EXPOSED: THE DARK SIDE
OF THE AMERICA’S CUPROCHESTER TO RICHMOND:
A THAMES ESTUARY
SAILOR’S VIEWGOOD LITTLE SHIP:
ARTHUR RANSOME, NANCY
BLACKETT AND THE GOBLINAlan Sefton and Larry Keating, Adlard Coles
The inaugural race, sailed round the Isle of Wight in 1851,
was characterised by the churlish and unsportsmanlike
behaviour of the Royal Yacht Squadron, panicked by the
radical new design and high performance of
the schooner America (the Marquess
of Anglesey almost fell overboard,
peering for her hidden propeller).
Little has changed since. Exposed
is a gripping account of men, money,
vested interests and gamesmanship:
Australia II’s ‘keelgate’ triumph, New
Zealand’s ‘glassgate’ challenge, skittering
multihulls with aerofoils and body armour,
aggressive psychology and litigation.
The Royal NZ Yacht Squadron is the
current defender – can the City of Sails
treat its challengers more graciously?Nick Ardley, Fonthill Media
Those who assume that the only way to sail up the Thames
is in a single tide-fuelled surge from Queenborough to
Limehouse or St Katharine’s may need to think again. Nick
and Christobel Ardley find half a dozen overnight stopping
points. Whimbrel, their Finesse 24, noses her way into
forgotten creeks where Ardley salutes lost industries
and identifies dead barge bones with enduring affection
that reflects his childhood growing up on board one
of these distinctive work boats. Beyond
Limehouse, they take to their feet to
explore London’s pools, wharves and
hidden rivers as far as Richmond Bridge.
Ardley’s style is idiosyncratic but his fund
of knowledge and quirky enthusiasms make
this an absorbing read.
Ardley’s latest cruising log can be read on
p62 of this issue. The author will also be giving
an illustrated talk at the Essex Book Festival
on March 20. Visit http://www.mercurytheatre.co.uk.Peter Willis, Lodestar Books
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.He soon regained strength and by his own desire, took his watch
with the other men. He was a fi ne fellow who everyone liked, and
what a hero to all on board! I had many a talk with him, and many
a time I heard his story. He left ship in Calcutta, and though he could
have been sent home passenger, he preferred to work his passage.
A lot would be made of such a strange occurrence nowadays,
but as far as I remember the story never appeared in a newspaper
and certainly my father received no recognition of any kind. He
had indeed, much diffi culty in getting paid by the Board of Trade for
the clothes with which he had supplied Lopez from the ship’s chest.
As she grew up, Elizabeth learned navigation from her father. She was
entrusted with the daily winding of the chronometers, ‘an important
duty and one that I valued highly.’ She was occasionally allowed to take
the wheel but only ‘in a dead calm.’ She knew that, as a woman, she was
there ‘on sufferance,’ as in this account of her fi nal voyage in 1889-90.
We were running with reefed topsails and stowed mainsail and
logging 10 or 11 knots. There was a full moon and everyone, fore
and aft, was in the best of form, knowing that in a few hours we
would be round Cape Horn and our faces set homeward. We had
strong fair winds until we were round the Falkland Islands, and no
bad weather. But we were not to leave that part of the world without
something to remember, and presently we ran into a terrifi c westerly
gale. It began to breeze up on April 12, the barometer slowly falling.
By the following afternoon it had fallen to 28.10. For two days the
gale raged and we did 12 knots under small sail. It was fi ne to be
speeding homeward at such a rate but I had to keep reminding
myself of our good luck to compensate for the discomfort I was
enduring. Everything was shut and battened down, and there was
the constant fear of not running fast enough to escape the heavy seas
that always seemed to be overtaking us. After two days running we
actually were pooped. An enormous sea came over the stern and
fi lled the ship fore and aft. In spite of all the precautions that had
been taken, the water ran down the companion stairs, the passages
were full, so were my room and the starboard after cabin. I put on
my rubber boots and helped the steward to bale the water out of the
saloon and spare room. The water had got in from the main deck
through the sail locker. Everything that had been left on the fl oors
was fl oating about and our trunks were standing in water. We had
to unlash them, put pieces of wood under them and relash them.
How can one describe the feelings of women battened down
in a ship’s cabin in circumstances such as these? I don’t mean the
water coming into the cabins – that was a diversion that relieved
the tension after the fi rst shock was over – but the awful suspense
until we knew that the three men on the poop had not been swept
away by the terrifi c force of the incoming wave?’
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