Swallows and Amazons

“BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN.”

Father’s cryptic telegram grants the Walker children permission to sail to and camp on the island alone. Its meaning has to be unpacked for the younger children, although Mother and John get it at once. As a British naval officer, Father says that the children would be better off drowned than “duffers,” or incompetent sailors. However, since they are not incompetent, they will not drown, and so they may go on their trip. The word “duffers” will recur at various points when the children believe that they have let someone down. This quote subtly alludes to the theme of Adventure as Both Thrill and Risk.

“The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which we shall never take part. And now, suddenly, it was real.”

Wild Cat Island means freedom from the world of adults, a goal so unimaginably wonderful for the Walker children that they haven’t even permitted themselves to visit the island. After the children are granted permission to camp there, the island becomes a tangible symbol of their goal. It plays into their upside-down logic that the world of Imagination as a Gateway to Freedom is the real one.

“‘That Queen Elizabeth was not brought up close to Sydney Harbor,’ said Mother.”

The Walker children’s mother is an extremely good sport. She quickly falls into their pretending games, as when John invites her to be Queen Elizabeth I as she supervises their first sail in the Swallow. She also enables their camping trip by supplying them with food and important equipment such as tents and flashlights. In addition, she is an expert sailor herself who shows John how to handle the sailboat. She is one of the factors, along with the idyllic setting and the children’s prowess at outdoor skills, contributing to the sense that the children’s adventure might really happen.

“The little town is known in guide-books by another name, but the crew of the Swallow had long ago given it the name of Rio Grande.”

Naming is important to all six of the young main characters in the novel. To name a place is to symbolically claim it for one’s own. Giving an exotic name to a familiar locale also transforms it into a suitable place for an adventure. The children never refer to a place by its real name once they have given it a new one.

“Keep a look-out for savages.”

The Walker children are British subjects in 1929, less than a decade after the British Empire reached its height in 1922. At that time, the Empire ruled over about a quarter of the surface of the world. With its history of colonization and conquest came the racist view that the Indigenous people whose lands the British had taken were less than human—“savages,” a term that Titty uses often. The children’s references to “savages” and “natives” are considered deeply offensive today.

“All this happened much quicker than I can tell it.”

Ransome uses a number of different points of view to tell his story, operating as an omniscient narrator. Sometimes he is entirely in the perspective of a single character—usually, but not always, one of the six main characters. At other times, he is in the heads of the children collectively. At others, as he does here, he interjects his first-person perspective. The wide-ranging point of view gives the effect of oral storytelling and also provides both an understanding of individual characters and a sense of how each set of siblings functions collectively as a crew.

“Lights out in half an hour.”

The Walker children adhere at times to various codes of honor and traditions: The British Royal Navy’s, the pirate’s Articles of Agreement, and the British schoolboy’s code of honor. Part of the pirate’s code was an agreement on when lights would be extinguished. As captain of the Swallow, it is John’s job to enforce lights out.

“Nurse somehow did not seem to feel that she was talking with seamen from another land.”

Adults, called “natives” by the children, tend to fall into one of two camps. Prosaic ones like baby Vicky’s nurse and Mrs. Dixon, the farmer’s wife, have an utter failure to remember what it is like to be young. Others, like Mother, quickly fall into the children’s imaginative games and way of talking. The Blackett girls’ uncle Jim Turner starts out as the worst kind of “native” and transforms into an ally of the children by the end of the novel.

“The flag blowing out in the wind at the masthead of the little boat was black and on it in white were a skull and two crossed bones.”

As children thoroughly steeped in nautical tradition and lore, the Walkers and Blacketts understand the importance of a sailboat’s flag. The skull and crossbones on the Amazon immediately signal to the Walkers that the Amazons are kindred spirits who will understand their pirate games. Nancy will insist that both flags fly during the “parley” in which they form a truce and an alliance. When the Swallows capture the Amazon in the battle to be head of the fleet, they win “flagship” status, hauling down the pirate flag of the captured ship.

“This year he is in league with the natives, and the natives are very unfriendly.”

One of the things that bothers all the children greatly about adults is the way that everyone knows everyone else’s business. The children tell as little as possible of their adventures to adults and take care to protect each other’s secrets. In contrast, Jim has been talking freely to the local citizens—most of whom the independent, strong-willed Blackett girls disdain.

“She and Master Jim, Eh! Eh! And now she’s a grown woman with two lasses of her own.”

The children do everything they can to block out and escape the world of adults and remain in the world of imagination. The charcoal burners, however, can remember the Blackett girls’ mother when she was a young girl. With their awareness of The Tension Between Timelessness and Change, they represent the reality that the children try their best to avoid: Everyone grows up.

“John choked. He went very red and stood up in the boat.”

