Tribute to Shotley peninsula restoration expert Mike Rines who saved the Nancy Blackett
By Derek Davis 26th Feb 2023
Mike Rines, rescuer and restorer of Nancy Blackett, has died, at the age of 89.
He first discovered Arthur Ransome's boat virtually derelict in Scarborough Harbour in the early 1980s.
Initially unaware that she was the inspiration for We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, and the original of the Goblin in that book, he simply saw a boat that, as he said, 'was too pretty to die'.
He eventually persuaded her owner to part with her, and had her transported back to the River Orwell in Suffolk, where the opening of the book is set, and where he himself then lived, as it happened only a few hundred yards from where Ransome had lived when writing the book.
Between 1988 and 1990, with the aid of a single shipwright, he virtually rebuilt the boat at Fox's yard, a few miles upriver from Pin Mill where Ransome's story begins.
His 1990 relaunch dinner at the Butt and Oyster, Pin Mill, was attended by around 30 Ransome devotees, including two of his biographers, and members of the Altounyan family, the originals of the 'Swallows' in Swallows and Amazons.
The event is credited with having contributed to the successful launch of the Arthur Ransome Society (TARS) later the same year.
Nancy Blackett herself was sold to recoup the costs of the restoration, and later bought by the group that became the Nancy Blackett Trust, of which Mike was made an Honorary Vice-President. Mike retained a keen interest in Nancy's fortunes, and enjoyed his last sail aboard her in the summer of 2021, after contributing to a short film about her for Anglia TV.
Donald Michael Rines, as he was christened, was born in Scarborough on May 3rd 1933. He went to the Boys High School there, and then to Oxford, before embarking on a distinguished career in industry, journalism and public relations.
He was Editor of Haymarket Publishing's Marketing magazine from 1970 to 1980, and continued to give public lectures until very recently.
Mike died in Ipswich Hospital on February 15th with his children by his side.
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