Racundra's Third Cruise is compiled from a sailing log and notes Ransome made during one of his Baltic cruises. He intended to make a book of it but left the manuscript unfinished. Brian Hammett has put the bits together, adding Ransome's own black and white photos, to make a handsome little book. The route was inland, on the Aa river. Although the subject matter is largely the kitchen-sink business of life on a small boat going up and back down a river, the wider arena is the Baltic after the first world war, where bandit warlords had been encouraged by the western Allies to chase the Bolsheviks back behind the pre-war boundaries, and in the process laid waste the newly industrialising Baltic economies. The backdrop to Ransome's cruise is a landscape of ruined factories and solitary chimneys, although the latter usually have a stork's nest on top. Trips ashore to buy milk turn into an exploration of local farmers' lives. Ransome the reporter is clearly visible behind Ransome the sailor.