Coot Club (CC) takes place during the spring holidays of 1932, just a few months after WH. The Swallows and Amazons are mentioned a few times, but that is all; this book is about the Ds, who are spending the holidays in the Norfolk Broads with Mrs Barrable. (This time their parents are off at a conference near Carlisle, on Hadrian’s Wall.) Mrs Barrable was Mrs Callum’s teacher; she’s an artist, and has rented a sailboat, Teasel, to live on whilst painting pictures of the local scenery. The Ds are looking forward to learning to sail before going back to the lake in the summer, but are disappointed when Mrs Barrable tells them that she can’t handle the boat by herself. But the Ds met Tom Dudgeon on the train to Horning, and he introduces them to Port and Starboard and the three younger boys (who have been playing at being pirates). The six of them are the main members of the Coot Club, the purpose of which is to observe and protect the local birds. Their favourite is a coot which is nesting on the river below Horning, but a motor cruiser which is being rented by a group of remarkably loud, obnoxious visitors moors right next to the nest. The mother coot is frantic, unable to get to the nest, and when Tom asks the visitors (called Hullabaloos because of the noise they make) to move their boat, they rudely refuse. The only thing Tom can think of is to cast the boat adrift, and he does so – but is spotted as he attempts to escape. The Hullabaloos give chase, but Tom manages to evade them. To get out of the Hullabaloos’ way, he offers to join Mrs Barrable and the Ds on Teasel, serving as captain (Mrs Barrable becomes the admiral, with a fleet consisting of Teasel and the Coot Club boats) and giving the Ds the lessons they had hoped for. And off they go, but the Hullabaloos won’t give up the search for Tom....
Pigeon Post (PP) is the first of four books set during the summer of ’32. The Walkers are back up at the lake, this time camping in the garden at Beckfoot, and so are the Ds. Captain Flint has been away in South America on an unsuccessful mining expedition, but he’s on the way home now. He hasn’t sent word to say when he’ll be home, but his last letter said to expect Timothy and give him the run of his study; after much deliberation, the children have decided that Timothy must be an armadillo and are making a hutch for him in the study. In the meantime there’s no sailing, as someone else is staying at Holly Howe and the Walkers won’t have access to Swallow for a couple of weeks. However, the Amazons have heard stories of a lost gold mine in the hills near Kanchenjunga, and their idea is to try to find the gold before Captain Flint’s arrival, to make up for his recent lack of success. The lot of them shift camp from Beckfoot to a farm nearer the alleged gold field (using the Amazons’ new homing pigeons to communicate with home), but there’s been a serious drought and all the adults are worried about the possibility of fires, so they aren’t permitted to camp up in the hills. Time is running out, and they have a rival – a mysterious stranger dubbed “Squashy Hat,” who also seems to be prospecting for gold....
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea (WD) takes place a week or two after the end of PP. Commander Walker is on his way home from China, with orders to Shotley, so the rest of the family have traveled to Pin Mill*, near Harwich, to wait for him. Once there, they meet Jim Brading, who has just sailed his cutter Goblin up from Dover. His uncle will be joining him soon, and they plan to sail Goblin up to Scotland before Jim goes off to university at Oxford. In the meantime, Jim invites the four Walkers to spend a few days on the boat with him. (He’d invite Mother and Bridget, too, but there isn’t room for everybody.) Daddy is due in just a few days, so they won’t have much time, but there will be enough for them to explore the rivers a bit; Mother insists they not go out to sea, and they all promise. But they are becalmed on the morning after they set out, and Jim discovers that he has run out of petrol for the engine. He goes ashore for a quick trip to get some, expecting to return soon, but doesn’t come back. The four children are alone on the boat, a heavy fog comes in, and they find themselves drifting out to sea....
I couldn’t find my copy of Secret Water (SW), so I had to skip it when I read the rest of the series this summer and will have to work from memory and from on-line notes. The book starts very shortly after the end of WD; Commander Walker and his children are planning on sailing Goblin down to Hamford Water, near Walton-on-the-Naze, to spend some time camping, but Daddy is called away on official business. He maroons the kids on an island, along with the Amazons (whom he has invited down as a surprise for the Swallows), provides them with a rough map of the surrounding islands, and suggests they do some exploring and survey the area whilst waiting for his return. What appear to be mastodon tracks lead to meeting a local boy, Don, and another family called the Eels (Daisy and her brothers, Dum and Dee). The Eels also enjoy camping where the Swallows and Amazons are, and are inclined to be hostile at first, but soon they reach an agreement and start a friendly “war.”
The Big Six (BS) takes place more or less at the same time as the last two books, and involves the Ds. They’re back at Horning, staying with Mrs Barrable (who this time has taken a house) again. Port and Starboard are away at school – in Paris, of all places – but Tom and the three Death and Glories are all present. And the latter are in trouble, because someone has been casting boats adrift, choosing times and places to make it look as if they were responsible. After all, everyone knows that Tom cast a boat adrift last spring; who’s to say that the younger boys aren’t emulating their hero? That’s not all - when the boys spent the night aboard Death and Glory at Potter Heigham, not only were boats there cast off, but also a boatyard was burgled. And now the boys seem to have a lot of money, much more than their parents would have given them. Dick and Dorothea join in the attempt at identifying the enemy before the local constable decides to arrest Bill, Joe and Pete.There have been a few films based on the books. Swallows and Amazons (1974) is a fairly faithful rendition of SA, starring Virginia McKenna as Mrs Walker and Ronald Fraser as Captain Flint. (The Beeb did a TV series based in SA, in 1963, but most people seem to think it was rather dreadful.) Swallows and Amazons Forever! was the title used for a pair of TV movies made in 1984; the title is misleading because the two films are based on CC and BS, and there are neither Swallows nor Amazons to be seen anywhere.
Still more to come....
*The link is to a pair of pictures showing Alma Cottage (still a working B&B) and the Butt & Oyster pub at Pin Mill. One picture is Ransome's drawing, done in the '30s as an illustration for the book; the other is a recent photograph. Picture from here.
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