ABSTRACT
A founding member of Missions to Seamen, W. H. G. Kingston was invested in the evangelical working-class sailor. Both novels examined here address the labour trade, which saw Pacific Islanders transported to work on settler-owned plantations, sometimes through contracts, at other times through kidnapping or enslavement. In Little Ben Hadden the repeated requirement to “do right” transitions from Ben’s personal mantra as a Christian sailor, to an apt description of the ideology mobilizing Pacific Islander converts; in turn the obligation to “do right” sees the British navy apprehend those who sought to kidnap Pacific Islanders as a labour force for South America, and thus Kingston positions Britain as the moral antithesis of slaving nations. Nine years later Kingston published Kidnapping in the Pacific, which counters the simple dichotomies of Little Ben Hadden by examining British complicity in the labour trade through Boas, a British sailor. Boas is unfamiliar with Christianity despite his nationality, and repeatedly distances himself from violence against Pacific Islanders by declaring “that’s no business of mine.” Through this refusal we see Kingston focus on the personal responsibility of sailors, representing working-class agency as requiring the moral framework of Christianity. Working across these novels, I read Kingston as arguing for the necessity of attending to the faith of the working-class sailor in order to address the violence of empire that is exemplified through labour trade abuses.
