This is a book about Arthur Ransome’s favourite cruising yacht – the 1931 seven ton 28ft Hillyard-built Nancy Blackett, named after Ransome’s most famous character, the leading Amazon, Nancy from the Swallows and Amazons book series. The bermudan cutter is also the inspiration behind Ransome’s most successful sea adventure story We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea, where she’s called Goblin, which he published in 1937, a couple of years after buying Nancy. He bought her in Poole in 1935 and had a “wild sail” home in her to Pin Mill in Suffolk to where he was moving after several years in the Lake District.
Peter Willis was one of the leading members of The Arthur Ransome Society who wanted to buy Nancy under the auspices of that group. The boat had been restored after falling derelict and sinking in Scarborough harbour in the late 1980s and she had come up for sale in 1996. In the end TARS did not buy her but there was enough support to form the Nancy Blackett Trust and raise the £25,000 purchase price and to keep her near Pin Mill on the River Orwell. Last year, at Pin Mill, Peter organised a marathon reading of We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea to mark the 80th anniversary of its publication and published his own work, this book, to more widely mark the enduring legacy of Ransome’s writing and his great inspiration from his fine seaboat.
Good Little Ship is full of Ransome, Peter would win Mastermind if he was allowed Ransome as his subject and he brings a scholar’s as much as an enthusiast’s eye to the subject. It’s also about setting up and running a successful society and charity whose members have cruised and looked after their main capital asset for more than 21 years. And it’s really well written – weaving the Ransome 1930s literary and cruising history effortlessly into the reality of sailing the boat today. So that’s a five star review really. DH
Pub Lodestar 2017, 218pp, softback, £14