Windermere Steamboats - Information & Photographs

TSSY Esperance - Captain Flint's Houseboat

Not Used
Click for large version of 'TSSY Esperance - Captain Flint's Houseboat'
Not Used

The Windermere Steamboat Museum has now closed while the Lakeland Arts Trust tries to find ways to rescue this unique collection of boats. For further information on this project see the Windemere Steamboat Museum's website

In addition to the steam launches, the old Windermere Steamboats & Museum was a treat for lovers of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons, as it also housed the original Amazon, and the twin screw steam yacht, TSSY Esperance, on which Ransome based Captain Flint's houseboat (allegedly).

Uncle Sam

Reading the books to my kids, I was struck by the close watch that the adults were keeping on the kids, and by the fact that, as a child, I had completely missed the ambiguity in the relationship between the children's mother and their 'Uncle' Captain Flint.

Also on display was the SL Dolly of 1850 - the oldest mechanically powered boat in the world. Although she, like Esperance, is painted black and white, it is the beautiful polished wood of the other launches that sticks in the mind.

In 2011 they recived a substantial Heritage Lottery Fund grant, so let's hope it is not too long before it can be reopened to the public.

Comments

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08/04/2007 Strolling Guide

Thanks for your comments. When I say that my eldest is now 26 you will understand that I was going from memory when I wrote that piece. It was never intended to be a scholarly dissertation, but I really ought to have re-read the book before making so bold a statement.

However, I think the point that I was trying to make was that far from being an Edin Blyton Famous Five 'kids run wild' romp, there is a whole back story going on amongst the adults that the children (and through them the reader) are only vaguely aware of, and in which they have no interest. And that is the beauty of his writing.

19/06/2008 Kevin Broadfoot

You mentioned that on re-reading the books (to your children) you had missed the ambiguity in the relationship between the children's mother and their 'Uncle' Captain Flint. Are you speaking of the Blackett children - Nancy and Peggy (the Amazons)? If so, in Swallows and Amazons it explains the relationship between the Amazons and Uncle Jim (Captain Flint) - he is their mother's brother.

In chapter 11 (In Alliance) when the Swallows and Amazons first meet on Wild Cat Island Peggy says in response to one of Titty's questions,
"He brought the parrot from Zanzibar. He's been all over the world. Mother says he was the black sheep of the family ...so he was sent to South America...Mother's his sister you know..".

But I'd often wondered why the Blacketts' father was never mentioned in the books - especially as we learn that the Swallows' father is in the Navy. However on last reading S&A I noticed that the book is set in August 1929 (John and Nancy date their written alliance in chapter 10). I'm assuming that John Walker is about 11 or 12 and it mentions that Nancy is a little older. So it's entirely feasible that the Blackett's father was killed in WW1 and that is why he is never mentioned. After all there must have been rather a lot of children at that time without fathers (my grandmother was one) as a result of the war, so it may be that Ransome was accurately portraying what may have been quite common. Just a thought!

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