The Dirty British Coaster – The Story of the SS Robin « Isle of Dogs Life Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays. The British coastal cargo steamships were the workhorses of the Merchant fleet in the late 19th, early 20th Century around the ports of Britain and Northern Europe. However by the 1960s they had all disappeared. Well nearly all ,and that brings us to the story of the SS Robin, a story that takes us as far away as Spain but has many connections to the Isle of Dogs. SS Robin 1890s SS Robin is a traditional raised quarterdeck coastal cargo steamer built at the famous Thames Ironworks, in Orchard House Yard on the eastern tip of Isle of Dogs and launched in 1890. She was built to high standards regarding materials and workmanship with her hull fitted out in East India Dock. From there she was taken to Dundee to have her boiler and engines fitted.

After trails she was taken to Liverpool to begin her career as a coastal steamer in 1890. For the next ten years she plied her trade around the ports of Britain and occasionally some of the continental ports carrying the heavy cargoes such as coal, steel and china clay for which the steamers became famous for. However in 1900, she was sold to a Spanish owner who renamed her Maria and spent the next 70 odd years going up and down the North Atlantic coast, she survived Two World Wars , once getting an escort from the French Navy to protect her from U Boat attacks. But then at the end of a hard working life and due to be scrapped, there was another twist of fate she was recognised by the Maritime Trust as a one of a kind and in 1974 was purchased and travelled back to Britain under her own steam. In West India Dock 2005 From 1974 she was given her original name back and moored in St Katherine’s Dock and her restoration began. In 1991 she moved to West India Quay where between 2003-2007 she was used as a Education Centre and Gallery.

When she moved into West india Quay she was barely a mile away from where she was built in Orchard Place therefore she really was coming home. However more structural restoration was needed, so in 2008 she went back to the coast this time to Lowestoft to prepare for her latest reincarnation as a floating museum in the Royal Docks. In 2011 she returned to the Royal Docks still only a mile away from where she was built to prepare to be finally unveiled to the public in 2014. She may still be a Dirty British Coaster of John Masefield’s poem but now she is in elite company. She’s part of the National Historic Fleet and one of only three ‘Core Collection’ (Grade 1) vessels in the capital. The other two ships are the Cutty Sark and HMS Belfast. And next week she will have a Royal Visitor when The Duke of Edinburgh will visit the ship on June 5th. The Duke was an important part of the campaign to save her forty years ago and will unveil a plaque to inaugurate the Ships new permanent home. To find out more about the SS Robin press here Other Posts you may find interesting.

The Wondering Minstrels: Cargoes -- John Masefield The Wondering Minstrels ( Poem #74 ) Cargoes Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amethysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays. -- John Masefield A lovely poem, and one that works on several levels. Of course, it is about progress, and nostalgia, and as such is somewhat unsubtle.

But it is also a poem redolent with beauty; the beauty and mystery of strange and distant lands, and forever vanished times that linger yet in racial memory, the sensual, evocative beauty of gems and spices, the beauty of words and phrases that flow trippingly off the tongue. Masefield was truly a poet who could both appreciate and recapture the pleasures of the senses - he is far more descriptive than introspective (compare, for example, Keats' 'To a Skylark', Wordsworth's 'Daffodils' and Coleridge's 'Kublai Khan' for very different treatments of this kind of beauty). Incidentally, this is a lovely poem to recite subvocally - don't quite read it out loud, but form the words with your mouth as you read them. Glossary: moidore moi.do<e>r. Also 8 moyodore, moedor(e, moydor(e, moider, moidor. [Curruptly a. Pg. moeda d'ouro lit. `gold coin' (moeda money, ouro:-L. aurum gold).

