Part two of BBC4's
Art of the Sea focused on the sea in words. Owen Sheers presented quite a personal overview of the influence of the sea on British literature and he began with Patrick O’Brian.
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| Patrick O'Brian |
Nelson’s naval battles provided O’ Brian with ready-made theatre on a grand scale. His success, with three millions copies of this books sold before his death in 2000, rests on his vivid and extraordinarily detailed depiction of the period. Indeed O’Brian is more famous for his depiction of period life than his depiction of naval action and in Stephen Maturin he encapsulates the role of the sea in scientific discovery.
David Cordingly described Peter Weir’s reconstructions of O’Brian’s battle scenes in
Master and Commander as “as vivid and authentic as any I’ve read of. He creates a feeling of noise and confusion and limbs being torn apart but the crew are getting on with their job and know what to do. Aubrey is a big man, 6ft 16 stone, with flaxen hair and a florid complexion, he is clumsy on land but on a ship knows exactly what to do. Russel Crow shares with Aubrey a sense of command and of leadership. The great thing about O’Brian, more than any other author is that he creates a world you believe in.”
O’Brian shows how the sea is an ideal setting for conflict. People’s nature changes at sea, they can become heroes, villains, cowards. Ships are a microcosm of society. When you set sail you enter a different world. Sea voyages are a transgression; there is a real sense of a strand being cut when you cast off from the quay.
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| Joseph Conrad |
Sheers turned next to the theme of the sea as enemy with Joseph Conrad’s
Nigger of the Narcissus, a title which he acknowledges few authors would be consider today. The book which is informed by Conrad’s own 16 years in the merchant navy focus on black sailor Jimmy Wait, an ailing, brooding presence who comes to be invested with supernatural significance. Conrad was writing from personal experience and his aim was to provide a voice for inarticulate seamen and to render justice for them. He was also fascinated by the vastness of sea; his characters are terrified by the vastness of the universe. The sailors of the
Narcissus come to believe their lives are tied up with Jimmy’s so when he is trapped during a storm they
mustrescue him. The buried compassion of the sailors is brought out by their superstitious concern for Jimmy. Although Conrad was very aware of the supernatural quality of the sea he always gives you a rational escape route. Conrad brings out the atheist in the atheist, the believer in the believer, the agnostic in the agnostic and he trusts the high seas to bring out the irrational in man.
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| Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
The sea is almost human in its moods, when it’s pounding in our ears it’s the sound of all history. Characters are changed by being at sea, this idea of transformation has always been the backbone of stories at sea.
The sea isolates you from everything that makes you feel safe and the sea can challenge your reason and warp your perception as well. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s the
Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner the sea is a wilderness, the kind of environment that can provoke spiritual reflection and despair. The Mariner is a story of psychic disturbance. As the men on the becalmed ship start to die, being to the sea comes to represent the stark desperation of being hundreds of miles from anywhere. The mariner himself does return home but is fundamentally changed ad is doomed to tell his retell is harrowing tale.
In the greatest stories of the sea characters are forced to face challenges. You cant run away from problems at sea, when a storm hits a ship everyone is in the same danger.
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| William Golding |
Wiliam Golding’s
Rites of Passage, the first book in his sea trilogy
To the Ends of the Earth, brings together his two preoccupations; the sea and morality. Golding’s ship is a theatre and the characters a microcosm of English society 200 years ago. The story is told through he eyes of Edmund Talbot who witnesses the breakdown of another passenger Reverend Colley. Everything changes when Colley gets drunk and frolics naked with a seaman. Colley has performed a homosexual act and is a changed man thereafter, he confines himself to his cabin and dies of an overwhelming sense of shame.
Rites of Passage is based on the ritual of crossing the line (crossing the equator) the rite of passage where the rules don’t apply. The book includes extraordinary seascape passages that come from the core of Golding as writer. Golding himself served in the navy during the second world war and was a keen sailor.
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| Margaret Elphinstone |
Most sea writers are men and sea literature feature storms, battles and all male crews. Charles Kingsley understood that the sea had many faces and both feminine and masculine qualities. Do men and women view the sea differently?
