As a kid, I didn't like this one much. It seemed too serious, too adult. The egg collector is actually quite morally corrupt by my standards. Guns were fired around kids. Adults were trying to bribe and threaten kids. Kids were taken and thrown into captivity. Captain Flint was being too native toward the kids, when Dick was expressing very mature concerns, until another adult angered him and he switched his position, which quite possibly narrowly averted a real mutiny.
The whole thing felt a little more Missee Lee than The Picts and the Martyrs, but it is also pretty clearly not a 'Peter Duck' story. The boats, Swallow and Amazon, are not present as one or more were in Peter Duck and Missee Lee. There is a much more serious feeling that we are dealing with real things, like taking good care of Sea Bear, and sticking to schedules. Captain Flint is far more native in this one than in the two Peter Duck stories. Overall the mature tone of the story makes us lean toward a Peter Duck story, but I think it's rather just a sign of the fact that the kids are growing and the story plots are growing with them. We had real criminals in Swallows and Amazons, but they were inept and gave no sense of danger at any time; things have changed in four years, and the adventure has well and truly left the Lake District behind this time. Also I think Ransome is somewhat using this as a soap box for his feelings about egg collecting, in case they weren't clear from Coot Club.
One thing odd to me as a kid was that these people made such a big deal about great northern divers, ever since my dad told me that bird was what we in Nova Scotia refer to as the common loon. 'Common' is right there in the name, because they are everywhere. Can't fall asleep anywhere around fresh water without hearing them. Anyway, it was hard as a kid to wrap my head around the idea that loons were a rarity, because for the most part I was imagining Great Britain as essentially a slightly foggier version of Nova Scotia (which I will maintain is not all that inaccurate, albeit with more loons here and more sheep there). That being said, now on my re-read it's clear that the presence of great northern divers is not such a big deal, it's entirely their nesting location that is under question. Even now, I can't find any confirmation of great northerns breeding anywhere in the Hebrides islands off Scotland.
Fun fact, I'm named Neil after my great grandmother's clan, which was Clan MacNeil. Clan home location: The Outer Hebrides.
The exact date, even the year, of this one is quite up in the air. It wasn't published until 1947, and it really does seem as though a year or more has gone by since we last checked in on the Swallows, Amazons, and Ds. Nancy and John both seem quite a bit older, and stronger, to be handling things such as the legs of Sea Bear and a proper careening of the ship. The four elders are treated more like adults, while the four youngest are still treated as kids. To me, this means the elders are well into maturity. The statutory leaving age for school was 14 at the time. By this point, John and Nancy could well be employed in a trade or considering marriage. Not to each other of course; Nancy will be marrying Daisy (and what a book that would be).
Fans of the series usually put Great Northern? in summer of 1934, a year after The Picts and the Martyrs. I see no reason to disagree. I am tempted to put it later, to better explain the maturity I see in John and Nancy, but at the same time Roger and Dick still seem pretty much exactly the same as they have always been; Roger is still the prat he came to be characterized as in the last few books, but more and more the other characters are beginning to tell him off about it, as though he should be outgrowing such behavior by this point. But really, if he's 11, I think he's doing ok in terms of maturity. If anything the other kids generally act too old for their ages, I think. Or maybe kids grew up faster back then.
John and Nancy are both navigating by chart and keeping a navigation log. Clearly some time has gone by in which they have learned to do these things, unless it was on this voyage. "After a happy fortnight of good sailing" (p1) suggests that they could have learned a lot just on this trip, by the point of the novel's beginning.
I don't think the book clearly tells us what time of year it is, but loons in Canada nest in May - June, although can be as late as July. I do find reference to red-throated divers nesting in Scotland well into the summer, and as great northern divers don't actually nest in the Hebrides it's hard to make a conjecture based on their nesting times elsewhere. I think though this must be summer as Captain Flint says "Trouble is, it's so light at night up here" (p161) which strongly implies summer.
| Day | Major events |
| 1 | Dropping the hook in Scrubber's Cove |
| 2 | Scrubbing Sea Bear
Youngsters explore |
| 3 | To harbour for supplies |
| 4 | Back to Scrubber's Cove (early morning)
Making the hide Pterodactyl arrives Deploying the hide (late night) |
| 5 | Dick in the hide
Red herrings and decoys all about ...and the story ends abruptly |
Closing thoughts.
It's a bit funny when Roger shouts "So long, you scrubbers" (p47) because 'scrubber' has long been an insulting term to someone, generally a woman, of a low grade occupation like a scullery maid. In some contexts it has come to refer to a prostitute, but I think that meaning came about after Ransome's time.
It's been mentioned before, but I always find it incongruous how the Swallows and Amazons and Ds and Coots (aka Arthur Ransome) were ahead of their time in terms of environmentalism when it came to bird and egg protection, and yet so backward when it came to dealing with trash. There is never any mention of what happens to all the tins and wrappers from their food, and they (and everyone else in that time) treated any body of water as a waste recepticle. All waste on Captain Flint's houseboat is just tossed overboard. I'm reminded of an old TV commercial I think the government of Canada produced, where little Billy is on a boat with his grandpa, and asks what he should do with some piece of trash. Grandpa replies that he should just throw it overboard, the ocean will take it away. "But where does it go?" asks Billy. "Away!", replies grandpa.
Great Northern? is actually the first book where there is a stated policy of not littering, beyond the D&Gs policy of burying orange peel (which I'm not going back to find the exact reference) when Roger is in the pict house having his lunch "obeying the ancient rule, never leave a scrap of litter" (p233).
Speaking of Nancy and John, which, ok, we were not, but... they sure do spend a lot of time together in this book. In fact, they are almost inseparable. They do everything together, and perhaps just because they are the eldest, but they try out the folding boat together (Peggy is booted out as she makes it too unstable), provide the first support for Dick against Captain Flint together, handle most operations on Sea Bear together, and wander the moors together as decoys. Daisy might just have something to say about that.
I found it really jarring how suddenly the book ended. The eggs go back in the nest and then... young McGinty is watching Sea Bear sail away. What a way to end the Swallows and Amazons series.
So next up I have Coots in the North, which is incomplete, and (I think) occurs some time before Great Northern?, although was only published later. It's not really a whole book, but we'll talk about it a bit (from the future: no, we will not. There isn't enough here to really make a dedicated page for although it does flesh out the D&Gs a bit more.)
If I ever come across a portal to parallel dimensions in the infinite space/time continuum, I'll first go back and ask Ransome to write more books, and tell Evgenia how much his books are loved by millions so that she is more encouraging of his work, because I think everyone would appreciate that, and then I'll travel to a universe where Swallows and Amazons actually happened, and I'll drop in around Swallowdale. With my modern knowledge, I'm sure I can come up with a career of some sort that would let me live on the lake (I'm not bad at both carpentry and blacksmithing, and I have built a boat) and watch the Swallows and Amazons at play. Maybe even get involved as one of the good natives, at some point. Hopefully I wouldn't get called up and killed in World War II because someone of modern mindset is going to have to give away the bride at Nancy and Daisy's clandestine moonlight wedding, after all. We can dream, at least.