Newsletter from the Arthur Ransome Apprciation Society (Dronfield Group)

Hello Naomi (or should it be "sailor"?!)

First of all, we hope you had a good day on Monday with your birthday celebrated on firm land (presumably).

Back to the water however, I have consulted my copy of "The Big Six" and now realise that I haven't yet read it (as part of the re-read the Arthur Ransome books exercise) but can tell you that the wherry in "The Big Six" is the Sir Garnet which from the illustrations is exactly the same as the Albion, in particular the winch arrangement for the sail in front of the mast! The boat in "Coot Club" (which I have read) is in fact also the Sir Garnet - AR must have had a bit of a soft spot for that particular vessel!

When we got home Sunday (in 3 hours - a very good journey we thought), I dug out our copy of Pallas's "East Anglia" and looked up wherry (actually Norfolk wherry ). The footnote is quite extensive and mentions by name the Albion -

"One trading wherry remains afloat on the Broads, called Albion. It is owned and sailed by the Norfolk Wherry Trust. The only other trading wherry alive is Maud which is under restoration at Upton Dyke and hopes one day to return to her native waters. There are two pleasure wherries - Hathor and Solace; and three wherry yachts - Olive, Norada and White Moth. Note for underwater archaeologists: on Ranworth Broad (and some other lakes as well), a number of these gaff-topsail boats were sunk during the Second World war in order to prevent German seaplanes from landing".

Cecil may be interested to read of the sunk boats (his story is that they were sunk to strengthen the banks - for all I know he could be right and the book wrong) but either way it's all very interesting, at least I think so!

Having got all this off my chest and the footie having already started on the box, I'll wrap this up now. Pat sends her love to you and Paul (of course!) and again thankyou for what was a very enjoyable weekend and memorable experience.