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Origins and Life With the Ransomes
Nancy was built in 1931, by Hillyards of Littlehampton. She is 28ft long, plus bowsprit, with an unusual Bermudan cutter rig. Exactly like the Goblin, she has roller-reefing, operated by a little brass handle, and, down below, four bunks with blue mattresses, and a little white sink opposite a tiny galley.
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Arthur Ransome scrubbing
Nancy Blackett at Waldringfield,
on the River Deben.
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She had already had two owners, and two names - Spindrift and Electron - before Ransome found and bought her in 1934, for £525. He was at the time in the process of moving from the Lake District to East Anglia, with the aim of doing some sea sailing. His delivery voyage with his new boat, from Poole Harbour to the East Coast, was hair-raising, as his Biography and Letters reveal: gales, damage, and an occasion where the navigation lights blew out, and he used a torch shone through a red plastic plate to ‘frighten off the Flushing-Harwich steamer’ - an incident which eventually appeared in “We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea”.
Ransome got plenty of good sailing out of Nancy. As well as his research trip to Holland, he took her round to Portsmouth and back with his friend Richard Rouse, a voyage he wrote up under the title “Saturday to Saturday” for the Cruising Association Bulletin. But one of his favourite destinations was the Walton Backwaters, just a
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few miles down the coast from his home on the Orwell. He would sail down, and anchor there,
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ostensibly to work, but often yielded to the temptation to do a little exploring in his dinghy, Coch-y-Bonddhu. The Back- waters formed the setting for his next book, “Secret Water”, which includes a brief appearance by the Goblin.
The Ransomes rarely hung on to boats, or houses, for very long. By 1937, in deference to his wife Evgenia’s desire for a larger galley, Arthur had ordered a larger yacht, Selina King, to be built at King’s boatyard in Pin Mill, and sold Nancy in 1938. He retained his affection for her, however - perhaps because she was the one boat out of the seven he owned which he had not bought new.
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Arthur Ransome sailing Nancy Blackett
on the Walton Backwaters.
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“Fools build and wise men buy,” he once said, but it was advice he rarely followed himself.
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