The real Swallow cont...
Swallow’s mast was set back quite far for a boat with a standing lugsail. This would have given her quite a pronounced weather helm under sail. When Swallow was bought by the late Roger Fothergill in 1936 or 1935 he corrected this by adding a jib. He also stretched her keel to nearly the full length of the boat no doubt to improve her heading to the wind. He had the loose lead pigs cast into a single pig and bolted to the new, larger keel. Both these modifications greatly improved her sailing abilities Roger used Swallow on her home waters, the northern Morecambe Estuary.
Rowing Swallow
With her beam, her six inch long, fixed keel and her ballast, Swallow would not have been that easy to row. Certainly, she would have taken some oomph to get going. The long keel would have made oar steering an interesting prospect and, when The Able Seaman and the Ship’s Boy head off on the treasure hunt to Cormorant Island in Swallows & Amazons, Titty orders Roger to take the helm as she is toiling to steer using the oars. There’s a great description of sculling which John prides himself on. Swallow has a U cut into her transom allowing a single oar to be used in the twisting figure of eight action that can move a boat like Swallow along handsomely. With her long keel gripping the water Swallow would have been a good boat to propel in this way as she wouldn’t be prone to wobbling and wouldn’t require a huge amount of compensation. I recall my attempts to scull an Enterprise racing dinghy as a boy having seen the BBC production of Swallows & Amazons, this resulted in an ignominious swim and hoots of laughter from shore and the Able Seaman and Boy.
What happened to Swallow?
Swallow was sold to the late Roger Fothergill who wrote to Stuart Wier in 1999, just before his death. You can read the letter here. He bought Swallow from William Crossfield & sons of Arnside, it’s often said that this firm had built Swallow but Roger doubted that because when he bought Swallow from Fred Crossfield, a man he had known all his life, Fred never mentioned that she had been a Crossfield boat.
Swallow had sat in Crossfield’s yard for two years before Roger bought her. Roger had gone to sea in the late 1930s and, in 1939, with the prospect of war looking he asked Fred to sell Swallow. He has no idea who bought her or where she went however, as you will see if you read his letter, he said it was unlikely that Swallow survived.
Article by: Richard Palmer
With thanks to : Stuart Wier
Stuart's excellent research is available at the following location and I would encourage you to visit. www.allthingsransome.net/arboats/sandaboats/sanda.html Reproductions of Swallow
There's heaps of information on both the original Swallow and the Amazon (which still survives and can be seen at the Windermere Steamboat Museum) and Stuart should be commended for the effort he went to in researching the article and contacting Iain and Roger.
There are many interpretations of Swallow recreated by Ransome enthusiasts including Mike Field’s Aileen Louisa as featured in this issue of Barnacle Bill Magazine. Although there are photographs and some of the measurements of Swallow, as Stuart writes, there remains critical information missing that is required for an identical reproduction. However, if you are interested in building or commissioning a dinghy of Swallow’s type, there are many options available to you and these are gone into detail on Stuart’s pages.
One obvious difference between Swallow and a modern boat is that in 2015 Crossfields would be breaking the law in selling a leisure craft to Roger without adequate buoyancy or self-righting capability. Had Swallow capsized she would have sunk. Despite the tameness of the rig, the low centre of effort, the tendency of lug rigs to dump their wind and the sail only being about 90 Square foot and that with all these advantages only ‘DUFFERS’ would capsize, modern health and safety laws demand buoyancy. As Roger said to Stuart in his letter:
“There was no organised dinghy sailing then.She had no flotation material inside; she would have sunk if I had capsized her because of her ballast. I do not remember anyone requesting that I should wear a life jacket & the waters of those lakes were dark & icy, but I survived”
They were made from sterner stuff in the days when you relied on rig and the competency for your safety.
“BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN”
64.