Posted by Ed Kiser on May 02, 2003 at 17:02:25 from 64.12.96.103 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Re: How Old Is Captain Flint? And what does he do for a living? posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on May 02, 2003 at 16:41:55:
As to what happened to Bob Blackett, Ransome is quiet on the subject. It is not a known fact that he did not return from the war. It is true that many, all too many, did not return from that horror.
It has been my feeling, judging from the age that Nancy and Peggy were supposed to be, and that itself takes some clue searching to get into a possible ballpark, it seems more reasonable that Bob was not actually killed in the war. I have felt it that he did come home, but died shortly after Peggy was born, possibly due to some illness that could have been contracted as a result of his military service.
A lot of people died from sickness in the unhealthy conditions of trying to exist in trenches filled with mud. There was the flu epidimic that was so widely spread by the returning veterans that devastated the home folks as well as the troops. So Bob could have been affected by these medical conditions that could have eventually taken him away for an untimely death, yet some time after the war itself.
Peggy's age seems to indicate that he survived the war, at least, briefly. For Peggy to be eleven in 1930 seems to show that Bob was around at the end of the war.
It is really all guesswork anyway, but that is part of the fun of all things Ransome, that we get to play detective and put together the clues to try to come up with "facts" (even in a work of FICTION) assuming of course that all these details were worked out in the author's mind ahead of time in order to be consistant, even if he was not sure of what the name of the Ship's Baby was all the time.
Ed Kiser, South Florida