Re: Dulcibella and lifeboat conversions generally (was: Death & Glory DESIGN)


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Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on May 20, 2003 at 18:33:23 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.

In Reply to: Re: Dulcibella and lifeboat conversions generally (was: Death & Glory DESIGN) posted by Jonathan Labaree on May 20, 2003 at 13:47:08:

Absolutely right, Jonathan - the counter was built up over the sternpost, so as to make her look a bit "yachty". This was done on the original "Vixen", which was actually sailed to the Frisians and the Baltic by Erskine Childers, and on the replica "Dulcibella" made for the 1979 film and later sold as a yacht (for some reason the film makers "sank" her, thereby changing the ending, but they did not actually do so, if you see what I mean!)

I think Davies is decidedly credible - FB Cooke's sailing textbooks, starting in the 1890's, seem to describe just the sort of "yachting", carried on by impecunious City clerks in places like Hole Haven and North Fambridge, that is Davies' milieu - a thousand very muddy leagues from Carruthers's (and the Kaiser's) Sacred Cowes! Come to think of it, it was just the sort of yachting that my father remembered from the 20's and 30's. Cooke wrote a wonderful article in praise of mud in the "Yachting Monthly" in the late 60's when he was 100!

With five children to bring up on a Naval Commander's salary, the Walkers were surely at the impoverished end of the middle classes, as is, I think, evidenced by Mary Walker's intense concern that her children should be polite and should behave well, mentioned by Susan in PP, and her description of Maria Turner's visit to Holly Howe in SD as "a curiosity call".

My father had to sell his beloved ex-RNLI lifeboat (without counter stern!) when children overtook him, so we were boatless childen until I was in my late teens. Reading AR as a boatless child may account for more than one lifetime passion for sailing!

This is one of AR's authorial tricks - he knows most of his readers won't have boats, so most of his protagonists, including the Swallows, are boatless, as, initially, are the Callums. The Swallows usually manage to scrounge a boat, or hire one, which is something we can imagine ourselves doing. Tom Dudgeon has been given the "Titmouse" because he built the "Dreadnought", and the Death and Glories have also (O joy!) cobbled together a means of getting afloat, thereby allowing the young reader to imagine that he or she might do the same!




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