Sea Stories

Most of us have passed through a period of life during which we have ardently longed to be, if not actually a rover, a buccaneer, or a pirate, at least and really a sailor! To run away to sea has been the misdirected ambition of many a youngster, and some lads there are who have realized their desire to their sorrow. The boy who has not cherished in his heart and exhibited in his actions at sometime or other during his youthful days, a love of ships and salt water, is fit forwell, he is fit for the shore, and that is the worst thing a sailor could say about him! The virile nations, the strong peoples, are those whose countries border on the sea. They who go down to the great deep in ships are they who master the world. On the ocean as well as on the mountain top dwells the spirit of freedom. When men have struggled with each other in the shock of war, or the emulation of peace, when they have matched skill against skill, strength to strength, courage with courage, the higher quality of manhood in each instance has been required upon the sea; for there the sharp contention has been not only between man and man but between nature and man as well. A double portion of heroic spirit is needed to meet the double demand. That is the reason we love the sea. It is this Homeric spirit of the Ocean Masters that fills the dreams of youth and stirs the memories of old age. In these dreams and memories the veriest boy catches glimpses of the perpetual Titanic struggle of, and on, the deep; dimly discerning in his youthful way, a thousand generations of heroic achievement before, and through which, he begins to be; and he realizes that the ocean affords such a field for the exhibition of every high quality that goes to make a man as may be found nowhere else. The deck of the ship is the arena upon which he can play a mighty part, and he loves it. In imagination the boy now discovers a new world, like Columbus and America; in dreams he opens a vast empire to civilization, like Perry in Japan; sometimes he fights the battles of the free, like Nelson at Trafalgar; or he strikes for his own flag on the decks of some gallant Constitution. If he be a sportsman, he may pursue the great fighting sperm-whale, or angle for "Jack Sharkee;" if an adventurer, he may seek to pierce the icy barrier of mystery ringed about that polar star by which he guides his ship; if a trader, he may visit strange lands and seek new markets for his product; if a missionary, he may carry his gospel of good tidings to dark peoples, ignorant of the meaning of that southern cross which flashes in splendor above them in the midnight heavens, and tell to them the story of the Ruler of the deep. Wherever men achieve and do, wherever nations grow and prosper, they have a mastery of the sea.

Dettagli