Preparing my address for the blessing of a yacht has provoked me to research a little into the way the sea builds the spiritual life of those who are called. The prayer for the blessing of a boat mentions two powerful symbols, that of Noah’s Ark and Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is a mere lake, but a large one, and the weather can be fickle.
Sea literature has followed the same biblical symbolism of the barque, the sea and the navigator. The ship represents life and the instrument of the young man’s spiritual formation, from cadet to able seaman, from midshipman to officer. In the old days of sail and the square-rigged ship, life was tough. You made it or you didn’t. You prayed for God’s strength but relied on your own and your cunning for finding a solution to any problem. The sea can be hostile, indifferent, fickle and insincere. Its force is greater than anything we know. The sea is also beautiful, mysterious and mother-like.
The sea makes men of us, because we learn to overcome fear and respect certain rules. My own experience is one of inshore sailing in dinghies and yachts. It is something else when all you see around you in the horizon, and you have only your navigation instruments to know where you are and where you are going. Even within sight of land, the sailor’s navigational skills hone his sense of space perception and anticipation.
The Romantic movement made a great deal of the sea. We have Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It is a tale of guilt and redemption, narrating the voyage of an old sailor who kills an albatross near the South Pole and lives with its ghost.
The early American settlers shared stories of fishing, whaling and transporting freight. The land had come out of the great waters. The sea was synonymous with freedom and soul-searching, a safe haven far from the evils and distractions of society. In the mind of the Romantic, the sea became a monastery with the ship’s bell fulfilling the same role as that of the abbey church. But life at sea was harsh and dangerous, all part of the young man’s kenosis. Some went to sea and it formed their personality. It all depended whether the Captain loved his men and earned respect, instead of flogging and keelhauling.
After the disuse of sailing ships for transporting cargo, fishing and whaling, the Romantic notion of life at sea evolved into pleasure and sporting sailing. From the end of the nineteenth century, men like Joshua Slocum would take on the might of the sea alone in a small vessel. Working sailors like those in the Navy, freight carriers or fishermen can easily be inclined to have a despising and cynical attitude to those who navigate for pleasure and as a human challenge. They are wrong, and have not understood the gratuity of the contemplative life, whether in the monastery on land or alone at the helm and on watch.
The call of the sea is indeed a form of call to the cloister…
The Blue Flower 
Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner was my favorite poem in high school, and one that I feel should still be required reading. The images and allusions in that poem are utilized so well to describe the human condition and our need for redemption.
However I feel the need to clarify that even for those of us who are retired “working sailors”, the lure of the sea and the call to follow God are much the same. Trust me, twenty-nine days at sea on an aircraft carrier can be a spiritual adventure. It is very humbling to stand on the weather decks with that first cup of coffee, seeing nothing but water, and watching the sunrise in the middle of Persian Gulf. It is in such moments that one begins to grasp the awesomeness of God.
Now however, I use a fifteen and a half foot sea kayak; close to the water, listening to it lap against the hull, quletly pulling my paddle so as not to disturb the wildlife around me. All the while closely watching the current, and listening for that still small voice…
I’d echo the above really, as an ex-RN type. There is a lot to be said for going to sea. Our “despising and cynical” attitude to the yachties, to which I would myself own in my less charitable moods, is more down to the fact that we come to view the sea as our work place, and all others as intruders who don’t spend enough time at sea to really know what they’re doing in an emergency.
Taking a frigate through the Solent on a hot summer’s day is rather akin to trying to operate a steam hammer on a busy factory floor while a load of chartered accountants zoom about having fun on the fork lifts….
That said, there is a rough affinity with the sea at a human level, which did tend to make church services reasonabbly well attended – it’s an opportunity to get your head down at Dartmouth, and then out in the wider fleet an opportunity for just contemplating and “being.”
It was the navy that confimed me in the CofE, and a naval chaplain who pointed me in the direction of Pusey House when I left to go up to Oxford, and all of this was in the last 10 years. We’re a rough lot, but the salt of the sea – something about going down to the sea in ships to do our business in great waters springs readily to mind…
Yes, I would agree with you about some of us “yachties”. It didn’t occur to me to take a boat out without having sailing lessons and having solidly acquired the basics, plus a little more than a smattering of meteorology and elementary navigation and knowing something about the tides and currents in our waters. Conversely, we had a fisherman having the use of our sailing club facilities for his tractor, boat and nets – and he parked his tractor (used for pulling his boat on its launching trailer for putting it in the water and taking it out again) right in front of the parked dinghies and catamarans so that no one could get his boat out. He would insult people who asked him politely to move his tractor, just so that they could get their boats out, rigged and down the slipway to the beach. Happily, he moved away to another place at the end of last year. Last Saturday he perished at sea with his father – requiescant in pace.
It is frustrating to have to go looking for someone at sea because his beach trolley is on the beach and there is no sign of his boat. Finally, I found out the guy was OK, but he had just about zero sailing experience, no mobile phone (as a substitute for VHF) – but at least was wearing a lifejacket. Launching trolley on the beach and no sign of the boat = equals = trouble.
In our waters in France, a ship doing its job has priority, and we in dinghies and yachts have to do the manoeuvring, heave-to, tacking or whatever is appropriate in the situation. That is the risk we take when we sail near ships – so it is for us to watch out.
I think a “yachtie” can be doing his business in great waters – his contemplative life, but the sea is a big place, big enough for us all to share, so we have to respect each other and follow the rules.
Ah, the memories of church services at sea. During the first Gulf War our Senior Chaplain got all of us who had ever worked in pastoral ministry to help out with Sunday evening services. Though I wasn’t yet ordained, since I had been a licensed Methodist minister I was asked to help out with the preaching. It was amazing to see how many men would show up, especially as we got further and further into the deployment. Unfortunately the chapel was just below the flight deck, so one had to often pause while preaching during flight ops because of all the noise of launching and retreving aircraft.
Personally, I respect all who go out on the sea – regardless of occupation or style of vessel. Like Christians in general, we sailors are a diverse lot who can go only but by the grace of God.