Editing Robert Louis Stevenson (section)

===Pacific voyages===
[[File:Robert Louis Stevenson playing his flageolet, published 1902.jpg|left|thumb|Stevenson playing a [[flageolet]] in Hawaii ca. 1889]]
[[File:Robert Louis Stevenson and King Kalakaua and his Singing Boys.jpg|left|thumb|Stevenson and King [[Kalākaua]] of Hawaii, c. 1889]]
[[File:Stevenson vailima.jpg|thumb|left|The author with his wife and their household in [[Vailima, Samoa]], c. 1892]]
[[File:Robert Louis Stevenson birthday fete, Samoa 1896.jpg|thumb|left|Stevenson's birthday fete at Vailima, November 1894]]
[[File:Stevenson's home at Vailima.jpg|thumb|left|Stevenson on the veranda of his home at Vailima, c. 1893]]
[[File:Burial and grave of Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa, 1894.jpg|thumb|left|Burial on [[Mount Vaea]] in Samoa, 1894]]
[[File:Grave of Robert Louis Stevenson 1909.jpg|thumb|left|His tomb on Mount Vaea, c. 1909]]

In June 1888, Stevenson chartered the yacht ''Casco'' from [[Samuel Merritt]] and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The vessel "plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help."<ref>Quoted from Stevenson's diary in Overton, Jacqueline M. ''[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15547/15547-h/15547-h.htm The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081012041600/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15547/15547-h/15547-h.htm |date=12 October 2008 }}''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933</ref> The sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he became a good friend of King [[Kalākaua]]. He befriended the king's niece Princess [[Ka'iulani|Victoria Kaiulani]], who also had Scottish heritage. He spent time at the [[Gilbert Islands]], [[Tahiti]], New Zealand and the [[Samoan Islands]]. During this period, he completed ''[[The Master of Ballantrae]]'', composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote ''[[The Bottle Imp]]''. He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in his ''In the South Seas'' (which was published posthumously).<ref>''In the South Seas'' (1896) & (1900) Chatto & Windus; republished by The Hogarth Press (1987). A collection of Stevenson's articles and essays on his travels in the Pacific</ref> He made a voyage in 1889 with Lloyd on the trading schooner ''[[Equator (schooner)|Equator]]'', visiting [[Butaritari]], Mariki, Apaiang and [[Abemama]] in the [[Kiribati|Gilbert Islands]].<ref name="South Seas 1896">''In the South Seas'' (1896)& (1900) Chatto & Windus; republished by The Hogarth Press (1987)</ref> They spent several months on Abemama with tyrant-chief [[Tem Binoka]], whom Stevenson described in ''In the South Seas''.<ref name="South Seas 1896" />

Stevenson left [[Sydney]], Australia, on the ''Janet Nicoll'' in April 1890 for his third and final voyage among the South Seas islands.<ref name="fanny1914">[https://archive.org/details/cruiseofjanetnic00stevuoft ''The Cruise of the Janet Nichol Among the South Sea Islands''], Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson, [[Charles Scribner's Sons]], New York, 1914</ref> He intended to produce another book of travel writing to follow his earlier book ''In the South Seas'', but it was his wife who eventually published her journal of their third voyage. (Fanny misnames the ship in her account ''The Cruise of the Janet Nichol''.)<ref>''The Cruise of the Janet Nichol among the South Sea Islands'' A Diary by Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson (first published 1914), republished 2004, editor, Roslyn Jolly (U. of Washington Press/U. of New South Wales Press)</ref> A fellow passenger was [[Jack Buckland]], whose stories of life as an island trader became the inspiration for the character of Tommy Hadden in ''[[The Wrecker (Stevenson novel)|The Wrecker]]'' (1892), which Stevenson and [[Lloyd Osbourne]] wrote together.<ref name="Jack Buckland 2001 p. 418">Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Ernest Mehew (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2001) p. 418, n. 3</ref><ref>Robert Louis Stevenson, The Wrecker, in Tales of the South Seas: Island Landfalls; The Ebb-Tide; The Wrecker (Edinburgh: Canongate Classics, 1996), ed. and introduced by Jenni Calder</ref> Buckland visited the Stevensons at Vailima in 1894.<ref>'Memories of Vailima' by Isobel Strong & Lloyd Osbourne, Archibald Constable & Co: Westminster (1903)</ref>