Posted by Jock on October 23, 2005 at 02:06:17 from 81.79.209.48 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Fantasy posted by John Nichols on October 23, 2005 at 00:47:50:
Dick polishing his spetacles and skating skillfully on the tarn is another character who for a while takes on the mantle of AR's alter ego. Yet he and Dot are also a portal into the world of boats for the non-sailing reader. I suspect that the scene in WH where the D's jealously watch (the Amazons?) row across the lake is autobiographical. Dick and Dot don't have a navy father or a Captain Flint to teach them, but armed with Sailing by Knight and aided by Port and Starboard they become competent crew by the end of CC.
I believe that in creating Dick's archaeolgist father Ransome is paying a tribute to Robin Collingwood. I'm not sure that Dick ever become an archaeologist. He's far too good a chemist. I suspect that after 1939 he went to work in the Admiralty Explosives Laboratory in Holton Heath in Dorset. After the war ended he may have gone sailing in Poole Harbour.