Westward Ho is not just a swashbuckler, it shows a surprising interest in how women are changed by the sea. For women the sea is fraught with anxiety, of waiting, for her the sea symbolises death. Kingsley was a protofeminist in his own way, often describing events through the eyes of the mother
Margaret Elpinstone describes the image of the woman waiting for the ship that never comes as an archetypal but passive role of endurance. There are no women at sea so women readers of sea fiction have to be position themselves as men. If you start worrying about gender and where the women are you can’t get into it so you have to become a “reading man”. The greatest sea novels written by women take place on land such as Virginia Wolfe’s
To the Lighthouse. To Wolfe the sea is feminine, it’s inchoate, it’s other, it’s always there like an element.
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| Robert Louis Stevenson |
Robert Louis Stevenson is largely responsible for our current perception of pirates and created the archetypal pirate in Captain Hook. Although he never met any pirates he read a lot from Captain Johnson
A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates history written in 1724 at the height of the Caribbean pirate problem.
Treasure Island is pure theatre with a strong theatrical character in Silver
*. Stevenson also explored the sea as theatre and the theme of ship wreck in
Kidnapped. David Balfour is cast up following the wreck of the
Covenanter on the island of Erraid (cue shot of drenched Sheers on dreich west coast of Scotland) where he barely survives before he realises the island is in fact tidal. It is a high point of comedy in the novel, with Stephenson poking fun at his own character and at the idea that Balfour will always be a captive. The bay on the island of Erraid, off Mull, is now known as Balfour bay.
Sheers concluded by asking just how alien is the sea in literature? Authors’ view the sea as an entirely other realm, we are reminded that once out there everything changes, it’s another word. The sea is as likely to punish as to inspire but the lure of the sea voyage is tremendous. By following these voyages we can arrive at a different perception of self. We are islands, the sea surrounds us and defines us.
* While talking about Stevenson, the programme cut to clips of a 1968 tv production of
Treasure Island featuring Peter Vaughan as Long John Silver. That’s the same Peter Vaughan who plays Admiral Lord Hood in
The Frogs and Lobsters. See? There had to be a
Hornblower connection there somewhere! (Incidentally Robert Vaughan also played Robert Lindsay’s prospective father-in-law in
Citizen Smith. Oh yes, I am old enough to remember the Tooting Popular Front ;)
(And for those of you who can’t be bothered with a long summary, here’s a short summary of the long summary: Cordingly spoke about O’Brian and Weir; Sheers covered Conrad, Coleridge, Golding, Kingsley and Stevenson; Margaret Elphinstone talked about reading sea literature from a woman’s perspective; no mention of Forester but one tenuous connection with Hornblower ;)
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 07:31 am (UTC)Of course. He said so himself in one of his forewords. Why should he invent naval battles, when RL is so much better than fiction.
*thinks of Cochrane,Willoughby,Hall, Riou and Chamier, to name just a few*
*g*
I am such a Cordingly fanboy. He spoke of Weir and O'Brian? Wonderful. His bios on Cochrane and on Billy Ruffian are such a good read.
Thank you for giving us this review. :D
no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 01:31 pm (UTC)He spoke extremely highly of O'Brian, Weir and Russel Crow. Talking about Weir's battle scenes, he said all other battle scenes he had seen from Errol Flynn to reconstructions of Trafalgar look stagey by comparison. Weir's, he said, were as vivid as any he had ever read "and I've read at lot!"
Cordingly also spoke about RSL but was slightly disparaging of the fact that Stevenson is entirely to blame for the fact that we think pirates have one wooden leg, rings through their ears, a parrot on their shoulder and bury their treasure. He also added that the only pirate that comes close to Silver is Captain Hook and added that it's ironic that the two most famous pirates are fictional. At that point I half expected Captain Jack Sparrow to stumble into view but alas no ;)
His bios on Cochrane and on Billy Ruffian are such a good read.
The Cochrane bio has been on my reading list for soooo long!
