Fate and Nancy Blackett

By Michael Rines

There were many strange coincidences connected with my rescue of Arthur Ransome’s Nancy Blackett, the yacht he described as “the best little boat I ever owned”, and which featured as Goblin, in his East Coast-based stories We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea and Secret Water.  Not the least of these was the fact that, at the time I took on the task, I lived in Broke Hall Park, Nacton, on the banks of the Orwell. 

Though I did not know it then, Ransome had lived just across the valley at Broke Farm in the 1930s, and had befriended the Russell children who lived in Broke Hall.  He taught them to sail, and lent them a dinghy.

This and other coincidences tempt me to think I was fated to save Nancy or that someone up there must have guided me.  The fact is that, though as a boy I was potty about ships and the sea, and read scores of sea stories, I never read a single Arthur Ransome book.  My friends did, but I did not – perhaps because I was a bit rebellious, and didn’t read Ransome simply because everyone else did.  So I was the least likely person to come to the rescue of his derelict favourite boat.

I was brought up in Scarborough, where my parents lived all their lives.  In later life, whenever I visited them, I used to go down to the harbour to look at whatever boats were in.  On one occasion, I saw a lovely old wooden boat, in immaculate condition, with perfect paintwork and gleaming brass port lights.  I was working in London at the time as a magazine editor, and when I got back to my office I told my secretary about this lovely boat I had seen, because I knew she was a keen sailor.

 I had forgotten the boat’s name, because it meant nothing to me. However, my secretary said that her father had once owned a boat similar to the one I had described, and its name had been Nancy Blackett, the name of one of the Amazons.  That jogged my memory, and I said ‘But that’s the name of the boat I’m telling you about!’

She then told me that Arthur Ransome had owned it, so I made a point of looking out for Nancy whenever I was in Scarborough.  Sadly, her owner neglected her over the years to the point where, on one visit, I found her in a pitiable state lying on her side in the mud in the middle of the harbour.

After lengthy negotiations, I persuaded her owner to sell her to me two decades after I had first seen her. I succeeded where others had failed; even though he was not prepared to look after her, he had been reluctant to sell Nancy - I suspect it was something to do with the fact that when you sell your last boat it is said it means you are ready to die.

To this day, I do not really know why I bought Nancy; I already owned a perfectly good modern plastic boat, and I knew from experience that owning a wooden boat even in good condition was a first class way of ensuring you spent more time working on the boat than you ever did sailing.

I had Nancy brought down to Fox’s yard at the head of the Orwell, and I needed to find someone to restore her.  I mentioned it to one of the postmen who, in those days, collected our mail from the house. By coincidence, he had a neighbour who he thought would be interested, and that’s how traditional shipwright Stan Ball, a Dunkirk veteran, came to work on the boat for two years.  Then, when he emigrated to New Zealand to join his daughter, I found a replacement, again by coincidence.

A storm had washed up a wooden boat on Nacton Shore, and my son had made her safe by tying her to a tree and reporting the fact to the harbourmaster at Pin Mill.  Her grateful young owner came to thank us.  He explained that he was training as a naval architect, and had just finished restoring the rescued boat.  “How would you like to tackle another?” I asked.  And that’s how James Pratt came to finish Nancy’s restoration.

Once I had bought the boat, I decided I really ought to read the Swallows and Amazons series.  Having done that, I thought I should tackle Ransome’s biography, and I was sitting in my study facing across the valley to Levington when I was surprised to read that in 1932 Ransome moved to Broke Farm, in the village.  I had only to raise my eyes to see that very building.

I read other books about Ransome, and once when I was talking on the phone to Roger Wardale, the author of two books about the locations of the Swallows and Amazons stories, my wife called from the kitchen: “Mike, can you help?  There’s a bird trapped in here. It was a swallow, of course.

Later, when I told Roger that Nancy’s name boards had been lost, he offered to carve some new ones to be fitted on her transom. We had no idea what the originals looked like, but when I was later sent a photograph of her stern it revealed that Roger had produced perfect replicas.

Another coincidence arose when I took a young Ransome fan – the daughter of a Scarborough vicar – to visit Walton Backwaters, the location of Ransome’s Secret Water. I had arranged for us to land on Horsea Island (Swallow Island in the book) and to visit the owner, Mrs Backhouse, in her farm house (the Native Kraal in the book).  As we walked in, a swallow flew out over our heads, and when we got into the kitchen we were astonished to find there were five swallows’ nests there.

“I do try to keep them out of the best bedroom,” said Mrs Backhouse.

The biggest coincidence of all was that, though I was not a Ransome fan, I was nevertheless probably the person best placed to rescue her.  First, I knew she was there in Scarborough and in need of rescue.  Also, I had good connections with Scarborough Marine, the only boatyard in the town, and was able to arrange the first stage of the rescue with them.

I also had good relations with Malcolm Westmorland, the manager of Fox’s Marina just up river from Pin Mill where Ransome had kept her, and Malcolm let Nancy lie there ashore for more than two years without charge, and gave me a substantial discount on all the materials I needed.

Again, because I was a public relations consultant, I knew how to get publicity for what I was doing, and got big stories placed not only in all the leading newspapers but also on radio and TV.  This enabled me to win important support from companies like International Paints (the specialist boat paint supplier), Black& Decker (for tools), Thornycroft  (for a new engine) and various electronic firms for navigational equipment.  Without the help provided by these companies I could not have afforded the restoration.

The weird coincidences go on and on.  I play the violin, and I play with various friends.  One day I discovered that a lady I play with was a Ransome fan, so I lent her some of my Ransome books, including Roger Wardale’s Arthur Ransome’s East Anglia.  Shortly afterwards, I got an email from her, saying: “Weird or what, the photograph on page 57 of four people in Felixstowe Dock is of me with my mother, brother and sister!”

Weirder still: I told Marion Wells, the Woodbridge Town Centre Co-ordinator who is a member of the working party that organises the  Maritime Woodbridge Festival of the Sea, about that coincidence. She then produced a woodcut that her mother had made when she was a child, showing her and her brother in exactly the same place in the same pose.

In fact, the rail the children are leaning against in both the photograph and the woodcut is not part of the dock; it’s the stern rail of the Brightlingsea, the former Harwich Harbour Ferry – which, by coincidence, is now owned by Rollo Cooper, another member of the Maritime Woodbridge working party.

One final coincidence.  My friend, The Reverend Christopher Courtauld, who lives in Ransome’s former house in Levington, has been a lifelong Ransome fan.  However, it was not until after he had bought the house and saw the deeds that he learned of his illustrious predecessor.

Nancy is now owned by the Nancy Blackett Trust (www.nancyblackett.org) which ensures that this much-loved boat will always be looked after, and her restoration led directly to the foundation of the Arthur Ransome Society (www.arthur-ransome.org), which has branches all over the UK and in the US, Canada and Japan.