Celebrating Christmas at Sea

2015 was just like yesterday and now the end of another year is right before us with the holiday season alluring to calm frayed nerves. The New Year looks bright with hope of a better future, the economy notwithstanding.  For the mariner working away from home, perhaps even thousands of miles away in a foreign country, the season comes with mixed feelings.  SHIPS & PORTS DAILY would like to recognize those doing business on great waters during this holiday season and especially those who have lost their loved ones at sea in the last year (unfortunately many of those were children in 2016).

Like John F Kennedy said at the dedication of the East Coast Memorial to the Missing at Sea, May 23^rd 1963, “No stone or cross can mark the place where they fell; no wreath can be laid by (mother or father) kin or friend on the graves of those lost at sea.”

SHIPS & PORTS DAILY, the voice of the maritime industry is specifically using this period to connect with mariners through the ages with the poem by the great 19^th century writer/poet, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1994) who though not a mariner by trade, travelled the world on ships like few did, other than professional sailors.  So he connected with mariners through the ages with the following:

“CHRISTMAS AT SEA”

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So’s we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every ‘long-shore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother’s silver spectacles, my father’s silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
“All hands to loose topgallant sails,” I heard the captain call.
“By the Lord, she’ll never stand it,” our first mate Jackson, cried.
…”It’s the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson,” he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter’s day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) 

Merry Christmas.