taffrail gazing out upon the wide sea and up into the starry firmament, a thrill of joy, strangely mixed with sadness, passed through our hearts; for we were at length “homeward bound”, and were gradually leaving far behind us the beautiful, bright green coral islands of the Pacific Ocean.’

Some concluding comments
The Coral Island is a captivating little read with a fictional storyline that was, at times, perhaps too twee and too predictable, yet it possessed a captivating pace and a breadth of language and colour.  For me, what was most unexpected was its strong Christian theme.  This begs the question, was Robert Michael Ballantyne, the author of over 100 books, mostly in this genre of so-called juvenile fiction, a true evangelical Christian, or was he merely a cultural Christian from the Victorian era?

What was the source of his Christian knowledge?  Certainly, it came initially at his mother’s knee.  But it became sustained, developed and applied.  According to some blurb on the Amazon website, ‘R. M. Ballantyne, a devout Christian and outspoken advocate for Christian boyhood, changed the lives of hundreds of thousands with his globe-trekking adventure stories that emphasized Christian character in the face of adversity.’

Ballantyne was a deep-thinking man and a stickler for detail and accuracy.  According to Wikipedia, ‘The Coral Island is the most popular of the Ballantyne novels still read and remembered today.  But because of one mistake he made in that book, in which he gave an incorrect thickness of coconut shells, he subsequently attempted to gain first-hand knowledge of his subject matter.  For instance, he spent some time living with the lighthouse keepers at the Bell Rock before writing The Lighthouse, and while researching for Deep Down he spent time with the tin miners of Cornwall.’  And there can be no doubt that Ballantyne gained much of his sea and sailing knowledge from the age of 16 when he worked for five years for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada.

Moreover, there is a series of incidents that can explain much of his Christian faith and experience.  In an article by Lionel Gossman and M Taylor Pyne entitled, R M Ballantyne’s Religious Faith and published on The Victorian Web, they state, ‘Returning to Scotland in 1847, Ballantyne learned that his father had succumbed to the heart ailment he had been suffering from for some time.  A few years later, in the autumn of 1853, the death of his sister Madalina in childbirth led to a deep commitment to maintaining and spreading Christian faith.  Furthermore, according to Eric Quayle’s 1967 biography of Ballantyne entitled, Ballantyne the Brave, ‘from the time of the funeral, he started to attend church regularly . . . both morning and evening services.  He formed a Bible-reading class for working men and was most assiduous in his duties, giving almost all his spare time to religious work of one sort or another.  His new-found fervour so impressed the local clergy that, at the end of the following year . . . . and at the age of only twenty-four, Bob was elected an elder of the Free Church of Scotland.’  The Free Church of Scotland was the evangelical wing of the church, led by Thomas Chalmers, that had broken away from the Church of Scotland at the General Assembly of 1843 in a move generally referred to as the Disruption.  ‘From this point in his life his letters become more heavily tinged with religious quotations and exhortations to Godliness.’

The Coral Island – a good read.  Well done, good job, Bob!

[Incidentally, if you want more, you should know that The Gorilla Hunters is R M Ballantyne's sequel to The Coral Island.  Here, he continues the story of Ralph Rover, Jack Martin, and Peterkin Gay who, after their return to England for rest from their South Seas adventures, are now intent on joining the great hunters in Africa for a journey to the interior of the Dark Continent.  Ralph is again the thoughtful and philosophical narrator, with a strong sense of right and wrong, and the story is punctuated by exciting adventures, narrow escapes, and humorous episodes.]