A meditation for those lost at sea, those who wait for their return, and those who go out and try to find them and bring them home.

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

I spent a lot of time looking at the ocean from the deck of my ship when I went to sea. It is beautiful, fascinating, I couldn’t get enough of it.

It may be different today, I understand there is a lot of debris now, much of it non-biodegradable, but I don’t recall seeing too much in the late 60s. Once I saw a bright orange ball, about a meter across, floating on the surface about a quarter mile away. I had no idea what it was until someone pointed out that it was most likely a floating buoy used by Asian fishermen to mark their nets. Occasionally they break loose and drift away. I think that’s the only thing I ever saw on the water in the deep ocean, although near the coasts you occasionally saw various bits of floating garbage. When operating with other ships there is a lot of paper, bottles, cans and scrap lumber floating around. Garbage was just dumped over the side, although I understand there are regulations against doing that now.

Marine life is also pretty scarce, at least to visual inspection. Once a whale surfaced near the ship, although I was below and missed it. I’ve seen whales from yachts, and porpoises, but not in the deep ocean, far from land. The only thing you’re likely to see out there are flying fish, in tropical waters, especially, they are quite common, skimming the waves in groups of three or four, travelling for hundreds of feet just above the water. Sometimes they landed on deck, twitching and gasping for breath, and we would throw them back in, or you would often find them there dead in the mornings.

There are few birds out there, except the deep sea flyers, like albatross. They say they stay aloft for months, coming ashore only to breed. They can land on the water, but can’t take off again except into a very stiff wind. They wait until they are on the peak of a tall wave and then launch themselves into the trough, picking up enough lift as they fall to get airborne. But they glide just above the surface, dipping into the troughs and flying over the crests, just inches above the sea, graceful and tireless. These are huge animals, with six-foot wingspans. One flew into the ship’s superstructure once and wandered around on deck for a few days, dazed and confused. He didn’t seem afraid of the crew. One morning he was gone, so I guess he made it back aloft ok.

In some places you see mats of brown Sargassum weed, or lines of it strung out by the current. Each shelters a huge community of floaters, tiny fish, crustaceans, molluscs and other travelers, huddled under the shade and shelter of the weed. Little floating cities, inhabitants that have evolved their own little grotesque colors and camouflage to help hunt each other in the weed.

I saw a shark once, a little guy about four feet long, swimming at the surface. And off the coast of Viet Nam there were sea snakes, everywhere, colored like rainbows, with flat paddle-like tails. They say they are among the most poisonous creatures on earth.

At night, sometimes, the sea glows an unearthly greenish blue, phosphorescent microorganisms in the water. If you go to the fantail, lean over the rail and stare just behind the stern, you see a boiling cauldron of cold fire where the screws churn up the sea. The ship’s wake is a glowing highway stretching behind us forever in an impossibly straight line to the horizon. From the bows, you can see blue-green sparks and meteor trails as fish near the surface, startled by the approach of the ship, dash out of its way. Yes, there are fish out there, and other things, invisible, until you sneak up on them.

I remember as a kid I read “Kon-Tiki” and Thor Heyerdahl described mysterious lights of huge marine creatures just beneath the surface. I never saw any, but I wasn’t as close to the surface of a deep tropical ocean for as long as he was. But I have seen the blue green light often enough.

Coleridge was a landsman, and he lived near a cold coast. I doubt he ever saw the phosphorescent Noctiluca of tropical seas for himself…

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch’s oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.

I’ve seen those “death fires” close up, I was brought up with them, and they are nothing but beauty. No one who has ever stared into that unearthly light can ever forget it, or fail to love the tiny microbe that flashes its bioluminiscence, as if only for the sheer joy of it.

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath;
Herman Melville