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Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
I am an inveterate reader of books, magazines, articles, social media posts, and other publications that touch upon the sea. Two of the most successful magazines are WOODENBOAT, published in the United States, and CLASSIC BOAT, published in the United Kingdom. In the July issue of the latter, I found a wonderful article entitled “How Many Ways Has Joseph Conrad Described the Wind?” by Adrian Morgan: journalist, regular contributor to Classic Boat, builder/restorer of wooden boats at his boatyard on the shores of Loch Broom near Ullapool in Scotland, UK. Morgan’s The Trouble with Old Boats, published by Bloomsbury Press, is a classic in the literature of maritime preservation.
Morgan’s article is based on Joseph Conrad’s equally classic rumination on the ocean, The Mirror of the Sea, again well worth your reading if you are at all interested in the challenges of seamanship and observations of the experience of being out there, really out there, at sea. I make so bold as to quote both from Morgan, and his quotations from Conrad.
Conrad wrote, “If you would know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a storm.” Morgan describes Conrad’s writing as follows: “It is the poetry, the Shakespearean choice of words that mark him out as one of our finest, and yet his first language was Polish. To my mind it is this that makes his prose so unique. There are no tired juxtapositions; it reads afresh. No more so than in his descriptions of the four winds which, from his pen, take on living forms.”
Here are some examples cited by Morgan. “For, after all, a gale of wind, the thing of mighty sound, is inarticulate. It is man who, in a chance phrase, interprets the elemental passion of his enemy…The olive hue of hurricane clouds…that unforgettable sound as if the soul of the universe had been goaded into a mournful groan.” Or, “Clothed in a mantle of dazzling gold, or draped in rages of black clouds like a beggar, the might of the westerly winds sits enthroned on the western horizon…Fleets of victorious ship hang upon his breath…” Or, “the wind’s “unfathomable tenderness reflects in the mirror of the sea” in which we discover the ”magnificent, simple, barbarous, pensive, impulsive, changeable” conditions of daily life.
I can do neither author justice. What I want to address here is the correspondence between the extremes, the constant change, the shifting context, the emotional release, and the specific conditions between language and experience in Nature, the elemental dynamic that is both ocean and description thereof, that is the critical motivation for informing, explaining, sharing, through words, images, and deeds the oceanic essence of human experience.
The challenge has two parts. The ocean, like human experience, is both specific and ephemeral. How do you capture the many facets of each in detail? How do you apply those observations in a way that helps an individual or community or nation state to understand and engage effectively with what so specifically and generally can affect their lives? How do we understand the wind so to adapt and invent the best practices by which to meet its force, destructive or supportive? How, when we look into the mirror of the sea, do we see the best reflection of ourselves and the natural world we live in? How do we express our capacity to confront what Morgan quotes from Conrad as “the friendly winds, scruffy winds, deceptive winds, maddening winds, benign winds, terrifying winds” that ever threaten to drive us onto lee shores and failure?
Words, drawn from a reservoir of experience and actions, are commands, poetry or otherwise, on which we rely to wear ship and bear away from the dangers of the day. A sailor’s exhortation pertains: Hold fast! Lean Forward! Ride the wind!
We will disuss these issues and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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