Was Arthur Ransome’s John Walker a Competent Seaman?

摘要

We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea (1937) is widely regarded as the masterpiece among the 12 volumes of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series.1 On the surface this is a bildungsroman, a successfully completed rite of passage, as John Walker negotiates a difficult passage from Harwich to Flushing, thereby entering the world of adult sailors.2 Indeed, he is congratulated on three separate occasions - wholeheartedly by the Dutch pilot and by the two Harwich custom officers; and by his father, who sees them from the deck of a steamer about to depart for England and jumps ship. Commander Walker conducts a careful de - briefing but his congratulations are strangely guarded: ‘A lot of things were lucky . . . You’ll be a seaman yet, my son’ (p. 286).3 This more guarded response led me to investigate John’s skippering rather more closely and to examine his leadership in other volumes.