Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825 - 1894) was principally a writer of fiction for young adults. He was was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and went to Canada aged 16, where he spent five years working for the Hudson's Bay Company. He traded with the local Native Americans for furs, which required him to travel by canoe and sleigh to the areas occupied by the modern-day provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, experiences that formed the basis of his novel Snowflakes and Sunbeams (1856).
In 1847 Ballantyne returned to Scotland to discover that his father had died. He published his first book the following year, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America, and for some time was employed by the publishers Messrs Constable. In 1856 he gave up business to focus on his literary career, and began the series of adventure stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated. He spent his later years in Harrow, London, before moving to Italy for the sake of his health. He died in Rome.
Among his many novels can be found some on life at sea including two which can be classed as historic naval fiction. Many of his novels are not copyright in many countries and some are available as free eBooks.
AOS Naval Fiction |
||
| Series: n/a | ||
| Year | Book | Comment |
| The Battle and the Breeze | Set around Nelson's Mediterranean chase culminating in the Battle of the Nile | |
| The Cannibal Islands | Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas | |
AOS Pirate Fiction |
||
| Series: n/a | ||
| Year | Book | Comment |
| The Pirate City: An Algerine Tale | Tale of pirates vying against the might of the British Navy. | |
| The Madman and the Pirate | A village propose a terrible fate for a man | |
AOS Other Nautical Fiction |
||
| Series: n/a | ||
| Year | Book | Comment |
| 1867 | Coral Island | Three teenagers are shipwrecked on an uninhabited island in the South Seas |
| Battles with the Sea | Heroes of the lifeboat and rocket: being descriptive of our coast-life-saving apparatus | |
| Black Ivory | About the slave trade in East Africa | |
| The Crew of the Water Wagtail | The fate of the crew of the Water Wagtail | |
| Fast in the Ice | A ship is trapped in the Arctic | |
| Fighting the Whales | A fatherless boy joins the crew of a whaling ship | |
| The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands | Some insight into the condition, value, and vicissitudes of the light-vessels | |
| Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader | Trading in the South Sea | |
| The Lifeboat | The work of a lifeboat of the Kentish Coast | |
| The Life of a Ship | Davy is taken to a shipyard to watch the building of a new sailing-vessel which he eventually sails on | |
| The Lively Poll | A story of fishing in the North Sea | |
| Man on the Ocean | A Book about Boats and Ships | |
| Saved by the Lifeboat | A tale of wreck and rescue by lifeboat on the coast of the English Channel | |
| Sunk at Sea | The adventures of wandering Will in the Pacific and the effects of a storm. | |
| The Young Trawler | About the North Sea fishing fleets | |
| The Red Eric: Or the Whaler's Last Cruise | Captain Dunning isthe owner and commander of a South Sea whale-ship | |
| The World of Ice | The whaling cruise of "the Dolphin" and the adventures of her crew In the polar regions | |