] A gold coin of Portugal, current in England in the first half of the 18th century. In later use, the word survived as a name for the sum of 27s., which was approximately the value of the coin. -- OED m. Posted on Monday, April 26, 1999 George Soule: John Masefield | Carleton College John Masefield's "Cargoes" by George Soule Revised from an entry in Masterplots II: Poetry Series Supplement, ed. John Wilson and Philip K. Jason. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 1998. Many years ago "Cargoes" by the English Poet-laureate John Masefield (1878-1967) was a very well-known poem, read by high school students along with such lyrics as Edgar Allen Poe's "Annabel Lee" and such almost forgotten narratives as "The Courtship of Miles Standish" and "Snowbound." Tastes change, and canons get revised, and poems are forgotten.

But even though "Cargoes" celebrated its centenary of publication in 2003, it (like the other poems I just mentioned) is still an enjoyable poem. Here it is: Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rail, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin toys. Enjoyable, yes. But what is it about? What can be said about such a poem? What does it say about love? Social problems? The human condition? The problem resembles that faced by my fellow graduate-students at Yale many years ago when dealing with a little poem by Robert Herrick: they decided it displayed "an ironic lack of meaning." But let's see what can be said. I First let us get the literal meanings straight. "Cargoes" is a short lyric poem consisting of three five-line stanzas, each of which describes a different kind of ship.

The first two lines of each stanza describe the ship moving through water; the last three lines list the different cargoes the ships are carrying. Stanza one's ship is a quinquireme, a large vessel which people like the ancient Phoenicians employed to trade across the Mediterranean Sea. These ships were propelled both by the wind and by men rowing. The prefix "quin" may refer to the five banks of oarsmen arranged vertically on each side of the ship. More probably, because five banks of oars would get hopelessly entangled, it refers to the five oarsmen manning the three oars in each vertical row. Masefield's ship departs from "distant Ophir," a region in either Arabia or Africa at the southern end of the Red Sea, and is being rowed to northern end of that sea. (Masefield must have intended the term "Palestine" to apply to the land at farthest reach of the present Gulf of Aqaba.) The ship's goal is a happy one, for Palestine is a safe "haven," and its skies are "sunny." This boat carries a cargo of animals, birds, exotic woods, and wine.

Masefield found many of his details in the Old Testament. Nineveh, an important Assyrian city, is often mentioned there, and many of the details of this stanza come from 1. Kings 10: ivory, apes, peacocks, and cedars. That chapter also mentions drinking vessels, though not the wine in them, and almug trees, which may be the same as sandalwood. In Stanza two, the poem moves ahead about two thousand years to the sixteenth or seventeenth century and changes its focus to the West Indies. A galleon was a large sailing ship often used in trade between Spain and Latin America, a part of the world Masefield himself knew well from his days as a sailor. This "stately" (splendid, dignified, majestic) ship begins its journey at the Isthmus of Panama and progresses with a vessel's normal up-and-down motion ("dipping") through the verdant and beautiful islands of the Caribbean. Its cargo contains precious (emeralds and diamonds) and semi-precious stones, spices, and gold coins (a "moidore" is a Portuguese coin; the word means literally "coin of gold").

In Stanza three, the British ship is not so pretty as the previous two (it is "dirty") nor so big. A coaster is a small ship designed chiefly to carry goods along a coastline, not on the high seas. This coaster is propelled by a steam-engine (it has a smoke-stack), and it moves through the English Channel with a force and motion that resembles an animal's butting with its head. Part of its cargo are things to burn: wood for fireplaces and coal mined near Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the eastern coast of Britain. The rest is metal that has been processed or manufactured, perhaps in the British Midlands not far from Newcastle: metal rails with which to build railroad tracks, lead ingots or "pigs," items of hardware made of iron, and "cheap tin trays." II Masefield's poem is formally precise. As we have seen, each stanza describes a ship in its historical era, each ship is pictured in motion, and its cargo is noted. In each stanza, the first two and last lines are long, whereas the third and fourth are short; the second and fifth lines rhyme. The rhythm of each stanza is very similar.

