The Wild Cat is a green two-masted schooner that Captain Flint, the Swallows, the Amazons and Peter Duck sail to the West Indies in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons book Peter Duck. She also appears in the opening chapters of Missee Lee. The ship would have been about 50 ft (15 m) long. In the book and the illustrations there is no mention of a head. This is typical of Arthur Ransome's reticence on the issue.
The name is taken from Wild Cat Island which features in all the books set in the Lake District. She was converted from a Baltic trading schooner by decking over the hold to make a saloon with a long skylight and four double cabins opening into it. The deckhouse has a couple of bunks for Captain Flint and Peter Duck.
In Ransome's book Missee Lee, the ship was burned to the waterline and sinks when Gibber, Roger's monkey, put a lighted cigar in the fuel (petrol) holding tank. In Peter Duck, the Swallow is aboard and is used as one of the ship's boats. In Missee Lee, both the Swallow and Amazon are aboard and used as lifeboats when she sinks.
Famous quotes containing the words wild and/or cat:
“The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whin’d.
Harper cries: ‘Tis time, ‘tis time.
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)