Charles Reade 
Foul Play (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) [EPUB ebook] 

This 1869 novel was an exposé of ship-knackers—merchants who made their money from the foundering of ships, with no regard for their crews.  Robert Penfold, a young clergyman convicted of forgery, is shipwrecked while on his way to Australia and cast up, with the heroine, upon a desert island. 

Circa l’autore

Charles Reade (1814-1884) was a prolific English novelist and playwright who sought to expose social injustice in his work.  He is remembered for the novels The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), a historical romance; Hard Cash (1863), an expose of abuse in mental asylums; and Put Yourself in His Place (1870), about trade-union terrorism.