Thank you for giving us this review. :D
You're very welcome, glad you found it interesting.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 04:26 pm (UTC)I guess that may have been one of the reasons, there is a short compilation of battle scenes from the movie at the Trafalgar Sail exhibition in Portsmouth.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 08:18 am (UTC)That's interesting, and true to an extent, but I do think the reason there is no women in historical naval fiction is because we tend to heavily romanticize it. Admitting there may have sometimes been women aboard would mean admitting things like swearing and sex went on.
I'd really love to see someone like HBO do a navy series...
no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 01:37 pm (UTC)Admitting there may have sometimes been women aboard would mean admitting things like swearing and sex went on.
True. And from what I can gather from authors such as Stark, women certainly weren't uncommon on the lower decks. I have another book at home Iron Men, Wooden Women which covers this topic but I haven't managed to read any of it yet! Although you've reminded me that I still need to post a review of Mary Lacy's The Female Shipwright.
I'd really love to see someone like HBO do a navy series...
Oh aye? And who'd be in it? Hmn? ;P
no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 11:27 am (UTC)Ships are a microcosm of society.
Is that so? It is often stated, but to me ships have always seemed to be strange universes of their own that seem to have little in common with "real“ life. Microcosms of the military maybe, but of society as a whole?
no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 01:45 pm (UTC)You're very welcome. Shame you can't access the programme outside the UK, hope the summary makes up for that a little :)
Microcosms of the military maybe, but of society as a whole?
I agree that it's a debatable point. Although I seem to remember that Melville makes a similar point in White-Jacketwhen he talks about the myriad different lives and occupations of the seamen before they joined the man-of-war. One of the things that was noticeable about this programme was that it did very much focus on sea literature in the widest sense, only a couple of the books discussed were explicitly naval fiction.
Sadly there was no mention of dragons ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 08:14 pm (UTC)Although I seem to remember that Melville makes a similar point in White-Jacketwhen he talks about the myriad different lives and occupations of the seamen before they joined the man-of-war.
It's like a cross section of society, I agree. But all those on-shore lives seem to be suspended while the people are on the ship. It seems to be a wholly different world, with so much stricter rules and harder conditions than are found anywhere on land, except perhaps in a coal mine.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-17 09:09 pm (UTC)But all those on-shore lives seem to be suspended while the people are on the ship
That's actually a very good way of putting it.
with so much stricter rules and harder conditions than are found anywhere on land, except perhaps in a coal mine.
The contrast between the rule of law on land and the articles of war at sea is one of Melville's recurring themes in White-Jacket. The contrast appears to have been particularly marked in the USA in the early 19th century, where the law was much more egalitarian than in Britain but the articles of war much more harshly applied than in the Royal Navy. Or in Melville's own words:
Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yes, dragons....
no subject
Date: 2010-05-18 07:46 am (UTC)The historic dockyard:
having just spent an afternoon wandering around the historic dockyard and finding it somewhat increased in tackiness after the ten year gap in my visits I wonder about authenticity there these days. Actually the exhibits are as good as ever, but very much at odds with the stuff that the shops sell, far more so than was formerly the case I think.
Women below decks - and not always easily transferred above - as one midshipman of our acquaintance found to his cost of course indeed. Have just found this rather archly phrased version of that story in " The quarterly Review" :
Captain Stott, who had been boatswain with Boscawen, was an excellent seaman, but had, as is too generally the case with persons thus promoted, retained some habits not suited to his present rank. He kept a mistress on board—a midshipman of the name of Cole, a special friend of young Pellew, happened to displease this woman, and was in consequence irregularly and unjustifiably turned out of the ship. Pellew, with the early firmness and generosity of his disposition, made common cause with his oppressed friend and insisted on sharing his fate ; they were both put On shore at Marseilles—penniless—but their spirited conduct attracted the notice and approbation of the late Captain Keppel and Lord Hugh Seymour, then lieutenants in the Juno, and laid the foundation of a friendship between them and Pellew which continued through their lives. Lord Hugh even had the kindness to advance them money to bear their expenses home, and among the services rendered to his country by that amiable man and distinguished officer, it is not the least that his sagacity and generosity probably preserved Pellew to be the naval glory of his country..
