Book Review: Coot Club by Arthur Ransome

Coot Club is superb. Even though this book is classed as ‘Swallows and Amazons 5’ neither the Swallows nor the Amazons sail into the story at any point.

Dick and Dorothea Callum are friends of the Swallows and Amazons, but neither Dick nor Dorothea has sailed before. They visit Mrs Barrable who lives on a boat near Wroxham in Norfolk. This is the area where flooded peat diggings called Broads connect many of the towns of Norfolk via dykes and navigable rivers. Dick and Dorothea are soon in a boat being taught the rudiments of sailing by a pair of identical twins, called Port and Starboard, as well as the main character of the story, Tom Dudgeon who is an absolutely superb sailor. The children along with other local sailors are in an unofficial ‘Coot Club’.

Of course, there has to be an antagonist, and this comes in the form of five selfish, arrogant, hullabaloos who hire a motor cruiser and speed around the water, ignoring speed limits and causing wakes that upset smaller boats and wash away the banks. One day, they moor in a place where some coots are nesting, so the coot parents can’t access their eggs.

Tom Dudgeon sees this and springs into action. He removes their anchors and mooring lines, so that the motor cruiser floats away. The people on board spot who did it and give chase to Tom. He evades them for a while but they are determined.

Mrs Barrable, Tom, Dick, and Dorothea decide to go on a journey to test their skills. They start out near Wroxham in the north and decide to try and sail to Norwich via all the broads, rivers, and dykes available to them. This is quite a journey via Yarmouth where the rivers meet the sea and there are tricky sailing conditions, so Tom requires all his skill to get the crew through unscathed. On the way back, having picked up the twins en route, they meet the motor cruiser coming the other way…