Secret Water (1939)
Synposis and Further Information on Secret Water
|
Synopsis Secret Water follows directly on from We Didn't Mean to go to Sea. The Swallows are safely back in Pin Mill with their mother, Brigit and newly-arrived father, Commander Walker. Jim Brading has gone away to convalesce, leaving Goblin in Commander Walker's charge. With a week's leave due, their father is planning a surveying expedition to a remote archipelago of low-lying islands, creeks and mudflats nearby. His plans are apparently scuppered when the Admiralty orders him to London. There is now no way that mother and father can join the expedition, but he salvages the situation by taking John, Susan, Titty, Roger and Brigit to the archipelago, where they are marooned with their tents, a dinghy, a stack of surveying equipment and a blank map. Their challenge is to explore and map the islands before Mr and Wrs Walker return to rescue them. The Swallows set to with a will, but their efforts are soon complicated by a local tribe of savages, the self-styled Eels. Then the Amazons arrive, courtesy of more behind the scenes organisation by Commander Walker. The Swallows want to complete their map; the Amazons fancy a war; the Eel they know has made friends, but those they don't want him to evict the explorers from the islands, if necessary by force... And all the time their exploration is controlled by the ebb and flow of the tide and the knowledge that the Goblin will soon be coming back. |
||
 |
For a more detailed synopsis of the Swallows and Amazons series, see Approaching Arthur Ransome by Peter Hunt. ISBN 0-224-03288-7. Jonathan Cape, 1991. | ||
| Further Information Secret Water takes place in the Walton Backwaters, a few miles south of Harwich Harbour. This area was one of Ransome's favourite destinations in Nancy Blackett. Secret Water is dedicated to the Busk family. There is evidence that Ransome met the Busk's whilst the latter were camping on Horsey Island in September 1938. They were engaged in map-making themselves and it seems that getting involved in their schemes gave Ransome the fictional reason for the Swallows' expedition. In addition to dedicating the book to the Busks, Ransome inserted their yacht, Lapwing, into the fictional story. A comparison of modern maps and charts to those made in the 1930s, shows that there have been considerable changes to the Walton Backwaters over the intervening years. 1930s maps show a landscape very similar to the map produced by the Swallows and Amazons in Secret Water. |
|||
 |
For a more detailed study of the background to the Swallows and Amazons Series, see Amazon Publication's The Best of Childhood, 2004. The Best of Childhood is available to current TARS Members from the Society Stall. | ||
| We Didn't Mean to go to Sea (1937) | Return to "Books" | The Big Six (1940) |
Mixed Moss 2009
Emoticons
AR's birthday lunch
