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Stranded — marooned — on a desert island. If you have ever experienced this — and this writer has — or wondered about it — one cannot help but think of and compare your experience or daydreams to that of Robinson Crusoe, as told by the Presbyterian author Daniel Defoe. He originated, in fact, a genre of literature known as the Robinsonade — carried on by both non-Christian writers, and Christian authors such as Johann David Wyss (The Swiss Family Robinson); Robert Michael Ballantyne (The Island Queen and The Lonely Island); William Henry Giles Kingston (The Coral Island); and George Alfred Henty (For Name and Fame). Today we highlight an American Presbyterian author’s contribution to the genre.
Originally titled Robert and Harold: or, The Young Marooners on the Florida Coast (1852), this popular novel by Francis Robert Goulding (whose creative mind also developed an early version of the sewing machine) is often known as simply The Young Marooners. Not unlike Wyss’s Swiss Family Robinson, which came about through stories told by a pastor to his children, Goulding’s story also originated in tales told to young people. It tells the story — said to be partially based on factual events — of a family in the 1830s who set off from Charleston, South Carolina around the Florida peninsula to the Tampa Bay area. Where exactly they ended up, and how the children were separated from Dr. Gordon, and what adventures followed is the tale that we encourage you to read, or perhaps to read aloud to your children.
Worthy of special mention in this work is:
The piety of the family - throughout their travels and adventures, the family’s commitment to Bible-reading, prayer and Sabbath observance is a golden thread that runs through the whole story;
Although not a submarine like that which is found in another Robinsonade, Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, a nautilus is featured in Goulding’s tale, described by the author as a “Portuguese man-of-war”; and the fact that
There is a sequel - after the success of Goulding’s adventure novel, which went through over ten editions in the United States and England, and was translated into several foreign languages, in the following decade Goulding published the backstory of Dr. Gordon’s search for the young children under the title of Marooner’s Island: or, Dr. Gordon in Search of His Children (1868). This and other adventure stories for young people can be found here.
