GOOD LITTLE SHIP: ARTHUR RANSOME, NANCY BLACKETT AND THE GOBLIN

The most basic reason for loving a boat is that she stops you being drowned. Arthur Ransome almost lost his own boat Nancy Blackett on their first voyage, and in the seventh book in his Swallows and Amazons series, We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea, he captures the ‘serious joy’ of a personal ordeal in which the yacht is the saving partner. But the story of Nancy Blackett, told in this book, is also the story of the Nancy Blackett Trust where readers, who have shared imaginatively in that ordeal of being saved by a boat, discover that the fictional cutter Goblin is real and can still be sailed. Peter Willis is the man who made this happen. His multi-layered account of the ‘good little ship’ is neatly presented and psychologically fascinating.