Masefield seems to have abandoned usual English syllabic verse for accentual verse, which was being experimented with in his day. This poem is best read with strong accents, giving two beats to each short line and four beats to each long line. An extra half-accent may be given in the second and fifth line of each stanza to words like "white," "green," and "tin." Because "Cargoes" has no clauses, independent or dependent, it makes no statement, provisional or otherwise. Therefore it must depend for its effect on the associations and connotations of the words Masefield has chosen. These effects differ significantly from stanza to stanza. All readers may not know that the details of Stanza one describe Solomon's lavish court at the time of the visit of the Queen of Sheba. Even so, readers will sense the exotic and sensual nature of this cargo. Ivory is lovely to touch; it and sandalwood come from far-off regions, even further away than distant Ophir. Both sandalwood and cedarwood are pleasingly aromatic; white wine is sweet to taste; apes and peacocks may decorate opulent palaces in sun-drenched Palestine.

Even though a quinqireme had sails, Masefield only describes only how it is rowed by human power. Other omissions are significant. Although the Bible says that Solomon possessed great quantities of gold and spices, Masefield does not mention them. And in this stanza Masefield chooses to distort geography and history in order to heighten the poetic effect of his lines. Nineveh was a great distance from the Red Sea and flourished long before the era of quinquiremes. It would have been almost impossible for such a large ship to have navigated down the Tigris river from Nineveh. Masefield probably chose the word "Nineveh" mainly for its sound and rhythm and for its aura of importance. Stanza two is almost as exotic as Stanza one and even more opulent. Masefield may have omitted sailing and gold from Stanza one because he wanted to save them for Stanza two. The emphasis here is on the riches of gold and gems, not on sensual pleasures. Yet these gems, the galleon, and the palm-green shores have a wonderful beauty that may exceed that of the ancient world. Stanza three offers a stark contrast to Stanzas one and two.

The British coaster is in no way beautiful or exotic or wealthy. Instead of the lovely weather of Palestine and the Caribbean, Masefield now provides unpleasant "mad March" days. The seas that cake the funnels with salt must be butted through with the help of a steam engine. The coaster's cargo is similarly unexotic, practical fuels and manufactured goods, some of them ugly. Masefield varies his sound to suit his subject matter. The first two stanzas are euphonious and slow-moving. Stanza three is cacophonous and fairly quick to read; its accents are heavier and less subtle, and its consonants are harsh: "salt-caked smoke-stacks." One reason "Cargoes" has been anthologized so often is that Masefield's control of his language produces so much pleasure. III But what does it mean? The most obvious theme of "Cargoes" has to do with ships. Masefield was a sailor as a young man, and throughout his life he delighted in describing ships and the sea. Though a dirty coaster is not the sort of vessel to which he usually responded, this poem clearly shows the poet's love of various kinds of ships.

Masefield imagines these ships at their most attractive; they are in action, dipping and butting in both smooth and choppy seas. When Masefield contrasts three very different ships from three very different historical eras, he implies that the wonders of ships and the sea, despite some changes, remain constant. Because this poem contains no clauses and hence no statements, it is tempting to say that Masefield has produced a pretty anthology-piece with very little meaning. Yet the contrast of the poem's stanzas will yield a simple but effective view of history, and more especially a view of Masefield's own age. In this poem, the ancient world is shown as sensual, given to exotic pleasures. Its boats are propelled by only human power over modest distances. In contrast, the world of the 16th century is magnificent and heroic. Its wind-driven ships traverse vast oceans and bring cargoes that are not only beautiful but opulent: gems and gold that are worth a great deal. In both stanzas, the ships are bringing their wonderful things back home for the differing enjoyments of those who live there.

Whether or not Masefield literally believed in these readings of history, they serve as a backdrop for his view of contemporary life in Stanza three. Modern life is one of change. The dirty coaster is propelled by a steam-engine, a comparatively recent machine that was supplanting the time-honored sail even while Masefield was working as a sailor. This world is not a particularly pleasant one. The coaster is not a pretty ship; it is having a difficult time steaming in the choppy seas. It is not bringing wonderful things back home to be enjoyed; it is taking a cargo of goods, many of them manufactured goods, away from home for delivery or sale at some unspecified port, perhaps elsewhere in Britain or across the English Channel in France. These goods are not sensual or beautiful, but practical, commercial, utilitarian, and sometimes cheap: rails for railroads, hardware, tin trays. Even so, this modern ship has an energy that Masefield finds admirable. The coaster suggests the side of British life that Masefield wishes to praise: not the elegant aristocrats of Victorian England, but the vigor of the common working person of the beginning of a new century.

