Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on June 06, 2013 at 15:40:51 user ACB.
This may be old news, but earlier today I was browsing through my copy of "The Falcon on the Baltic" (EF Knight, Ransome's hero, Mariner's Library edition with foreword by Ransome, so he had certainly read it) and I re-read the passage where the Dutch pilot comes aboard and takes them in.
The Pilot in WDMTGTS is effectively the same character, and Knight's remarks about taking pilots are Jim Brading's.