Posted by Margaret Ratcliffe on December 23, 2000 at 14:54:57 from 193.113.185.169:
Posted on behalf of Jeremy Gibson.
In a letter to Margaret Ratcliffe about the TARS Library and its magnificent first catalogue, I happened to mention my interest in the relationship between AR and Nevil Shute (Norway). In response she kindly sent me the 'postings' of a 'Nevil Shute thread' which she tells me appeared on TARboard. As one of the 'third world' who is not as yet on the Internet, I am unable to respond directly, but I have asked her to 'post' the following as an addition to this discussion.
I had suggested to her that they were acquainted, though have no specific evidence for this except that AR was 'godfather and nanny' to the Mariners' Library series, i.e., I assume, General Editor in charge of selection of titles and providing suitable people to write the Forewords that he didn't undertake himself. As Nevil Shute wrot e the Foreword to No. 42, "Once is Enough", by Miles Smeeton (Checklist, p. 42, "Ransome on Blue Water Sailing"), referred to by Terence McManus and Bruce Clarke, I think that suggests they were 'acquainted' more than merely knowing of each other. Shute's references in his own novels to SA (in "No Highway", Chapter 11, page 311, Mandarin 1992 ed.) and CC (in "The Rainbow and the Rose", final page), show he admired AR.
Shute's introduction to sailing was during his long vac's (1919 and 1920) whilst he was up at Oxford. His autobiography "Slide Rule" (published 1954, Chapter 2, Mandarin edition, 1990 pp. 42-45) describes in some detail his first voyage, in the "Aeolia", 'a heavy, straight, stem yawl of 28 tons Thames measurement, gaff rigged of course, and with a long bowsprit. ...she had no engine...' She was kept on the Hamble River and they sailed to the Helford River. Shute remarks 'I have given some space to that first cruise westwards from the Solent because although I have made many since, you can only do a thing for the first time once. Since then I have sailed in a number of yachts and owned two cruising boats, and I have cruised the coast from Portsmough to the Scillies a number of times, but that first cruise on the old "Aeolia" stays in my mind as the best remembered...' He must have enjoyed PD, and one can see why he was able to describe the cross-Channel sailing trip in "What Happened to the Corbetts" (1939, Chapter 6) so vividly.
The Internet contributors rightly refer to other marine references in Shute's books: "Landfall" (1940, "Most Secret" (1940s) and "Requiem for a Wren" (1955) are all wartime stories, thus they are naval rather than the 'amateur' sailing which links Shute and AR. The bizarre Pacific voyage that Keith Stewart takes with Jack Donelly on "Mary Belle" in "Trustee from the Tool Room" (1960, his last) is not one we would have wished on the Walkers and Blacketts.
However, it is not just in sailing that AR and Shute share interests - they were both keen fishermen. In one of Shute's most famous and poignant books, "Pied Piper" (1942) (as Bruce Clarke mentions, the only one to feature children in the prominent role), by planning a lengthy visit to then-uninvaded France, the Jura, with fishing as the main object. Unfortunately the blitzkrieg put a stop to the fishing, but nevertheless that was its purpose.
"Pastoral" (1944), a romance about a bomber pilot and a WAAF section officer, set in southern Oxfordshire (Benson seems the likely location for 'Hartley'), has fishing as its main theme. All the bomber crew of 'R for Robert' are coarse fishermen, and when the close season comes at 31st March, not only does the girl dump the chap, but the rest are left bored and grumpy. Fortunately the girl finds some trout fishing (in season) for them, and all, of course, ends happily. There, there is an author after AR's own heart writing about the importance of fishing.
I am neither a sailor nor a fisherman, but I would welcome views from those who are, on what clubs or societies both authors might have belonged to. From their own autobiographies we know that they were both 'clubbable' men, and in the 1920s to 1950s such organisations were far more important and expected than they are now (TARS apart!)
Jeremy Gibson.