Racundra's First Cruise take him, "I, of course, agreed with joy, as there is no such rigger in the Baltic as the Ancient Mariner". His real name was Captain Carl Sehmel and his character is also featured in several of the Swallows and Amazons books as Peter Duck and Simon, a wherry sailor in "Coot Club". Racundra's First Cruise Racundra's First Cruise is the first book about sailing written by Arthur Ransome, author of the "Swallows and Amazons" series. It describes a trip he made across the Baltic Sea from Riga in Latvia to Helsinki in Finland and back in a 9 metre
Swallows and Amazons series remainder of his books himself. In 1938, he drew his own pictures for "Swallows and Amazons" and "Swallowdale" to replace Webb's. Ransome's pictures were done in pen and ink with no colour, although colours have been added by some publishers in later editions. Typically, figures in the pictures are shown from the back, though there are some which show the faces of a few of the characters. Taqui Altounyan, the oldest of the children to whom the first edition of "Swallows and Amazons" was dedicated, recalls that "He shirked drawing faces and got over that difficulty with back views of