22 Treacherous Seas: Currents Crossed and the Power of the Seas

“The World Is Too Much With Us” by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

“Sea Grief” by Dowell O’Reilly

Along the serried coast the Southerly raves,
Grey birds scream landward through the distance hoar,
And swinging from the dim confounded shore,
The everlasting boom of broken waves.
Like muffled thunder rolls about the graves
Of all the wonder-lands and lives of your,
Whose bones asunder bleach for evermore,
In sobbing chasms and under choking caves.
O breaking heart—whose only rest is rage,
White tossing arms, and lips that kiss and part
In lonely dreams of love’s wild ecstasy.
Not the mean earth they suffering can assuage
Nor highest heaven fulfill thy hungry heart,
O fair full-bosomed passionate weeping sea.

From Favourite Poems of the Sea edited by Howard Watson (HarperCollins, 2015)

“The Ocean” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Ocean has its silent caves,
Deep, quiet, and alone;
Though there be fury on the waves,
Beneath them there is none.
The awful spirits of the deep
Hold their communion there;
And there are those for whom we weep,
The young, the bright, the fair.
Calmly the wearied seamen rest
Beneath their own blue sea.
The ocean solitudes are blest,
For there is purity.
The earth has guilt, the earth has care,
Unquiet are its graves;
But peaceful sleep is ever there,
Beneath the dark blue waves.

You can find The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, With Introductory Notes by George Parsons Lathrop here.

A Note About “The Raft of the Medusa” (Britannica)

“The Raft of the Medusa, painting (1819) by French Romantic artist Théodore Géricault depicting the survivors of a shipwreck adrift and starving on a raft. Géricault astonished viewers by painting, in harrowing detail, not an antique and noble subject but a recent gruesome incident.”

Reading Sea Prayer (2017) by Khaled Hosseini

Each day, individuals and families risk their lives on the sea in the hope of finding a safe haven and escape from oppressive regimes, war, and conflict. This journey is perilous and many lose their lives. The death of 2-year-old Alan Kurdi, whose body was found washed ashore in 2015, shocked many people and drew attention to the plight of refugees escaping war. The writer Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-American novelist, UNHCR goodwill ambassador, and former physician. Beautifully illustrated, Khaled Hosseini’s Sea Prayer is written in the form of a letter to a son. He dedicated his book “to the thousands of refugees who have perished at sea fleeing war and persecution” (Introduction, Sea Prayer, 2017). The sea is an opportunity for escape but its vast expanse leaves individuals at the mercy of natural forces. The father narrating the prayer tries to reassure his son and protect him; however, he realizes the futility of his promise that “nothing bad will happen.” The father in Sea Prayer reflects upon the vast and indifferent expanse of the sea and the sense of hopelessness as he is unable to control the fate of his son. The father’s only option is to pray and hope that his son (“precious cargo”) will make it to land and safety.

The Titanic Disaster

On April 14, 1912, four days after leaving Southampton, England, British luxury passenger liner the R.M.S. Titanic sank within 2 ½ hours after striking an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. This sea disaster claimed about 1,500 lives (passengers and ship personnel). There were insufficient numbers of life boats and the life boats that were launched were not full. Those who died in the icy North Atlantic had either drowned or died within minutes due to shock from the cold and incapacitation. Rescued by the Carpathia, there were 706 survivors (412 passengers and 214 crew members). The Titanic (named after the Titans of Greek mythology) was on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic.

Novels, stories, poems, musicals, and films continued to make the Titanic sinking one of the most famous tragedies in modern history. In 1955, Walter Lord wrote the non-fiction book A Night to Remember based on the Titanic disaster. Lord was one of the few writers to actually interview sixty-three survivors of the Titanic and he included their firsthand accounts in his book. His extensive research enabled readers to gain greater insights based on direct interviews.

Lord’s work continues to be of interest to historians, artists, and film makers today. A television adaptation of his book was narrated by the Austrian actor Claude Raines in 1956. In 1958, the book was the basis for a popular British film of the same name directed by Roy Baker and starring Kenneth More and David McCallum. Actors Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the 1997 blockbuster film version, titled Titanic. Irony, fate, love, drama, suspense, terror, and tragedy are interweaving themes that continue to draw interest in the Titanic. The wreck of the Titanic was found in 1985, four hundred nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

(Adapted from Wikipedia)

“It becomes a haunting experience to me, it’s the haunting experience of ‘if only’.” – Walter Lord, Titanic historian and author of A Night to Remember (1955).

“The Titanic” by Aleister Crowley

Forth flashed the serpent streak of steel,
Consummate crown of man’s device;
Down crashed upon an immobile
And brainless barrier of ice.
Courage!
The grey gods shoot a laughing lip: –
Let not faith founder with the ship!

We reel before the blows of fate;
Our stout souls stagger at the shock.
Oh! there is Something ultimate
Fixed faster than the living rock.
Courage!
Catastrophe beyond belief
Harden our hearts to fear and grief!

The gods upon the Titans shower
Their high intolerable scorn;
But no god knoweth in what hour
A new Prometheus may be born.
Courage!
Man to his doom goes driving down;
A crown of thorns is still a crown!      

No power of nature shall withstand
At last the spirit of mankind:
It is not built upon the sand;
It is not wastrel to the wind.
Courage!
Disaster and destruction tend
To taller triumph in the end.

“The Wreck of the Hesperus” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It was the schooner Hesperus,
      That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,
      To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
      Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
      That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
      His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
      The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailòr,
      Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
“I pray thee, put into yonder port,
      For I fear a hurricane.
“Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
      And to-night no moon we see!”
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
      And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and louder blew the wind,
      A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
      And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain
      The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
      Then leaped her cable’s length.
“Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,
      And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
      That ever wind did blow.”
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat
      Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
      And bound her to the mast.
“O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
      Oh say, what may it be?”
“‘T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!” —
      And he steered for the open sea.
“O father! I hear the sound of guns,
      Oh say, what may it be?”
“Some ship in distress, that cannot live
      In such an angry sea!”
“O father! I see a gleaming light,
      Oh say, what may it be?”
But the father answered never a word,
      A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
      With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
      On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
      That savèd she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
      On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
      Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
      Tow’rds the reef of Norman’s Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between
      A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
      On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
      She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
      Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
      Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
      Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
      With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
      Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
      A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
      Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
      The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
      On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
      In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
      On the reef of Norman’s Woe!