Peter Duck

Peter Duck is a 28ft Bermudan ketch designed by Jack Laurent Giles and built in 1946 at Harry King’s yard in Pin Mill for Arthur and Evgenia Ransome.

An 80-year-old bath chair

Peter Duck was designed by Jack Laurent Giles and his partner Humphrey Barton. She was commissioned in 1945 soon after the end of WW2 and built in 1946, one of the first new-builds of the post war era. Ransome had been advised by his doctor that his pre-war yacht Selina King (also built in Pin Mill) was too heavy for him as age and infirmity took its toll.

He wasn’t happy about this and famously referred to Peter Duck as his ‘marine bath chair’.

It’s possible that one underlying reason why he never really warmed to the boat was that she came at the wrong time in his life.

The Peter Duck class

The Peter Duck class yachts were built between 1960 and 1970. The idea came from George Jones, then joint owner of Peter Duck. He suggested to Jack Laurent Giles, PD's designer, that the initial plans could be adapted slightly for a class build. JLG agreed. Instead of the original design for two berths, there should be four, and the coach roof should be carried forward of the mast to give improved head room in the forepeak. An extra strake was added to give standing headroom in the saloon. This added 3" to the boat's length overall. The new Peter Ducks would be built of top quality materials to Lloyds specification A1, with more powerful engines. They would also have a separate WC.

The Peter Duck class was built by Porter and Haylett at Wroxham on the Norfolk Broads. George Jones's company East Coast Yacht Agency (later Interyacht) handled the sales and the designer commission. 38 Peter Duck class yachts were built and sold for about £5,000 (1960s prices). Several can still be seen around the coasts of Britain and Ireland, especially on the Essex and Suffolk rivers but they have also migrated as far afield as Canada, USA (Seattle), British Virgin Islands, Aegean, Slovenia and France.

Peter Duck’s owners

1945–1949

Arthur and Evgenia Ransome

In Arthur Ransome’s third — and possibly most far-fetched (though Missee Lee comes close) — novel, the eponymous old seaman ‘Peter Duck’ represents solid common sense and maturity. “Anything might happen to Peter Duck and he would always come out alright,” the children thinks Able-seaman Titty. In Swallowdale ‘Peter Duck’ is Titty’s imaginary friend, always ready for an adventure. Ransome had modelled the character on an actual person, the old Baltic seaman Carl Herman Sehmel (‘The Ancient Mariner’) who sailed with Arthur and Evgenia in the ketch Racundra in 1921.

The design process was somewhat fraught misunderstanding and ill-temper but Ransome had a full season’s East Coast sailing Peter Duck during 1947. His log entries tend to be dissatisfied — whether due to deck leaks (there was little properly seasoned timber available so soon after WW2) or the unreliable engine. He also seems to have found her difficult to handle. Subsequent owners have disagreed, finding her very handy (for a motor sailor). A particularly thoughtful article by Greg Palmer suggests that Ransome may have failed to come to terms with PD’s lack of weather helm. She is a well-balanced boat in a post-war style that he’d not previously experienced. He kept her scarcely three years after her launch before moving back to the Lake District and putting her up for sale.

1957–1984

George and June Jones

Ransome’s loss was eventually the Jones family’s gain. Peter Duck had moved to the South Coast (where Ransome noted she had been painted blue) but George Jones, Julia’s father, was a yacht agent who encountered Arthur and Evgenia Ransome in 1951 when, with characteristic restlessness, they returned once again to Suffolk for some sailing. At that time they rented George and June Jones’s Hillyard-designed yacht Barnacle Goose. When Peter Duck was once again on the market, the Jones family was growing and Barnacle Goose beginning to feel a little cramped. George Jones was asked to act as the agent but bought her for himself. This was 1957 when Julia was not quite three years old and her brother Nick just fifteen months.

Peter Duck was the key element in Julia’s childhood. She was based at Woodbridge and Waldringfield on the River Deben and remained a central part of family until George’s sudden death in 1983. June did her best to maintain her (with help from the youngest child Ned) but it was a lonely task and at that time PD needed significant maintenance and more attention than anyone in the family was able to give her. She was once again sold.

1987–1999

Greg and Ann Palmer

After a single brief ownership Peter Duck was bought by Greg and Ann Palmer in 1987. “Three Million Cheers,” Ann wrote in her log book. They and their son (another Ned) were her most adventurous, imaginative and intrepid owners. Peter Duck is a fine sea-boat and the Palmers explored her potential as never before. They started small, pottering around the peaceful Deben, then venturing to the Alde or the Walton Backwaters but then Greg’s vision and determination extended their horizons. He and Ned took her round Britain in 1991; then to the Baltic in 1993 and 1995.

For a few years Peter Duck’s home was in St Petersburg, where Greg (a historian) was involved in the project to build a replica of Peter the Great’s flagship Shtandart but then Greg died, unexpectedly and far too young - as George Jones had done, fifteen years before. Ann and Ned took the same hard decision that June had previously done that Peter Duck needed new owners if she was to be maintained in seaworthy condition for the future. With John Robinson as skipper and a crew of young Russian volunteers Peter Duck sailed home to Woodbridge. The crew may have been pumping all the way and her topsides may have looked like baggywrinkles but for Julia and her brother Ned PD’s return to the Ferry Quay was a wonderful emotional moment — better still when Francis agreed that they should make an offer to buy her.

1999–present

Julia Jones and Francis Wheen

In Other People’s Dreams, an essay written for the Aldeburgh music festival programme, Julia tried to describe what it meant to her when she heard that Peter Duck was back in the River Deben. Extensive renovation was needed to counteract ice damage from the marshes near St Petersburg but by 2000 PD was back in home waters.

Since that date she has welcomed four generations of the Jones family: from June, who made her last trip on board when she was 91, to Julia’s own grandchildren, three of whom have become particularly keen young sailors.

Over the last fifty years Peter Duck has put Julia through the gamut of emotions. Among her most treasured memories is the day she gave her son Bertie, then aged eleven, her first children’s novel, The Salt-Stained Book, written in partial homage to Ransome. Bertie settled down in Peter Duck’s cabin to read it and would not be disturbed, continuing as Julia rowed him up the river in the dinghy and finally finishing the story on board Goldenray.

As a young adult Bertie is the most regular member of PD’s crew and has also enjoyed taking her away on his own. For Julia she remains a uniquely special place.

Peter Duck in pictures