We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea by Arthur Ransome was first published in 1937 and it’s the seventh book in the author’s Swallows and Amazons series.
The Walker children and their mother have travelled to Harwich to wait for Commander Walker to arrive back from a trip to Europe, they aren’t quite sure when he’ll get to Harwich though. The children can’t keep away from boats so make for the harbour to admire the various yachts. They befriend Jim Braiding who has just sailed into harbour in the Goblin, Jim has earned their admiration with his sailing prowess.
After being given assurances by locals that Jim is trustworthy and a great sailor Mrs Walker agrees to allow the children to accompany him on a voyage, but she stipulates that they must not go out of the harbour as any further than that and they would be sailing out to sea.
Of course everything that can go wrong does go wrong and the children find themselves sailing the Goblin on their own and having to navigate through a real pea-souper of fog and high seas. There’s an awful lot of sailing terms bandied about which might as well have been Greek to me, but this didn’t detract from this very suspenseful adventure.
These books are very much of their time, and for me that adds to the charm of them. There’s a lot of use of the word ‘jolly’ – but hockey sticks don’t feature!
I suspect that my mother-in-law would have been sea-sick if she had ever read this book. She could get seasick watching The Onedin Line.
