#sea stories

[the-golden-vanity]

I think the thing I like most about The Sea, as, like... a setting or a concept, is that in its vastness, its untameable nature, its unknown secrets, you have a lot of historically documented events that sound more like tales out of mythology and folklore.

Take, for instance, the fate of the Victory Expedition of 1829.

The Victory expedition was a private polar expedition led by veteran British explorer Captain John Ross. Twenty-three men set sail for the Canadian Arctic on the steamship Victory, but when the ship became trapped in the polar ice, there was no way to free it. The crew spent four years in the frozen north, surviving on rations from the wreck of a previous polar exploration ship.

Eventually, twenty survivors packed their belongings into small boats and hauled them over ice towards open water. And in that open water, there was a ship, the whaler Isabella of Hull.*

The Isabella's crew couldn't believe their eyes, because, as they told the Victory's survivors, "Captain Ross has been dead these two years."

And if that wasn't strange enough, the (very much alive) Captain Ross of the Victory had, on a previous Arctic expedition, been captain of the Isabella.

*Side note: the more I read about the Age of Sail, the more I realize that wherever official Explorers™ from a given Western nation go, their whalers have already beaten them there. Sometimes that's even the reason the explorers were sent.

[vhshistory]

November 5, 2002: SpongeBob SquarePants: Sea Stories is released on DVD and VHS.

[ihardblack]

En el fondo del mar, cayó con fuerza la libertad.

La fauna abisal que se encontraba festejando junto con las algas, dejaron de bailar.

Las medusas se dispersaron ocultándose tras los corales y arrecifes con rapidez.

Los microorganismos gritaban con sus ojos haciendo que estos se desprendieran y rodearan sobre la arena.

Sin embargo, los seres vivos más grandes, la miraban con repudio.

Un largo y tenso silencio bombardeó el lugar.

Atada de pies y manos con una cinta en su boca, gemía de llanto, miedo y desesperación.

Intentaba zafarse.

Intentaba pedir auxilio.

Sus lágrimas comenzaron a brotar y escurrir por su rostro.

Cuidadosamente, las especies salieron con temor de sus escondites para verla.

No entendían lo que trataba de decir pero entre ellos murmuraban que había mucho dolor.

De pronto, un cardumen de diablos negros decidió acercarse siendo los más valientes de la fauna y le pidieron a Neptuno que la ayudara.

Rápidamente, la figura mitológica concedió sus plegarias y este les pidió que no saliera lastimada.

Luego de eso, la fauna se puso de acuerdo y entre todos comenzaron a desplazarse de un lado a otro.

Nadaron con fuerza creándose poco a poco un gran torbellino con una fuerza sobrenatural jamás antes vista.

“Esta es mi oportunidad de salir a flote”, murmuró la libertad.

En medio del huracán, se creó un enorme tsunami.

Todos juntos la empujaron y la arrastraron hacia arriba abandonando la zona abisal, pasando por la zona batial, la zona mesopelágica hasta finalmente llegar al piélago.

La libertad después de encontrarse aterrada por su traumática empiria se percató de que estos seres no querían hacerle daño sino que querían que fuese libre y feliz y que a pesar de sus horrorosas y espeluznantes apariencias, no eran tan malos como la gente decía.

Ella se despidió y les agradeció a todos ellos.

Emocionada y dichosa, el sol nuevamente le dio la oportunidad de abrazarla deslizando sus perlas y jugando con sus hermosos ojos verdes.

Los delfines y las gaviotas la acompañaron hasta las orillas de la playa.

Encantada y maravillada por el hermoso paisaje, la libertad desembarcó en las costas de Sicilia del mar mediterráneo.

Esta sacudió su cuerpo.

Estrujó su enorme cabellera y sentó sobre una roca.

Quienes la llamaban la libertad, era una hermosa sirena.

Autor: Valentina Neira Yáñez. ✅ Publicado bajo el Registro de Propiedad Intelectual. Todos los derechos reservados.

[sohannabarberaesque]

Especially when Peter Potamus comes in to some seamens' hostel and swaps tales galore of the uncharted reaches Polynesian he's fond of visiting and taking note of.

