Good Little Ship: Arthur Ransome, Nancy Blackett and the Goblin

Peter Willis

Lodestar Books

£14

The most basic reason for loving a boat is that she stops you being drowned. Arthur Ransome almost lost Nancy Blackett on their first voyage and in We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea he captures the ‘serious joy’ of a personal ordeal in which the yacht is the saving partner. But the story of Nancy Blackett is also the story of the Nancy Blackett Trust where readers, who have shared that ordeal imaginatively, discover that ‘Goblin’ is real. She can be sailed. Peter Willis is the man who made this happen. His multi-layered account of the ‘good little ship’ is neatly presented and psychologically fascinating.