We Need Ships in Poetry

Amidst all the perils of the sea, there lies a mode of transportation often declared unglamorous, one ignored for all of its marvel and remembered only for tragedy; the ship. Literature in its entirety has failed to capture the elegance and intricacy of ships. And its first soldier, Poetry has not fulfilled the duty of representing them for a figure beyond horror or angst. Yielding only a memory of ‘shipwreck’ when asking us to think about these vessels which walk on water.

Why are ships only so faintly acknowledged in poetry? Are they too undignified to boast about glamour, or does the majesty of the sea render them miserable?

A large part of literature, or rather poetry, ignoring ships stems from its fantastic obsession of the sea. Charlotte Smith, in her poem Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening, remarkably about the abysmal mysteries of the sea, mentions only this about ships: “[W]here afar the ship-lights faintly shine / Like wandering fairy fires.” Why do we obsess over the sea to be so fantastic but blatantly ignore the transport which carries us over it? Arguably, without ships we would’ve failed to place ourselves on different parts of the sea. The unknowns would’ve remained stranger.

The treatment of the ships has been simply as decoration. Not of substance but of a mere garnish over the sea.

It’s reductive, and presenting this summarised version throughout poetry has perhaps altered one’s manner of ever representing it. If you tend to present such an incredible vessel, something so important to our journey on the sea as a minor, minuscule contributor, one will lose respect towards it. The grandeur of the sea has always tended to override the nobility of the ship. The ship tends to not be as mysterious as the sea. We’ve built the ship so we, in theory, know all there is to know about them. Every part used, every engineered association of ideas which formed the ship solely belongs to us. And its mysteries perhaps remain known; the sea is therefore, the bewildering hero.

There’s no momentous occasion in history which can credit the formation of the sea to us. We’ve had fables and mythologies which allowed us to ‘control’ it, even split it but none where we created it. It exists outside our control and so do its unknowns. We still don’t know what it has to offer, and this heroism of the sea’s image in poetry is a stark reflection of our fright. Perhaps this fright we host translates into an anxiety around the fragility of ships. It is a man-made creation, and there seems to be a lack of trust or belief in its ability to withstand the uncertainties being offered by the sea.

The sea naturally overwhelms the writers about ideas to focus on ships. But even when their lens focusses on this transport, they tend to associate horrific ideas of devastation. I refuse to believe that ships only hold so much value to be associated with their extinction. Even as we speak today, the most notable ship, The Titanic, tends to be remembered because it sank. It’s cruel to mistreat these vessels and only corroborate ideas of destruction when thought of making them memorable.

Even the poetic works of D.H. Lawrence and John Donne only show us ideas of disaster and angst, when expressing their ideas about ships. Lawrence cites the journey of a ship to be a metaphor for the cruelness of fate. One which presents the idea of human fate to be fragile and unreliable. In his ‘The Ship of Death’, he flaunts an idea of deep and terrible fright via the references to the ship. The following is a direct quotation of the fourth stanza of the poem: “Have you built your ship of death, O have you? / O build your ship of death, for you will need it.”

Lawrence was undoubtedly an influential figure in the poetry-canon and his representation of ships in this vehemently tragic manner is perhaps a tribute to Donne’s short, horrific ‘A Burnt Ship’. What rests as a poignantly excellent commentary on the paradox of fire causing havoc on the sea, it still remains as a violent, tragic representation of the ship. The reiteration lies in the title itself; a burnt ship. Burnt; already destroyed. It’s an interesting take by poets to destroy the ship in most of poetic writing, for how much of it truly remains that it is able to get destroyed daily?

A rather famous quote from Donne’s warfare capture reads as follows: “So all were lost, which in the ship were found, They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown’d.” There’s no doubt that the writing, albeit defaming ships, is spectacular. It’s spectacular in two natures: one in its quality, and the second in its passion to decimate the ships and its idea. I’m still perplexed as to why the idea of shipwreck and the associated tragedy is so appealing to readers of poetry. My understanding leads me to conclude that the writing of such tragedy, when associated with shipwreck panders to our anxiety around the mystery of the sea.

The image of a shipwreck is absolutely terrifying. Why’d one render such ghastly images when the purpose of these vessels extends beyond cargo, transport or warfare? It evokes a fright which seems to re-occur at any visit of yours to the sea or ocean. To have an object so impressive demolished to scraps is horrid.

We almost want our fears about the sea’s unknowns to be true. Captured brilliantly in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Kraken’, our debated thought of sea-monsters seems to counter our ability to fight them. Our acceptance of being weaker to the sea is translated into such pessimistic writing about ships. It’s unfair and derogatory, but the fascination I seem to hold towards ships doesn’t seem to be reflected in the prominent poetic works, or in the poetic works accessible to me.

How can a vessel prescribed to be a prey to “the flame”, as Donne quotes be expected to fight Tennyson’s monster which lays with “giant arms”, and one day “by man and angels to be seen / [I]n roaring (he) shall rise”?

We’ve quite intentionally weakened the image of our own creation which was supposed to help decipher such magnificent mysteries offered by the sea. So even today, as those submarines are astray in search of a forgotten vessel, we do not know a ship worthy to be considered knightly. We’ve never known a ship which wasn’t afraid of the sea’s brute or wore an aroma alien of fright and disaster. We need more ships in poetry, and we seem to not have an anchor in literature to currently uphold the vessel’s wonder.