The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn

In Chapter I the reader is introduced to Eric Blackburn, fourth officer of the ill-fated "Saturn", and hero of this story. The s.s. "Saturn" is overtaken in mid-ocean by a sudden and irreparable disaster, Blackburn being the sole survivor. Picked up by a sailing ship, the castaway finds himself elevated to the position of skipper, and joins in a search for hidden treasure. The search is successful, but on its way to port the ship is wrecked on an uncharted island.

Blackburn and the dead captain's son reach land safely, and while exploring have many adventures and experiences. They become acquainted with a savage king, to whom they render aid in repelling attacks by huge apes which are a continual menace.

The treasure, which they have saved, proves a source of danger when two doubtful characters, former members of Blackburn's crew, turn up unexpectedly. A settlement is effected, but complications arise and disaster is narrowly averted.

Later, the hero and his companion leave their island home, carrying the treasure with them.

Harry Collingwood (1851-1922). Pseudonym of William Joseph Cosens Lancaster, a civil engineer who specialised in seas and harbours.

A PDF of scans and an HTML version of this book are provided. We also provide a plain TEXT version and full instructions for using this to make your own audiobook. To find these click on the PDF, HTML or TXT links on the left.

These transcriptions of books by various nineteenth century authors of instructive books for teenagers, were made during the period 1997 to the present day by Athelstane e-Books. Most of the books are concerned with the sea, but in any case all will give a good idea of life in the nineteenth century, and sometimes earlier than that. This of course includes attitudes prevalent at the time, but frowned upon nowadays.

We used a Hewlett-Packard scanner, a Plustek OpticBook 3600 scanner or a Nikkon Coolpix 5700 camera to scan the pages. We then made a pdf which we used to assist with editing the OCRed text.

To make a text version we used TextBridge Pro 98 or ABBYY Finereader 7 or 8 to produce a first draft of the text, and Athelstane software to find misreads and improve the text. We proof-read the chapters, and then made a CD with the book read aloud by either Fonix ISpeak or TextAloud MP3. The last step enables us to hear and correct most of the errors that may have been missed by the other steps, as well as entertaining us during the work of transcription.

The resulting text can be read either here at the Internet Archive or at www.athelstane.co.uk