I have a confession to make......... :: View Single Post

Art...

Damn.... another modeler as wordy as me.... welcome. Since you started with a confession, I'll add mine. I confess to a love of the model ship, a passion for understanding the technology of the wooden ship and a fascination with the social history of the trade, but a dread of the sea itself. I'd make a poor sailer, most likely sick and far too terrified to go aloft...

Since my fellows have resorted to poetry (perchance to make happy sailors of the lot of us?) I'll add my own favorite....

Who hath desired the Sea? – the sight of salt water unbounded –
The heave and the halt and the hurl
and the crash of the comber wind – hounded?
Who hath desired the Sea? – the immense and contemptuous surges?
The shudder, the stumble, the swerve,
As the star-stabbing bow-sprit emerges?
Who hath desired the Sea? Her menaces swift as her mercies?
The in-rolling walls of the fog and
The silver-winged breeze that disperses?

From "The Sea and the Hills", Rudyard Kipling

Kipling went to sea aboard a fishing schooner to research "Captains Courageous". Apparently the experience wasn’t all together wonderful as Kipling admitted to being “Immortally seasick” but the result was a fine novel (and later a movie) about the sea and those who make their livings upon it. I like to think that the poem describes the experience of being at sea aboard a fishing schooner such as I am modeling.

Once again, welcome and Regards

Jim