ABSTRACT
A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1857) stumble across 'a small hut or cottage' containing two skeletons. On leaving the 'melancholy stillness' of the scene, the boys 'brought the whole hut in ruins to the ground, and thus formed a grave to the bones of the poor recluse and his dog'. Analyses of The Coral Island have generally focused on the desirable side of this equation: the desire for imperial expansion, occupation of distant lands, prelapsarian fantasies and acquisition of new knowledge pre-emptively understood to confirm Western superiority. Missionary texts focus on a particular narrative of antithetical interests based on the death of John Williams of the LMS, a narrative reinforced subsequent to publication of The Coral Island in the death of John Coleridge Patteson of the Church Missionary Society. Williams is relevant here since his widely read work, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Seas, forms the basis for events and passages in The Coral Island.
