A Life On The Ocean Wave

Hi! what does the phrase “A Life On The Ocean Wave” conjure up in your mind I wonder? A sailing ship rolling on a mighty wave?  A jolly tar doing a hornpipe?  Or something entirely different perhaps.

In my presentation I am going to choose six poems that show six different aspects of a life under sail as seen by poets of the past. Each of my poets share a common experience of having sailed on what today we call “Tall Ships” sailing ships that relied on wind-power alone. With one exception these poets have earned their living at some time as sailors and there are many believe that even that one earned her living at sea as well; but more of that later.

I will begin by trying to explain why anyone would want to go to sea in those days and for me the title of this poem is reason enough although the poet does amplify that somewhat. I refer to Harry Kemp’s short poem There’s Nothing like A Ship At Sea http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/62076 .

Those of you who have seen a four master cresting a wave will find it hard to disagree with the repeated couplet
              “There's nothing like a ship at sea with all her sails full-spread
              And the ocean thundering backward 'neath her mounting figurehead”
and Kemp should know for when Harry Kemp was sixteen, he ran away to sea, shipping as cabin boy on the German ship, "Castle", bound for Australia and had plenty of time to view such magnificent sights.

Another sea-faring poet was one-time Poet Laureate” and sailor John Masefield. As a teenager Masefield was educated as a cadet on board the sail-training ship H. M. S. Conway and later went to sea as an apprentice in a square-rigged ship which rounded Cape Horn. His description of the spell that the sea weaves in many a matelot’s mind is one of his most quoted poems “Sea Fever” http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/14195 .

Although Masefield was disillusioned by his actual sailing experiences the poem does express his early infatuation with the sea and the life he imagined as a schoolboy. Like many of you I first came across this poem (together with his equally lyrical poem Cargoes) when I was a schoolboy slumped behind a small desk in an English lesson. At that time I had never seen a sailing ship in real-life but I was still hooked by Masefield’s wonderful words “a tall ship and a star to steer her by”. That was probably the first time I ever heard the phrase “Tall Ships” and as a potential pilot in my youth, I would never have dreamed that I would end up singing songs and shanties onboard one of them.

Having once been gripped by the spirit of the sea many sailors keep returning to the life over and over again despite trying other jobs. Homer wrote, all those years ago, that the only sure way to avoid being drawn back into a sailing life was to march inland carrying an oar until someone asked what that peculiarly shaped piece of wood was for. Only then would a sailor be able to settle to life on land without reminders of what he was missing. This is echoed in the Irish myth of “Fiddler’s Green”.

For my third poem I have chosen a poem by a woman writer, Cicely Fox Smith. She sailed many times on ‘tall ships’ as, we believe, a captain’s clerk. Miss Fox Smith certainly knew all about sailor’s and sailing and this is a tale told by an old-salt sat on a dockside in Canada. CFS insisted on that title Miss by the way! The poem is called “The Traveller”  http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/46475-Cicely-Fox-Smith-The-Traveller

In that poem Miss Fox Smith talks about the bad times at sea but infers that there were good times too and, as her old-tar says ‘Me that was born with a taste for travel, give thanks because o' the same.’ But as well as good times a major influence was the good friendship that grew between ship-mates. The strong friendships forged in shared endurance of hardships and indulgence in snatched pleasures. To my mind one of the best poems about this is the almost love-poem entitled “Lee Fore Brace” another from the pen of Miss Fox Smith http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/45241-Cicely-Fox-Smith-Lee-Fore-Brace

The unerring accuracy with which she describes the perils of that particular spot convinced many mariners that CFS must have experienced it for herself.

In the long lonely night watches and on days becalmed in the doldrums a sailor might spend a lot of time thinking on life and death and the hereafter. There are many strange beliefs still to be found in fishing and sailing ports around the world but one of the most common of them is that dead seamen are reborn as the sea-birds that can often be seen flying around a ship. Returning to John Masefield we find he has written of this fancy in his poem “Sea Change” http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/11726-John-Masefield-Sea-Change

In the selection I have placed before you so far I haven’t touched upon a characteristic that seems to be common among many sailors. The love of telling tales. People often talk of sailors gathering on ship to sing shanties before turning in on an evening but this didn’t happen. Sailors only sang shanties when actually working! At other times they would gather on the fore-deck and, whilst doing household chores such as patching their clothes, sing popular songs of the day which might or might not have a maritime theme and they would also tell tales and recite poems. Such songs and stories were known as fore-bitters. To finish my selection I’ll return to Miss Fox Smith and a fine example of a fore-bitter bragging poem. “Racing Clippers” http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/48714-Cicely-Fox-Smith-Racing-Clippers--A-Wool-Fleet-Memory-

Well those good old ships may have gone to chips but there are still a few being built and sailed and, who knows, in these days of fuel conservation we may once again come to rely on wind-power and see many more tall ships and hear new tales about “A Life On The Ocean Wave”.
Thank you for listening