Posted by Peter H on February 12, 2004 at 14:41:08 from 213.122.115.165 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Young Sailors posted by Adam Quinan on February 12, 2004 at 04:36:30:
To answer Adam, the argument I was referring to was a controversial broadcast by Pauline Marshall in September 2000 followed by an acrimonious debate in the Westmorland Gazette (which spilled over, as these things do, into Tarboard). The brief TV exchange was posted on Tarboard and went as follows:
Voice Over :
Pauline Marshall and her sister Georgie met the books author, Arthur Ransome, while holidaying at Coniston in 1928. She believes that they were the inspiration for the Blackett girls and that their family dinghy was the inspiration for the Amazon. But mutiny is in the air. Pauline is amazed at claims by a local museum that it has the boat on which Ransome modelled the Amazon. She's devoted much of her life trying to prove otherwise.
Pauline Marshall :
It became rather irritating because I've kept silent for years about all this - it had an extra seat or thwart and the centreboard case goes from one to the other, there's also a difference that the mast is stepped in an iron ring.
Voice Over :
The disputed vessel is on display at the Windermere Steamboat Museum, Pauline says the real Amazon was sold by her father long ago and besides had fewer seats. The museum begs to differ.
Curator :
The illustrations may show a different number of seats but again I don't think Ransome was trying to be specific, and in a tiny drawing like that 'praps he felt that more seats would appear cumbersome.
Voice Over :
But surely she knows her boats. She is an Amazon, after all !
Curator :
I know that is a claim that she makes and understand she's written a book about that, but that's not something I can really discuss.
Pauline Marshall :
If we're not the Amazons, I'll eat my souwester boiled in bilgewater !
I don’t want to resurrect old arguments, and most people, including the WSM, consider Mavis to be Amazon. But Amazon is a fictional boat anyway and I think we ought to be careful about saying that any boat is ‘definitely Amazon’ or that any valley is ‘definitely Swallowdale’. But by the same token, perhaps we should also avoid saying that Mavis is ‘definitely not Amazon’! (In fairness, Pauline Marshall set out a detailed argument for her views in the W Gazette)