Houseboat
From Arthur Ransome Wiki
The Houseboat is Captain Flint's summer residence on the Lake. A retired former lake steamer, she has blue sides, a large cabin with separate galley, foredeck and after-deck, a rope ladder and permanent mooring chain.
Owner: Captain Flint
Flag: Siamese elephant
[edit] Appearances
- Swallows and Amazons – mined by the Amazons, later attacked by them allied with the Swallows during The Battle of Houseboat Bay, this was followed by a feast on board.
- Swallowdale – Captain Flint's foredeck cannon was used to start the race between Swallow and Amazon
- Winter Holiday – frozen in ice, she was re-named Fram by the North Polar Expedition and briefly became a residence for the Ds.
- The Picts and the Martyrs – Timothy Stedding's residence and laboratory. Great Aunt Maria was marooned on board overnight.
- 'Coots in the North' – sketch in notes to this incomplete story suggest the Houseboat coming adrift and being salvaged by the Death and Glories.
[edit] The original Houseboat?
The boats considered to be what Arthur Ransome had in mind for the Houseboat are:
- Esperance (pictured above), a steamboat moored at the Windermere Steamboat Museum, (NBUS pages 66, 248)
- Gondola, a passenger steamer on Coniston Water, as a guide for illustrator Clifford Webb (CFT1; pictured in photo 21 in 1988 paperback ed). See Photograph of Gondola.
[edit] Other houseboats
- "There was one at Falmouth, where people used to live all the year round." (John tells Titty; SA3)
- Miss Millett's houseboat "There was one yesterday... [a motor cruiser, presumably Margoletta] ...going up late in the evening, [ie 21 April, 1932] upset half Mrs Millet's china in her houseboat. (Ella Dudgeon, CC3)
- the hulk of Harry Bangate the eel man is referred to as a houseboat (BS3)
- the green houseboat which is cast adrift (BS5)
