The Seafarer is an Old English poetry that tells the story of a man who is alone on the sea. It has been described as an elegy, a literary form typically given to a specific set of Old English poems that dwell on spiritual and earthly sadness. Like other Old English poems, it contains many lines of three stanzas with the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GGHH. Seafarers were itinerant workers who traveled by boat to different parts of Europe and Asia. They were often young men looking for work, but there are also stories about married couples traveling together or people who were retired. The number of ships in European ports declined after the 11th century because of new technologies such as the steam engine and shipping lanes that prevented sailors from sailing around the coast (known as the "last leg"). What's more, because of the danger involved in this kind of job, fewer and fewer people were willing to become seafarers. Until recently, scholars believed that the Seafarer was written by only one person, but recent research has shown that some poems within the collection may have been written by more than one person. Still, it's impossible to say for certain how many authors might have been involved since many early medieval poems were probably composed by multiple writers. The oldest surviving copy of the Seafarer dates back to 1407 and is held by the British Library.