Opposite: shipwright Harry King and designer Fred Shepherd (kneeling) check one of the first frames for Selina King. Left: Selina King sailing on the English east coast, and a classic study of Arthur Ransome (below left) alongside a rather austere image of E George Martin, winner of the first Fastnet Race and the founder of the Ocean Racing Club, later the RORC
himself had no more ballast to offer. Those large pigs, Ransome was told, belonged to Commander Martin of the Griffin. And he was coming back for them. Harry King was too diplomatic to try to
deter Arthur from ‘borrowing’ them, but he must have shuddered behind his patient smile for George Martin was 6ft 7in and, although a cultured and erudite Old Etonian who played Baroque pieces on his 17th-century violin as well as any profes- sional, this was a man who owned half shares in the beautiful Thames barge Memory, which he worked as mate out of Ipswich into London Docks. Locals said it was best not to call him George unbidden or he might land one on you. He was respected the length and breadth of the coast. But you did not cross him. In his innocence and enthusiasm
Ransome himself had fretted about
handling her due to his age (and girth), but Uffa wrote that Selina’s clear deck plan, ‘such a comfort on dark nights at sea’, with all the lines led aft, demonstrated that she could be tacked and handled without the need for anyone going for’ard, for the topmast backstay was set up permanently to her canoe stern while the runner taking the pull of the jib and forestay was slacked and set up by a Highfield lever placed within easy reach of the helmsman. All these details had come from what
Ransome called daydreams, alongside ideas taken from his careful observations of other vessels – for example, the adapta- tion of a friend’s Bermudan sloop’s roller reefing gear – all of which were being explored when Selina was not even a twinkle in her designer’s eye. He wrote, ‘I had to devise a method of sheeting sail and boom that would allow me to disconnect the one from the other while sailing, leaving the sail still drawing while I would be stowing away the boom, while at the same time approaching my mooring.’ So much of Selina’s rig was exper -
imental on her first trials and her proud owner was terrified as well as happy. A bigger problem was the matter of ballast, where calculations had indeed gone awry, which only manifested themselves when
the ship at last hit the water… Fred Shepherd or someone else had got
it wrong. As had Mrs King who blurted out ‘I christen thee Selina King’, (rather than name you) wrapped in her best coat trembling with anxiety, only breaking the champagne bottle successfully at the third time of trying. Selina slipped gradually down greased troughs in her cradle, until she was hanging with her bows already off the planked slipway; beneath her was the deep trench in the mud through which she would at last go into the river. Most then went for lunch as the tide gently seeped in. Ransome waited until there was enough
water for a pram dinghy, and then paddled out to her. He said, ‘She was just the shell of a ship, but still already a ship.’ He climbed aboard the shell and waited for the slight jerk that told him she was moving, and then the sudden plunge as she went headfirst into the trench. A moment later she was clear of the mud. But some- thing was very wrong. She was floating in the water like a balloon – her allocation of ballast had clearly been a miscalculation. And so began the great row. Lying on the shore there was a handy
heap of about half a ton of lead. After the mast had been stepped (with the traditional shining new 1938 penny head uppermost in the step), Selina was still a balloon. King
Ransome took the lead. Mr Parker and a trainee architect were sent from Fred Shepherd’s and agreed that all Selina needed was ballast. The lead was sitting there unused. Meanwhile, no one knew where Martin was. ‘Rumour spoke of Falmouth and rumour spoke again of Norfolk Broads.’ Harry King was asked to load the heavy pigs into a boat, from which they were rowed to Selina and soon safely stowed so at last she ‘looked a little more like the drawing which had hung all spring and summer’ on Arthur’s wall. When the big water tanks were filled
she looked even more the part. Mr Parker, his assistant and Ransome rowed about measuring here and there with a stick: free- board bow, stern and amidships. After a few more adjustments her trim was per- fect; she was floating only an inch or less above her designed waterline and that would soon be rectified by her new wood taking in water, and the crew aboard. Arthur wrote that they slept that night
‘happy that Selina was no longer a bal- loon, and it was possible to walk about on her with another gait than that of an ele- phant walking on a rolling ball in a circus’. Harry had sent for replacement lead.
Martin was nowhere to be seen. There was time now to test the mainsail, tear the mainsail, take the sail to be patched, but they were happy: ‘cyder and smoked salmon sandwiches never tasted so good.’ Experts from London were summoned
to fine-tune her to perfection, ready for the late autumn’s cruising and, as he proudly demonstrated the beauties of his staysail boom, unshipping and stowing it while she ran on, Selina really was Ransome’s dreamship come true. Then one night after dusk a red and green and a low masthead light slipped up
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