152 Ransome Notes and Ransomes Boats
Few readers will need any introduction to ‘Swallows and Amazons’, the story of four children, holidaying with their mother and baby sister by a lake in the Lake District. Most of Arthur Ransome’s subsequent books were sequels to ‘Swallows and Amazons,’ which he always recommended should be read first.
When first published in 1929, ‘Swallows’ was an immediate success, as were the sequels, which followed at the rate of approximately one a year. In 1935, Ransome moved from the Lake District to East Anglia; the books’ locations moved there, too, with the publication of Coot Club, set in the Norfolk Broads. But, the ‘Swallows’ and the ‘Amazons’ returned to the Lakes frequently, as did Ransome, who settled there permanently in 1955, until his death in 1966.
Many Ransome memorabilia are exhibited in the Abbot Hall Museum of Lakeland Life and History, in nearby Kendal. It may be thought more appropriate to display them somewhere where he lived and worked, but all his Lakeland homes are still private residences; Low Ludderburn, in particular, is reached by means of a narrow country lane, and there’s nowhere to park when you get there.
Many people like, instead, to visit the various places mentioned in the Swallows and Amazons books. But, there’s a catch. Ransome’s lake (henceforth called The Lake) existed only in his imagination. But, it’s easy to see it contains recognisable features from Windermere and Coniston Water, although many have been ‘geographically misplaced’.
Ransome didn’t help. ‘All the places in the books are to be found’ he wrote ‘but not arranged quite as in the ordnance maps’. The only clues he gave outright were that ‘Rio’ was Bowness on Windermere, and ‘Kanchenjunga’ was Coniston Old Man.
I suspect that he wished readers to identify his scenarios with what they knew. For me, Blake Holme, in Windermere, was always ‘Wild Cat Island’, where the children camped, and ‘Dixon’s Farm’, where they obtained their supplies, was the nearby Blakeholme Farm … where I lived at the time!
The location fitted, and people still remembered the charcoal burners working in the nearby woods. Among them was a father and son, both named William Lishman, upon whom Ransome is believed to have based his characters Old Billy and Young Billy.
Most people think that ‘Dixon’s farm’ was, in fact, Low Yewdale Farm, transplanted from about a mile to the north of Coniston Water to the south-eastern shore of The Lake. And, ‘Wild Cat Island’ was largely based upon Coniston’s Peel Island … although there were, I discovered, some bits of Blake Holme in it. Peel Island doesn’t have Blake Holme’s tall trees, and ‘landing place’, both necessary to the plot..
Most Ransome experts … and there are many … believe that Bank Ground Farm, overlooking Coniston Water, was the model for Holly Howe, where the Swallows stayed on their holidays. The River Amazon was Coniston’s outflow, the Crake, which also has a pool filled with lilies, but moved from Coniston’s southern tip to flow into the north-western part of The Lake.
‘Beckfoot’, home of the Amazons, is harder to identify. Ransome’s drawings, some of which illustrate the books, are vague sketches of a large, Palladian-styled house … which could be any one of a dozen around the two lakes!
But, it doesn’t really matter, although it’s pleasant to take a cruise on either of the lakes, which make up The Lake, and explore the bays, islands, rivers and hills that Ransome knew. But, if you just read the books, any island you know can be Wild Cat Island … who’s to say otherwise?
Serious students of the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ genre like to study Ransome’s letters and notes, to try to find the real people who inspired his characters. It’s usually said, for instance, that the ‘Swallows’ were based upon the children of his long-time friend Dora Collingwood, and her husband, Dr. Ernest Altounyan. ‘Based upon’ probably isn’t the right expression, though. He used the names of most of the Altounyan children, and some of their characteristics, but all the Ransome characters seem to have been composites of many young people of his acquaintance.
In the Ransome books, the boats play as large a part as any of the human characters do, and here, we’re on safer ground. It doesn’t matter if you couldn’t name two of Ransome’s books, or can’t tell the gaff from the pintles, you can still admire these lovely old boats for the craftsmanship that’s gone into them, and the care that’s gone into preserving or restoring them.
Three ‘Ransome Boats’ are on display at the Windermere Steamboat Museum, just outside Rio … I mean, Bowness-on-Windermere. Esperance, a steam launch once belonging to industrialist H.W. Schneider, and later used as a houseboat, lies in the wet dock. This was probably the model for ‘Captain Flint’s Houseboat’, and is equipped with a brass cannon. The cabin is laid out for the tea party which ‘Captain Flint’ (based upon Ransome himself) gave for the Swallows and Amazons as a reward for recovering his ‘treasure’.
Inside the museum are Ransome’s own ‘Coch-y-Bonddhu’ (‘Cocky’ to its friends), which appears as ‘Scarab’ in ‘Picts and Martyrs’. This little boat is now on loan to the Museum from the Arthur Ransome Society, who recently restored it from a derelict condition.
But, the pride of the Museum’s Ransome Collection is ‘Amazon’. This was originally, and still is, owned by the Altounyan family. Originally, it was called ‘Mavis’ after the third Altounyan daughter (nicknamed ‘Titty’ and so immortalised in the books.). It’s almost certainly the boat upon which ‘Amazon’ was modelled, and, at the inaugural meeting of the Arthur Ransome Society in 1990, ‘Mavis’ became ‘Amazon’ … and, of course, still flies the appropriate skull and cross-bones flag!
Of ‘Swallow’, named after the boat on which Ransome may have learnt to sail as a young man, no sign remains; the last ‘definite sighting’ was around the outbreak of World War II. But, I did hear rumours of a plan to build a replica, using Ransome’s descriptions as a guide.
Ransome used to describe another of his boats, bought when he moved to Suffolk, as ‘the best little boat I ever had.’ It’s a 28-foot Bermuda-rigged cutter, with a cabin, which can sleep four, and a little galley. So fond of this boat was he that he named it after his favourite ‘Swallows and Amazons’ character … the Captain of the Amazon, Terror of the Seas, Nancy Blackett! And, like the other boats, she made an appearance in the books, as ‘Goblin’ in ‘We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea’
‘Nancy Blackett’ was re-discovered almost derelict in Scarborough Harbour in 1988, and brought back to the River Orwell, where Ransome used to sail her, to be restored. Over £60,000 was spent on her restoration by her owners, and later, by the Nancy Blackett Trust, an offshoot of the Arthur Ransome Society.
Today, ‘Nancy Blackett’ appears almost as Ransome knew her. I found her at the International Festival of the Sea at Portsmouth, where the crew (wearing the ‘official Amazons red hat’, of course!) told me that Red Fox, a subsidiary of Random House, was launching a new edition of all twelve of the Swallows and Amazons books.
So, it seemed that yet another generation was going to meet Ransome and his timeless characters … and the Lake District, the Norfolk Broads and beyond … and, of course, the boats!