John, who is very honorable, is greatly bothered by the fact that Jim thinks he was the one who set off the firecracker on the houseboat’s roof. After Jim calls him a liar, he is deeply upset and remains so until near the end of the novel. The insult is made worse by the fact that John did not want to give the charcoal burners’ warning to Jim and only tried to pass it on because it was the right thing to do.

“It doesn’t matter what people think or say if they don’t know you.”

This is Mother’s sensible advice to John after he tells her how Jim called him a liar. John cannot follow the advice because he doesn’t have the maturity to know that it is sound. He only realizes this after Jim learns that John is innocent and offers a heartfelt apology.

“Just then Titty had her idea.”

Titty’s idea is brilliant: The “enemy” ship has come to Wild Cat Island, and Titty is in the perfect position to capture it. She acts bravely and proves to the others that while she is often so lost in fantasy that she doesn’t quite seem in touch with reality, she is just as clever as her older sister and brother.

“Don’t you think that was very nearly like being duffers?”

By this point in the story, even Mother uses Father’s expression of “being duffers” as a sort of code to mean “likely to drown yourselves.” John called himself one when he was sailing at night and couldn’t tell how far he was from the shore, endangering the ship and the younger children. Mother’s gentle criticism is typical of her respectful treatment of the children. She understands that John’s remorse is more powerful than any punishment she might mete out.

“Run away, Sammy, and don’t make those mistakes again.”

Nancy delivers this dismissal to the policeman Sammy in a “clear, ringing voice.” The scene in which the policeman sternly questions John turns humorous after Nancy frightens the man away. Ransome has dropped hints about the Blacketts’ wealth relative to the Walkers’: For instance, the Blacketts own their own sailboat and a motorboat and have a cook. The fact that she calls on her family’s connections to Sammy’s in order to make him do as she wants confirms that the Blacketts are fairly wealthy and therefore have a higher social standing than a police officer.

“There was a most unpleasant lump in Captain John’s throat. He found that it was almost more upsetting to have things put right than it had been when they went wrong.”

John has been so troubled by Jim’s mistaken impression of him that he is overcome with emotion after Jim’s apology. To all the Walker children, however—steeped as they are in the British schoolboy’s code of honor—tears are a sign of weakness that they must suppress. With the exception of Susan, whose placid temperament extends to being “in a native mood” when she is provoked, all the children are tempted to cry at some point but manage to hide or suppress their tears. John’s emotions highlight Nontraditional Gender Roles, demonstrating the necessity of crying for all genders.

“Well done, Able-seaman!”

Titty proves her mettle a second time when she discovers the stolen box containing Jim’s typewriter and the manuscript of his memoir. His transformation is complete after this point: He is completely in alliance with the children. He calls Titty nothing but “Able-seaman” hereafter to stress her capability.

“Honesty is the best policy.”

Nancy is all for hanging the burglars who stole and hid Jim’s box. Jim, however, doesn’t want to send anyone to prison and instead plays a trick on the burglars, burying a wooden fish with this inscription in place of the box. His experience traveling around the world may have given him a sense of mercy that Nancy lacks.

“Now that it was time for the Swallows to go, there came a sudden change in the weather to remind them that the summer too was near its end.”

The storm plays into the theme of the tension between timelessness and change. It provides a reminder that all good things must end. It also gives Titty a glimpse of the power and beauty of the natural world—a beauty that is inherently fleeting.

“‘Aye,’ said Mrs. Dixon, ‘we all think that when we’re young.’”

Mrs. Dixon, who is the most humdrum and “native” of all the grown-ups, feels obligated to disappoint Titty when she says that the children will return every year forever. In her awareness of the realities of adulthood, she is like the charcoal burners who can remember when Mrs. Blackett was a young girl: very cognizant of the facts that children grow up and that nothing stays the same forever.

“We’ll be grown-up, and then we’ll live here all the year round.”

Wild Cat Island symbolizes both freedom from adults and a place where childhood will last forever. Nancy and John, the two oldest of the six children, understand that they cannot really stay on the island forever. They are still children, however, so they find ways to reconcile adulthood with their love of the island. Nancy puts forth the plan to live on the island as grown-ups. John is somewhat more clear eyed, although his age relative to Nancy is not stated. He says that both he and Roger will go to sea one day, like their father, but will return to the island on leave.

“He’s asking about his pay, John said.”

The Walkers add the parrot Polly to the ship’s papers after he is given to Titty. Polly has learned to say, “Pieces of eight,” like the parrot in Treasure Island. As part of the children’s game, they pretend that his new catchphrase is actually dialogue and that he is asking for his pay as they sign him on as crew. It is their last bit of play before they sail away from Wild Cat Island and provides a touch of humor to lighten the glum mood.