One of those backstory plotbunnies that I will get around to one day...
but Stott is perhaps a good example of an officer who made the swap from the lower ranks to captaincy and was seen ( by more than his bumptious middies it has to be said)as not quite the thing
no subject
Date: 2010-05-18 09:13 am (UTC)He kept a mistress on board—a midshipman of the name of Cole, a special friend of young Pellew,
WHAT??! His mistress was a midshipman called Cole???! Think it might be about time I scrubbed my mind out with bleach ;P
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Date: 2010-05-18 09:43 am (UTC)Cole is the one Showell Styles desribes as being defended from unspecified middie outrages by Edward's abilities as a boxer
no subject
Date: 2010-05-18 05:45 pm (UTC)somewhat increased in tackiness
But isn't the tackiness very much in keeping with the period? Think of all those "tasteful" commemorative items that were churned out after Trafalgar!
Regarding Pellew and women below decks, he seems to have had an unusually enlightened view of their presence. Suzanne Stark in her brilliant book Female Tars quotes Pellew as follows:
I'll look out the reference for that quote when I get home, I'm still in the office :}
no subject
Date: 2010-05-18 10:34 am (UTC)Poor sailors, they must have been dropping like flies! :(
from the dock-yards of a republic, absolute monarchies are launched?
That's a great phrase. It's something that always puzzles me about our modern armies, too.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-18 05:38 pm (UTC)According to Melville midshipmen in the US navy were allowed to have seamen flogged and frequently did, which was not the case in the RN. In fact he seems to regard the British navy, and Collingwood in particular, as being considerably more just and humane than the US navy.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-20 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 09:53 pm (UTC)I'm loving Aubrey and Maturin at the moment
I haven't started on O'Brian yet, although they're all lined up on our bookshelves looking very tempting :}
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Date: 2010-06-12 12:27 pm (UTC)Ohh you must! I was very bad and started reading them before I'd finish all the Hornblower books, but they really are too fantastic. I prefer them in many ways to the Hornblower books, just because O'Brian is absolutely hilarious and the relationship between Jack and Stephen is too gorgeous for words. Also I'm slightly in love with Dr. Maturin. Oh man I love my geeky boys.
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Date: 2010-06-14 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-20 08:01 pm (UTC)And O'Brian's humour is certainly more earthy, though personally I'm just a huge fan of just about everyhting that comes out of Stephen Maturin's mouth. He just says the darndest things. And his exotic-animals!love is adorable to behold.
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Date: 2010-06-21 06:36 pm (UTC)I'm just a huge fan of just about everyhting that comes out of Stephen Maturin's mouth.
Erm....right.... ;P
He just says the darndest things. And his exotic-animals!love is adorable to behold.
Ah yes. The animals. Partner read out something about a wombat the other night! I think it may have been chewing Jack's hat. I'm sure Hornnblower would never put up with wombats aboard ship!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-21 08:29 pm (UTC)Oh yes! I do think there's a wombat part. Not up to that bit yet though - but to be fair, just about any time when Stephen is squeeing over animals means hilariosity is bound to ensue. Sloths, tortoises, bees, apes, etc. etc. XD And no, Hornblower would never stand for such a thng aboard his ship! His love for Bush is much more of the stiff-upper-lip-tough-love brand. Right up until Bush is injured of course, then that goes out the window and some passionate manly hand!porn ensues. By comparison Capt. Aubrey and Maturin and positively gooey over each other to be sure. XD
I'm developing a theory whereby C.S. Forester was a hand fetishist. Bush is forever waxing lyrical on how strong and capable (read: sexy!) Hornblower's hands are - and in The Happy Return Lady Barbara also starts swooning over Hornblower's sexy capable hands. Now, I like poetic hands as much as the next girl - but surely all this fawning over Hornblower's hands takes it to a whole other level? Either Hornblower's hands are so aesthetically perfect that they completely redefine what sexy is, or C.S. Forester just has a fetish for that particular part of the anatomy.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-24 09:02 pm (UTC)I think I'm still a bit of an amateur when it comes to this fangirl business. But never let it be said that I'll let innuendo pass uncommented!
I'm developing a theory whereby C.S. Forester was a hand fetishist.
Heh you need to go and talk to
no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 12:12 pm (UTC)