Ransome fan leaves Nancy Blackett £150k
The trust that owns Arthur Ransome’s old yacht Nancy Blackett has plans to expand its operations after a £150,000 windfall.
The ‘game-changing’ donation was left to the Nancy Blackett Trust by trust member Tony Parslow, who died in December 2020.
In its winter newsletter, the trust says: “Tony, who appears to have had no immediate family, was a great enthusiast for Arthur Ransome, and this amount represents 50% of the residue of his estate, following the sale of his house and a number of small bequests to friends. The other 50% goes to the Arthur Ransome Trust, which was set up about 10 years ago with the aim of raising funds to set up an Arthur Ransome visitor centre in the Lake District.”
The trust says: “The scale of the bequest represents both a challenge and an opportunity, or perhaps a number of opportunities. It completely dwarfs our present financial model which, following the original raising of the £25,000 purchase price of Nancy Blackett, has ticked along as a membership organisation operating on an income of subscriptions and fund-raising activities amounting to roughly £25,000 a year – just ahead of, or sometimes just behind, the maintenance and operating costs of
Nancy Blackett herself.”
A finance committee has been elected to look at how best to protect and maximise the sum.
Meanwhile a number of potential projects are being discussed, aiming to enable more young people to discover sailing, possibly buying a second boat to operate alongside Nancy Blackett.
Built in 1931 at Hillyard’s in Littlehampton for Seymour Tueley, who named her Spindrift, Nancy Blackett was bought by Ransome in 1935 for £525. He renamed her and sailed her to Pin Mill, Suffolk. Famously she appears in his 1937 book We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea as the Goblin.
He sold the boat in 1938.
The Nancy Blackett Trust was formed in 1997, having fundraised to buy the boat and restore her. She now covers hundreds of miles each year with volunteer skippers. Find out how to sail on the boat at nancyblackett.org