Posted by Magnus Smith on August 27, 2014 at 23:26:58 user Magnus.
In Reply to: Re: Amazon and Scarab's keels/hull bottoms posted by Roger Wardale on August 25, 2014 at 07:23:57:
Very sad to hear of a drowning in that way, though in that era it cannot have been uncommon. People hadn't even realised it was a bad idea to drive home drunk, or made any laws about it, back then. Changing the way boats were had been sailed for the past 100 years probably hadn't occurred to them either. So very sad.
The quotation Ed Kiser just gave us appears in John Berry's book immediately after the damning report from the modern boat-builder, to illustrate that the nature of Mavis and Amazon were very similar.
This could be a point which counts against Roger W's point of view...BUT...Dave Thewlis' word "assemblage" is a good one, reminding us that different facets of several entities went into Ransome's creations, and it doesn't mean the whole item made the jump from reality into fiction.
I agree there is a world of difference from allowing the children to sail and taking the children sailing. I don't think John Berry's recollections were given a date, so he's probably talking about the later years when Taqui and Susie were old enough to be responsible, as well as having sailing experience. There were comments about parental rulings: "no sailing in broken water" (i.e. waves on the lake revealing the strength of the wind). No mention is made of how far from home they went, which would interest me more. If children were sailing in view of the house, the parents could launch a rowing boat in the event of a capsize. I suspect parents didn't watch children back then, as they do now!
When thinking about other boats that may have 'donated' parts of themselves to the fictional Amazon, I was trying to recall how many boats the Altounyans had. I remembered Toob, but that was just a rowing boat I think. I had forgotten Beetle!
Is Beetle covered in any detail in your books, Roger? I recall mention of 'Beetle II' on the lake in Syria, but that is all. The first Beetle was a Collingwood boat rather than purely Altounyan I think? And Beetle was Dora's nickname? We'd love to hear more details if you wanted to chat about any of the boats! I wonder if either survived the passing of years!