Wave over Wave

Here’s a shanty by Jim Payne on the theme of a sailor’s lot when sailing ships were commonplace. The ditty tells the story of a sailor who was wedded to the sea rather than his wife. He’d been a part owner of a schooner for 40 years, and couldn’t understand why he preferred life at sea with all its hardships to being at home with his wife and children.

The modern small boat sailor goes to sea for adventure, not out of compulsion or necessity, but for enjoyment and challenge. Even with electronic aids, diesel engines, and well engineered equipment, today’s recreational sailors can’t escape some of the hardships experienced by old salts in the days of sail, because the sea has no mind of its own, but it can exact the same costly price wherever weakness may be found in ship or man.

Wave Over Wave by Jim Payne

Me name's Able Rogers, a shareman am I
On a three-masted schooner from Twillingate Isle
I've been the world over, north, south, east, and west
But the middle of nowhere's where I like it best
Where it's wave over wave, sea over bow
I'm as happy a man as the sea will allow
There's no other life for a sailor like me
But to sail the salt sea, boys, sail the sea
There's no other life but to sail the salt sea
The work it is hard and the hours are long
My spirit is willing, my back it is strong
And when the work's over then whiskey we'll pour
We'll dance with the girls upon some foreign shore
I'd leave my wife lonely ten months of the year
She made me a home and raised my children dear
But she'd never come out to bid farewell to me
Or ken why a sailor must sail the salt sea
I've sailed the wide oceans four decades or more
And oft times I've wondered what I do it for
I don't know the answer, it's pleasure and pain
With life to live over, I'd do it again

The Three Voices

Over past months I’ve scoured Internet archives for good poetry on the subjects of the ‘sea’ and ‘ships’, but my search has borne little fruit. There’s a fair amount of mundane stuff out there, but little of substance with poetic merit. This next poem by Robert W. Service is the best of what I have not published to date.
The Three Voices
The waves have a story to tell me,
As I lie on the lonely beach;
Chanting aloft in the pine-tops,
The wind has a lesson to teach;
But the stars sing an anthem of glory
I cannot put into speech.
The waves tell of ocean spaces,
Of hearts that are wild and brave,
Of populous city places,
Of desolate shores they lave,
Of men who sally in quest of gold
To sink in an ocean grave.
The wind is a mighty roamer;
He bids me keep me free,
Clean from the taint of the gold-lust,
Hardy and pure as he;
Cling with my love to nature,
As a child to the mother-knee.
But the stars throng out in their glory,
And they sing of the God in man;
They sing of the Mighty Master,
Of the loom his fingers span,
Where a star or a soul is a part of the whole,
And weft in the wondrous plan.
Here by the camp-fire's flicker,
Deep in my blanket curled,
I long for the peace of the pine-gloom,
When the scroll of the Lord is unfurled,
And the wind and the wave are silent,
And world is singing to world.
Robert W. Service

A Shanty

Rudyard Kipling has written many a good yarn and some provocative poetry. For today’s entry I’ve chosen, ‘The Last Chantey’. This is a dirge in the form of a sailor’s shanty bewailing the loss of the oceans when God finally does away with the seas at the time of creating His new heaven and new earth. (Revelation 21:1 ‘Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.’)
The Last Chantey
"~And there was no more sea.~"

Thus said The Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim
Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:
"Lo! Earth has passed away
On the smoke of Judgment Day.
That Our word may be established shall We gather up the sea?"

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
"Plague upon the hurricane that made us furl and flee!
But the war is done between us,
In the deep the Lord hath seen us --
Our bones we'll leave the barracout', and God may sink the sea!"

Then said the soul of Judas that betrayed Him:
"Lord, hast Thou forgotten Thy covenant with me?
How once a year I go
To cool me on the floe?
And Ye take my day of mercy if Ye take away the sea!"

Then said the soul of the Angel of the Off-shore Wind:
(He that bits the thunder when the bull-mouthed breakers flee):
"I have watch and ward to keep
O'er Thy wonders on the deep,
And Ye take mine honour from me if Ye take away the sea!"

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
"Nay, but we were angry, and a hasty folk are we!
If we worked the ship together
Till she foundered in foul weather,
Are we babes that we should clamour for a vengeance on the sea?"

Then said the souls of the slaves that men threw overboard:
"Kennelled in the picaroon a weary band were we;
But Thy arm was strong to save,
And it touched us on the wave,
And we drowsed the long tides idle till Thy Trumpets tore the sea."

Then cried the soul of the stout Apostle Paul to God:
"Once we frapped a ship, and she laboured woundily.
There were fourteen score of these,
And they blessed Thee on their knees,
When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under Malta by the sea!"

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
Plucking at their harps, and they plucked unhandily:
"Our thumbs are rough and tarred,
And the tune is something hard --
May we lift a Deep-sea Chantey such as seamen use at sea?"

Then said the souls of the gentlemen-adventurers --
Fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity:
"Ho, we revel in our chains
O'er the sorrow that was Spain's;
Heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the sea!"

Up spake the soul of a gray Gothavn 'speckshioner --
(He that led the flinching in the fleets of fair Dundee):
"Oh, the ice-blink white and near,
And the bowhead breaching clear!
Will Ye whelm them all for wantonness that wallow in the sea?"

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
Crying: "Under Heaven, here is neither lead nor lee!
Must we sing for evermore
On the windless, glassy floor?
Take back your golden fiddles and we'll beat to open sea!"

Then stooped the Lord, and He called the good sea up to Him,
And 'stablished his borders unto all eternity,
That such as have no pleasure
For to praise the Lord by measure,
They may enter into galleons and serve Him on the sea.

Sun, wind, and cloud shall fail not from the face of it,
Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free;
And the ships shall go abroad
To the Glory of the Lord
Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea!

Rudyard Kipling