Here, for the first time in many years, is a new previously unpublished book be Arthur Ransome, author of the
Swallows & Amazons series of children's books. Racundra's Third Cruise is a detailed account of a cruise up the River Lieupe from Riga, latvia to Jelgrava in the summer of 1924.
The voyage took place shortly after his second marriage to Evgenia Shelepina, Trotsky's secretary. Ransome describes in detail a leisurely six-week sailing cruise. He covers the trip, the countryside, local people and a blow-by-blow, fish-by-fish account of his second greatest passion, after sailing, fishing. It was without doubt intended for publication as a follow-up to his first really successful book Racundra's First Cruise, which was published in 1923.
The book contain maps and sketches, including the map used by Ransome for the voyage, lines of Racundra from the Cruising Association's archives, many original Ransome pictures of the trip, together with present-day photographs of the area.
'The cook struggled up the companionway with a sandwich. She asked real inquiry, "Are we going to be drowned before morning?"
I leaned forward from the steering-well and shouted, "Why?"
"Because I have two thermos flasks full of hot coffee. If we are, we may as well drink them both. If not, I'll keep one till tomorrow."'
They kept one.
The long-suffering Evgenia, during Racundra's First Cruise.
'The cook says there is no point in living in Racundra, that only children are glad to live in a ship, that there is nothing to see, nothing to write about, and that she's sick of wind and rain and living in a small cabin; that I grow worse with age, and that proper authors live at home and write books out of their heads.'
The not so long-suffering Evgenia, during Racundra's Third Cruise.
