Posted by Martin Honor on April 05, 2017 at 04:32:25 user MartinH.
For the sake of something to do I have been pondering on Captain Flint’s age. Of course this is not given in the books, but looking for clues, the only ones I could find were: carving Ben Gunn’s name more than thirty years previously, and Oxford winning the Boat Race when CF grabbed a policeman’s helmet and got himself arrested.
The name was probably carved prior to 1901, memories of exact dates in childhood can be unreliable, but it could be the same year they climbed the Matterhorn. Is it reasonable to think of CF as ten in that year, but perhaps younger?
Oxford won the Boat Race in 1905, and then annually from 1909 to 13. If the information in ML is taken as correct, then CF was up during at least one of those years. 1905 seems too early, so 1909 onwards could be a good bet.
As CF “chucked Oxford before Oxford made up its mind to chuck him”, he probably left at the end of his first or second year, possibly after very poor exam results. So he could have gone up in 1907 or as late as 1912. The later dates seem less likely based on his carving and mountain climbing dates.
Based on this flimsy evidence I suggest that Master James Turner was born in 1890, give or take a year. Placing his age as about 40 in S&A.
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