Editions

We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea

We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea

'Like to spend a night in the Goblin?’

The Swallows are staying on the Suffolk coast while they wait for their father to return home from China. But although the harbour is bursting with bobbing yachts, barges and steamers, this year there's no chance of any sailing for the landlocked Swallows. That is until they rescue young Jim Brading and his boat the Goblin from a sticky situation and to their delight are recruited as crew members. Mother agrees they can go, on one condition – they absolutely must not sail out past Beach End Buoy and into the open sea…

Includes exclusive content: In the 'Backstory' you can test your knowledge of the book, and learn all about the art of sailing!

Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from Peter Pan and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Reviews

  • The seventh of the Arthur Ransome books about the Swallows and the Amazons, and I really think it is the best

    Sunday Times

  • The most exciting of the whole Swallows and Amazon series

    New Statesman

  • This book is Ransome at the top of his form

    Observer

  • The book is a record of an uncovenanted voyage, which ended in Holland, of the rain and wind, the darkness and the wild water, the escapes from buoys and from ships crossing in the night, the courage and resource of the children

    Evening Standard

  • Perhaps the best of all ... Just what does happen is told with all the wealth of practical detail and satisfying sense of reality which make Mr Ransome so unfailingly successful

    Punch

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About the Author

Arthur Ransome

Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian. After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children's treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post. Ransome died in 1967. He and his wife Evgenia lie buried in the churchyard of St Paul's Church, Rusland, in the southern Lake District.

Arthur Ransome

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