Brian Hammett Editor

Arthur Ransome, world famous for the hit series Swallows & Amazons, had, as a young man in 1913, gone to Russia as a foreign correspondent and journalist. He fell in love with Evgenia, Trotsky’s secretary, whom he later married. Together they owned two small yachts before commissioning the building of Racundra in 1922 at Rigia in Latvia. Their first cruise in their custom-made yacht took them from Lativa, via Estonia, to Finland and back. Brian Hammett was given a copy of Swallows and Amazons for his tenth birthday, and was immediately captivated by both the story and the author. The first boat he had was a closed canoe and he called it Swallow. He went on to join the Arthur Ransome Society and became an Arthur Ransome expert, discovering the unpublished Racundra’s Third Cruise in Leeds University library. He has cruised the Baltic himself, following Ransome’s cruises in the area.