Posted by Mark on February 23, 1998 at 19:21:11:
In Reply to: Re: Capt Flint's Houseboat posted by John Wilson Smith on February 18, 1998 at 21:20:33:
I think John said it best that Gondola and Esperance are both
MODELS for Captain Flint's houseboat. I have ridden the Gondola
and seen Esperance at her pier, (though not been on board), and they
both have the right shape but the scale is wrong. Ransome's illustrations,
particularily the one in Winter Holiday, show a hull that is at least twice
as high as either of the two prototypes. (Look at the size of the
characters in any of Ransome's drawings in relation to the height of the
hull, then look at the photo on the Windermere Steamboat Museum web page
at the Arthur Ransome web site. The people standing on deck show what a
lower profile Esperance has compared with the illustrations. My own
photographs of the Gondola show it to be a somewhat better scale).
For the best comparison picture, see Claire Kendall-Price's "In the Footsteps of
the Swallows and Amazons". One page shows the marked up postcard of Gondola,
and underneath it a wonderful picture of the Esperance fitted out as a houseboat,
complete with an ugly structure at the stern where Ransome put a awning.