More About Nancy

NANCY BLACKETT: More About Nancy

Origins & Life with the Ransomes | Rescue & Restoration | Nancy Blackett Facts

Nancy Blackett and Arthur Ransome

Nancy Blackett was Arthur Ransome's favourite amongst the various cruising yachts he owned during his lifetime. He named her after his favourite character, the adventurous, irrepressible leader of the Amazon Pirates who first appears in “Swallows and Amazons”, and again in several of his other books for children.

She provided him with the inspiration for possibly his best book, “We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea”,

widely regarded as a classic of both children's and seafaring literature, and appears in it, lightly disguised as the Goblin, which plays a leading role in the book. Its action takes place almost entirely aboard the little boat, as the four children seek to sail her across the North Sea, at night, in a storm without any adult aboard. Ransome sailed the course himself in Nancy, and worked on the book aboard her, while living near Pin Mill on the River Orwell in Suffolk, where the story starts.

Nancy Blackett at Woolverstone Marina

- May 2003

Nancy is immediately recognisable from Ransome’s description, illustrations and many key details:

“I say, just look down,” said Titty.

They looked down into the cabin of the little ship, at blue mattresses on bunks on either side, at a little table with a chart tied down to it with string, at a roll of blankets in one of the bunks, at a foghorn in another, and at a heap of dirty plates and cups and spoons in a little white sink opposite the tiny galley, where a saucepan of water was simmering on one of the two burners of a little cooking stove.

Many visitors to Nancy like to identify the bunks used by the individual Walker children (girls in particular have a penchant for Titty’s bunk - fore-cabin, port) and other features.

Origins and Life With the Ransomes