Tom Ayrton

Tom Ayrton is a fictional character who appears in two novels by French author Jules Verne. He is first introduced as a major character in the novel In Search of the Castaways (1867–1868). He then reappears in a later novel, The Mysterious Island (1874), in which his fate, left unknown at the ending of the previous novel, is resolved, and during the course of which his character undergoes change and achieves a redemption.

Biography

In Search of the Castaways

A Scottish able seaman, Ayrton served as quartermaster on board the three-mast ship Britannia, under the command of Captain Harry Grant. Differing opinions and extreme disputes with Grant led Ayrton to attempt leading a mutiny, the failure of which ended in his being expelled from the ship. Left behind alone on Australian shores, Ayrton learned nothing of the calamity that soon befell Grant's ship and crew.

Teaming up with a band of escaped convicts, Ayrton began a life of crime around Australia, becoming a cunning highwayman and eventually a notorious gang leader under the name of Ben Joyce. Wishing to commandeer a swift ship in order to become a pirate leader as well, he took advantage of an opportunity supplied by the arrival of Lord Glenarvan's Scottish expedition searching for the castaways of the Britannia. Learning for the first time of the Britannia's foundering, Ayrton tricked the searchers into a fraudulent wild goose chase for the alleged location of the shipwreck, while at the same time conspiring with his gangmates to ambush and delay the expedition while he made a grab for their own powerful ship, the Duncan. However, a prodigious set of circumstances resulted in his treacherous scheme backfiring, and in his falling into the hands of the searchers and facing harsh justice for his crimes.