‘They’re Pirates!’ ~ secrets of filming Swallows and Amazons on 3rd July 1973

It was found on e-bay and brought to Coniston Water when we re-launched Swallow at the Bluebird Cafe in 2011. Everyone was fascinated. I’d never seen this hand-coloured print used to publicise the movie in cinema foyers, but it has memories of a good day, spent not on Coniston but further north on Derwentwater.

 

When Richard Pilbrow’s movie of Swallows and Amazons was first shown on British television in 1977, ITV made a trailer to advertise it. This started with the shot of me saying, ‘They’re pirates!’ People loved it. Everyone was going around saying, ‘They’re pirates!’

If it was my best performance it was because I had been lying on a red ant’s nest – and they stung us.

The other secret is that that lighthouse tree in this shot is not a tree. Not one that was growing. It was a big log that Bobby Props had stuck in the ground making the ants very angry indeed.

This was the second location that we used for ‘Lookout Point on Wild Cat Island’. It was on a promontory that overlooks the bay where the houseboat was moored on Derwentwater. There were bushes but no sadly big pine trees. The log was planted so that our director Claude Whatham could get what is called a two-shot of the Swallows watching Nancy sail past Captain Flint’s houseboat, while Peggy raises the skull and crossbones. As we were keeping low the height of the lighthouse tree was not an issue.

Just prior to this scene when we spot the Amazons for the first time, I was working on the chart while Susan was sewing a button onto Roger’s shirt. The needle stuck into him as he flung himself down on the grass beneath the lighthouse tree.

Since needles are small you can hardly see what is happening but I think it is a detail that Arthur Ransome would have appreciated. I wonder if the same sort of thing had happened to him as a child? He used his memories of Annie Swainson throwing boys across her lap to darn their knickerbockers whilst they remained on him, just as Mary Swainson frequently darns Roger’s shorts after sliding down the Knickerbockerbreaker rockface in Swallowdale. Claire Kendall-Price describes this and where it all happened beautifully.

Here is the diary entry I kept for that day in the Lake District ~

Suzanna’s diary is more succinct ~

I don’t know why she felt depressed. Perhaps it was the ants. She was on more of them than me and they were not waving. They were very angry.

So, the secret of Wild Cat Island is that the lighthouse tree sequences were shot in two different places. Although we were mainly on Peel Island on Coniston Water, Rampsholme, an island on Derwentwater is depicted in the opening titles. This is faithful in that Arthur Ransome annotated postcards to show that wanted this view and the fells beyond as a backdrop for his story.  In her book, In the footsteps of the ‘Swallows and Amazons’,  Claire Kendall-Price provides a wonderful map and guide showing how you can walk from Keswick to find some of the locations.

We didn’t use the island known as Blake Holme on Windermere at all even though Arthur Ransome had envisaged the camp fire as being there. Richard Pilbrow told us it had become a real camp site by 1973 with caravans on the nearest shore.

The “They’re pirates”  shot was used in the movie trailer, which you can watch on Amazon Prime here

The iconic photograph of Swallow sailing past the houseboat was used on the first edition of ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons (1974)’ which has become a collector’s item but can still be found online.

The Lutterworth Press bought out an improved 2nd edition and this multi-media ebook is available everywhere for £2.99: