Captain Flint's Houseboat?

As they passed the second cape beyond Darien, Roger, the look-out, reported a ship, and pointed towards the shore.  The sail was on that side, so that Roger saw it before the others.  In the bay beyond the cape lay a strange-looking dark blue vessel.  She was a long narrow craft with a high raised cabin roof, and a row of glass windows along her side.  Her bows were like the bows of an old-time clipper.  Her stern was like that of a steamship.  She had nothing that could properly be called a mast, though there was a little flagstaff, where a mast might have been, stepped just forward of the glass-windowed cabin.  There was an awning over her after-deck, and under it a big fat man was sitting writing in a deck-chair.  The vessel was moored to a large buoy.

“It’s a houseboat,” said John.  (Swallows and Amazon. 1930.)

I soon discovered that the village of Coniston was a good place in which to find lunch, and was having difficulties deciding between the Church House Inn and the Wilson Arms as both of their menus looked wonderful.  On a cool and blustery day I reasoned that a hot lunch, preferably close to a fireplace, was a sensible idea.  But as I walked on down the main street sense turned to sensibility when I saw a sign with the hands of a clock showing twelve-thirty and the words “S.Y. Gondola sails.”  I had read a little about this boat and immediately abandoned lunch plans and hurried down to the jetty where a long narrow craft was already making steam.  Within minutes we were chugging along at a comfortable speed southbound on the lake.

The original steam yacht Gondola was launched in 1859 as a summer ferry on Coniston, picking up passengers at various jetties and providing a link to the Furness Railway station in Coniston.  For the next sixty-three years, summer after summer, she made her way up and down the lake.  Then came the First World war and she was taken out of service, only to return to duties with the peace in 1918.  Gondola was eventually decommissioned in 1936, entering her retirement as a non-powered houseboat. (In other words the engine was never fired up again.)  But they were neglectful years.  She slowly deteriorated and by the 1960s had been abandoned at the southern end of Coniston, little more than a rotting hulk.  Then a powerful winter storm took her from her moorings and she sank in a reed bed.  For years only the superstructure was visible to other boats.

All however was not lost.  Ten years later money was collected to raise her and look at the possibilities of refurbishing her.  It was decided that although the hull and the engine were beyond salvage, the rest of the yacht could be restored.  To cut a wonderfully long story short a replacement hull was built by Vickers of Barrow-in-Furness, and a new engine and boiler followed.  The new Gondola was launched on March 25th, 1980, and has remained in service under the flag of the National Trust ever since.

For the technically leaning among you, Gondola weighs forty-five tones, is eighty-six feet long, and has a beam of fifteen feet.  Her steam engine, now greenly powered by burning “logs” made from recycled sawdust, can provide a cruising speed of eight knots with faster bursts if needed.  She carries a crew of three:  A Master, a stoker, and someone who comes around taking large sums of money from the maximum number of eighty-six passengers that the yacht is licensed to carry.

There were no more than twenty of us afloat that day and I was glad of my coat as I sat or stood on the fo'c'sle deck.  But what a remarkable experience. Our voyage took us over five miles down the western shore Coniston Water , looped around, and returned up the eastern bank.  There was a running commentary from the bridge, pointing out places of interest and telling a little of the history of the area, but it was good-humoured and pleasant.  We learned of copper mining and the Romans, of the species of fish in the lake, of medieval settlements, of Malcolm Campbell, the artist John Ruskin, the author Beatrice Potter, and that the farm to the east (Bank Ground farm) was the inspiration for Holly Howe farm in Ransome’s stories.  The hour and more passed too quickly.

Gondola was a influential part of Ransome’s boyhood memories when his family would spend long summer seasons on Coniston, and was clearly the inspiration for the strange-looking dark blue vessel at anchor in Houseboat Bay.  (Swallows and Amazons et al.)  He recalled those days much later:

… We could look out high above the lake to the pier on the further side at which the real Gondola called, giving a warning whistle before it came into view round the trees on the Waterpark promontory.  This was a steam vessel, shaped like an Italian gondola, with a serpent figurehead.

And then:

With the end of each Long Vacation we had to leave Nibthwaite and go back to Leeds.  We stayed to the last possible day in deepening melancholy. The Gondola did not run during the winter and old Captain Hamill (who let me, as a very small boy, steer his noble vessel, standing behind me at the wheel at the top of the long cabin) performed a rite of his own.  When for the last time of the year the Gondola left the pier that we could see from the farmhouse windows, he used to sound his whistle, a long last wail of farewell until he was out of sight. (The Autobiography.  1976.)

I sailed Coniston Water in a piece of floating history, a relatively unchanged landscape on both sides.  But I wasn’t returning to a rented house in Nibthwaite but to my rented car in Coniston village, and by now was very hungry.  But having spent a princely sum for a kingly cruise I bought a cheese sandwich and a bottle of water in a Spar convenience store, and feasted like a pauper, reviewing the photos that I had taken – some of which I share with you.

 

That afternoon was my last in the Lakes and I drove away from Coniston and towards Barrow.  Why Barrow?  I had never seen the place and perhaps needed an infusion of the modern world – which I soon received.  Within half an hour I was driving through a new commercial park with every large retail name under the sun.  It felt brash and ugly, but moving on I knew that the people of the Lake District do not exist in a theme park inspired by Ransome, Ruskin and Worsdworth.  They depend on a modern economy with all its industrial, hospital and school facilities, and a constant source of employment.  Needless to say I didn’t take any photographs there.  Who is interested in images of Staples, Tesco’s, Lidl and TK Maxx?