[gameraboy2]

Sea Stories, November 1953 Cover by Krenkel Doore

[cybershadowmachine2]

The history of a man that tries and tries, but in the end, fails to achieve the apparently simplest of the tasks: find its own path, but without being conscious of the method or the way to do it properly for himself. Probably the story of many that, in this society, in this system, are and has been oppressed by the forces of enthropy, and capitalism. A story that, in a certain way, reminds of myself. (Video written, illustrated and produced by Michael Claisse) @HorsesOnYT

[begottaum]

The Sea of untold Stories, detail

Desmond Lazaro

Australia, India, England

1968

[readskiesatdawn]

Attempt three on this book.

LET'S SEE ME LOSE MY PLACE NOW UNIVERSE I UNDERLINE SHIT IN MY BOOKS

[handmedownpocketpussy]

When I was a sailor (merchant sailor not navy) we all had stupid boat names. One guy I sailed with was called Wahoo because 30 fuckin' years ago he was line fishing off the aft deck and caught something on the line, he was really struggling to pull it in and a guy on the aft house 02 deck yelled out 'wahoo!' and he turned back and was like YAH, CAUGHT A FISH! WA-HOOOO! not knowing that a wahoo is a type of fish, not a marioesque esclamation of excitement lmao To this day not only is he called Wahoo I learned his real name only after sailing as his watch partner (10hrs together every day for months on end) and only as someone making a joke about his name as he was leaving the vessel at the end of his hitch

[athoughtfullyautomaticcollection]

BPOE - A flashback Friday Presentation

Small nuggets of fact often are below mountains of folklore. Getting to the nugget is usually impossible. So it is with most sea stories. But this story is true. It was told to me by an admiral I knew back in my Navy days. My first father-in-law, the Cap’n, confirmed it.Navigation and pilotage are difficult. The texts would have you believe that we have a science before us. In truth, they are…

[the-golden-vanity]

Ahoy, shipmates!

Over the course of several delayed flights this weekend, I devoured a paperback copy of Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. I found it enjoyable, if not a Great Classic Work Of Literature.

My question to you now is, there's a chapter in the middle of the book where our castaway hero encounters a plague ship. It moves erratically through the water before them, with what appears to be a smiling, nodding sailor at the rail, acknowledging Arthur and his fellow castaways.

However, as the ship approaches, the stench of death washes over our hero and his companions, and as it passes under their stern, they can see that all aboard the ship are dead of some terrible, unknown disease, and that the smile and nod they perceived were the rictus of death and the movement of a seagull feasting on the dead sailor's flesh.

This is my first time reading this book, and yet there's something viscerally, intensely familiar about this imagery. I feel like I've read this somewhere else before. Perhaps it was in a graphic novel, because my mental image of this scene appears in a sort of comic-book style.

Does anyone have any ideas where I might have encountered this before? Any help would be appreciated.

@clove-pinks @benjhawkins @ltwilliammowett @saranilssonbooks

[athelind]

In my Coast Guard days, I dealt with hawsers on a regular basis. That first pic looks a lot thicker than the 5" double-braided nylon that we used, but it's also hemp rather than nylon. Nylon has a lot of strength, a lot of elasticity, and a WHOLE FUCK TON of snap-back if it breaks.

I have never seen a hawser break myself, but the forward bulkhead of towing deck on the High Endurance Cutter I was stationed on had a SERIOUS dent in the quarter-inch steel from a snapped towing hawser years before.

I HAVE seen some very impressive snapback on a much lighter line (inch and a half nylon, I believe), but it wasn't the line that parted: it was the sea lion carcass that the boat crew was trying to un-wedge from the breakwall.

Thankfully, the weight of the sea lion (well, half of it) was sufficient to keep the line from whipping back and injuring anyone, but the force of the snapback flung the detached end of said pinniped high into the air. This was 35 years ago, so I don't quite remember how high, but my memory is telling me it was higher than the 40-foot boat was long.

I was not on the boat crew that day; I was up on the breakwall, and when I realized what was about to happen, I made sure I was out of the Splash Zone.

The tourists on the pier, alas, weren't quite so prudent. I'm sure that was a vacation memory that stayed with them for a LONG time.

i get so freaked out by like. pictures of really big rope

[moomoorare]

I love nautical and seaside town horror stories. Tell me more about the fog and water that eats people

[paintedcrows]

When asked why they still haven't kicked the bucket after decades: Ford insists he beat Death at chess. Stanley insists he kicked Death's ass in a Denny's parking lot