RACUNDRA'S FIRST CRUISE

This new edition of Racundra’s First Cruise includes the original maps, text and photos from the 1923 first edition, of which only 1500 copies were printed. The book also contains a detailed introduction detailing Ransome’s Baltic sailing in Slug and Kittiwake and includes unpublished articles and essays together with many original Ransome pictures and present day photographs of the area. The manuscript has been researched, edited and introduced by Brian Hammett, who received critical acclaim for his work on Racundra’s Third Cruise . Details of Racundra ’s life after Ransome are also included. It has the full support of Ransome’s literary executors who are delighted to see it republished.

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.