Life in the Dying World of Sail, 1870-1910

Abstract

By its beauty and grace the sailing ship invites that nostalgic sentimentality often bestowed upon relics of the past. Visitors who notice the inscription on the Cutty Sark at Greenwich are asked to share this veneration: “Here to commemorate an era the Cutty Sark has been preserved as a tribute to the ships and men of the merchant navy in the days of sail. They mark our passage as a race of men/ Earth will not see such ships as these again.” The image of the “glorious” last days of sail is largely the creation of retired seamen-writers. In an unfinished essay written just before his death in 1924, Joseph Conrad summarizes the era of the sailing ship with typical nostalgia:The last days of sailing ships were short if one thinks of the countless ages since the first sail of leather or rudely woven rushes was displayed to the wind. Stretching the period both ways to the utmost, it lasted from 1850 to 1910. Just sixty years. Two generations. The winking of an eye. Hardly the time to drop a prophetic tear. For the pathos of that era lies in the fact that when the sailing ships and the art of sailing them reached their perfection, they were already doomed. It was a swift doom, but it is consoling to know that there was no decadence.“Doom” without “decadence” — like the death of a beautiful woman in her prime — is the seaman-writer's usual elegy for the sailing ship.