Posted by Jock on January 12, 2006 at 13:05:17 from 84.64.131.122 user Jock.
After which, I have to say pedantically that Jock is still wrong. Bob B did not die during WW I, or how do we explain Peggy? This is an FAQ. The answer normally given is that BB died after the War from a wound received during it, or he died from the flu epidemic that followed the war. (I don't really accept either)
I don't think we have properly thrashed out the ages of the S's, A's and D's on Tarboard (or are the brain cells playing me up again?). When S&A was written it was supposed to be happening in 1929. So, if the Amazons were conceived at times when Captain Bob Blackett was back home on leave, we could kill him off towards the end of 1918. It then still would have been possible for Peggy to have been born early in 1919 making her ten at the start of the series.
I'm not convinced that AR had worked out what to do with the Amazon's father when he wrote SA. There is vague 'native trouble' which restricts the A's somewhat. In the end it took two more books before AR killed off BB. Towards the end of SA, there is also a reference to a planned sea voyage 'next year' by CF which I have always assumed eventually comes to pass in GN when the A's and S's (except Bridget) are old enough. In the end the sea voyage hinted at for 1930 becomes an imaginary story made up in the cabin of a Norfolk Wherry, but the series skips a year to 1931 for SD just as if the PD voyage had actually taken place in 1930.
If we skip a year like AR (Is there anything in SD that tell us that only a year has passed since SA?) that would make Nancy and Peggy 13 and 12 in PP and 14 and 13 in PM and 15 and 14 in GN, which seems about right. However, I'm tempted to nake Nancy two years older than Peggy, that would give her some shadowy memory of her father on his last occassion home on leave. Peggy's birth after BB's death would have subjected her to the sticky sympathy of family friends and relatives ('Oh you poor little child.') This would go a long way to explain the difference in character between Nancy and Peggy. It's usual for parents to be over protective to their first child and then more relaxed thereafter so the first child is most introverted and 'good' while the last child is the most extroverted and rebellious. In the case of the A's these classic roles are reversed.
The stress of Peggy's birth after Bob Blackett's death and the subsequent difficult negotiations with the Maria Turner when she had to move out of the family farm would contribute to Molly Blackett's health problems which were to resurface in PM.