The next day I would pack and drive leisurely to East Anglia for a reunion with friends, but I had one port of call before an early dinner.  The Red Lion in Lowick Bridge where Ransome and friends would often drink a pint or two.  And it was a good pint served me, sitting near a coal fire and listening to a friendly group of late afternoon drinkers at the bar. Sometimes it’s entertaining to be an anonymous stranger passing through.  Little did they know that I was not actually a tourist but a South Sea pirate in disguise come to visit Captain Flint.

 

Arrrgh!

"The Voyage to the Island" (*)

To call it the ‘Lake District’ is a bit of misnomer for although there are ninety four designated bodies of water within this region of north west England, only one of them, Bassenthwaite, is officially a lake.  All of the others are Waters, Meres, Tarns, with a couple of reservoirs thrown in for good luck.  As if anyone really cares about the titles.  Arthur Ransome was not pedantic in such matters.  Early in his autobiography he talked about sharing his father’s “passion for the hills and lakes of Furness” and “Lake Country holidays.”  (Actually his description of his father was delightful.  “Every long vacation he was no longer a professor who fished, but a fisherman who wrote history books in his spare time.”)  But I digress.

It was to Coniston Water that I was heading that morning, winding my way down the lanes, emerging at Lowick Bridge and taking the narrow road than ran with passing places along the River Crake and then up the east side of the lake.  Annoyingly enough I could not see the water at first except for the occasional glimpse between private houses, but after a couple of miles the scenery opened out and Coniston appeared, blue-grey and choppy in the morning’s north wind.  I had read that there was a National Trust parking area - one that held only three cars – and I simply prayed that there was space for my small car. There was!

The eleven acres of shoreline at Low Peel are a pleasant enough walk in themselves but it was not woodland which was drawing me – it was what may be seen at the northern edge of the trees.  There, a mere three hundred feet into the lake was Peel Island.  All of a sudden I had re-entered not only my childhood imagination as a reader but also connected with Ransome’s own memories.  He wrote of his experience staying with the Collingwood family in 1904, aged twenty:

I was bidden to come early next morning and ‘my aunt’ packed us off with a bun-loaf, a pot of marmalade and a kettle to go down the lake to Peel Island, the island that had mattered so much to me as a small boy, was in the distant future to play its parts in some of my books, and is still, in my old age, a crystallising point for happy memories.  (The Autobiography.  1976.)

But Ransome had inherited a fascination for Peel Island from his adopted uncle, William Collingwood, who in 1895 had written a children’s novel about Norsemen in 10^th century Cumbria.  Thorstein of the Mere introduced Peel Island with a pen and ink map and these words:

In the midst of Thurston-water there is a little island, lying all alone. When you see it from the fells, it looks like a ship in the blue ripples; but a ship at anchor, while all the mere moves upbank or downbank, as the wind may be. The little island is ship-like also because its shape is long, and its sides are steep, with no flat and shelving shores; but a high short nab there is to the northward, for a prow, so to speak; and a high sharp ness to the southward, for a poop. And to make the likeness better still, a long narrow calf-rock lies in the water, as if it were the cockboat at the stern; while tall trees stand for mast and sails.

The island is not so far in the water but that one can swim to shore, nor so near that it would be easy to attack it without a boat: and at that time boats there were none on these lakes, except maybe a coracle or two of the fell-folk. For fishing, no spot could be better, nor for hunting, if one wanted a safe home and hunting-tower. (Thorstein of the Mere. P 261)

And, of course, in 1930, came the lines familiar to children of all ages for generations to come:

The island was not in the middle of the lake but much nearer to the eastern shore… covered with trees and among them was one tall pine which stood out high above the oaks, hazels, beeches and rowans…. The tall pine was near the north end of the island.  Below it was a little cliff dropping to the water.  Rocks showed a few yards out from the shore.  There was no place to land there…. A little more than a third of the way along the eastern shore of the island there was a bay, a very small one, with a pebbly beach… The only place where it would be possible to land a boat.

But later Captain John, exploring on foot, found the hidden harbour on the south west corner of the island.

Beyond it… ran out nearly twenty yards into the water, a narrow rock seven or eight feet high, rising higher and then dropping gradually.  Rocks sheltered it also from the southeast.  (Swallows and Amazons chapters 3 and 4.)

In the books where the Swallows and the Amazons sail the lake, unnamed except for in their imaginations, is an amalgam of Coniston Water and Windermere, but there is no doubt whatsoever that Peel Island was the prototype for Wild Cat Island. (Except the eastern "landing place" is a bit of an exaggeration.)  Looking at it from under the shoreline trees I felt a childish sense of excitement.  And that day I had the view all to myself, for I knew that on brighter, warmer days, the waters around the island are full of small boats and other craft with people enjoying themselves, perhaps pretending that they were the Walker or the Blackett family, or just telling their young children about books that they had read growing up.

It was eventually time to go.  Walking back to the car I took a last look at the island.  “What a place!” said the able-seaman.  And it was, but the day was marching on. My plan was to eat an early lunch in Coniston village and wander around lazily for a while.  Little did I know that I would soon abandon those ideas and be afloat.

(*)  The title of Swallows and Amazons Chapter III