* * * * * * * * * * After this article was posted on the internet, I got an eloquent email from Jonathan Ogle of Oakland, California, who went to sea as a ship's officer as a young man and still works in the shipping industry. He wrote to say that he thought Masefield here was reflecting on the nature of empires. "Each stanza refers to an imperial era defined by the described ship. The Assyrians ruled their world, the Spanish theirs, for a time, and when this was written, Britannia ruled the waves. However, those earlier empires went the way of Ozymandias, arguably due to their romantic, sensual pursuits. Sure, Masefield seems to say, they were great, but it was a greatness built on exotics like sandalwood and peacocks, or diamonds and cinnamon, and dainty days in fair weather. How could that last? British dominion, on the other hand, was the result of steam and coal and the ability to deliver the road rails in the mad days of March. This is a dominion which will perservere, is what I read.

Given the time that it was written, it might even have been a warning to his fellow Englishmen to remember the roots of their greatness." Mr. Ogle went on to say that he was attracted to this poem because it shows Masefield's "historical sense of continuity in the seagoing profession. We are all part of the same continuum, from the Greeks on their black ships on a wine-dark sea, to the treasure fleets of the Spanish Main, to his contemporary British Merchant Marine. . . . Most of us going to sea were drawn to it for the romance and adventure, with sunny seas and emerald shores in mind. But we have spent most of our time butting into heavy seas, salt-caked and perservering, hauling oil or wheat or generic containers from places like Beaumont or Oakland to the outskirts of Bremerhaven or a modern harbor 20 miles outside of Shanghai. Masefield understood this, as he sailed in the twilight of the sailing-ship era and the dawning of the steamship era. . . .

I have always thought this poem tied me and my contemporaries to those ancient sailors and all their descendants who worked the seas on an ever-changing range of [vessels], right up to today's pragmatic, now diesel-driven, ships." These remarks add several interesting dimensions of my enjoyment of Masefield's poem. --G. S. Cargoes Poem by John Masefield - Poem Hunter Cargoes Poem by John Masefield - Poem Hunter Cargoes - Poem by John Masefield Autoplay next video Terence George Craddock (5/31/2010 2:14:00 PM) Cargoes by John Masefield is a wonderful romantic view of ancient cargo in stanza one and two, described as being exotic exciting treasure contrasted with the modern cargo of stanza three, which is practical industrial dirty cheap and boring. Leonard Wilson is correct, a Spanish cargo containing all these jewels at once and gold moidores is extremely unlikely. The moidore is a Portuguese gold coin minted from 1640 to 1732. A Spanish cargo of mostly silver and far less gold ingots or cob coinage would be realistic.

The first minted Spanish Gold Doubloons in the new world was in Mexico from 1732 but gold cobs were produced until 1750. The lines ‘QUINQUIREME of Nineveh from distant Ophir, /Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, ’ is historically impossible. Nineveh is an ancient Assyrian city and capital from 705 to 612 BCE. Roman Palestine is a term used from around the time of the birth of Jesus, but Palestine first appears as ‘Syria Palaestina’ on Roman maps in 132 CE when the ‘Emperor Hadrian changed the name of the province from Iudaea, Judea as it was called in Herod’s reign. The quinquereme is not a trading ship but a Hellenistic-era warship used extenively by the Carthaginians and Romans from 399 BCE but invented by Dionysius of Syracuse. John Masefield’s description of the cargo of Ophir, is from the earliest time period, in the reign of King Soloman 971-931BCE.

Soloman received a cargo of gold, silver, sandalwood, precious stones, ivory, apes and peacocks from Ophir, every three years. At1 Kings 10: 22, it reads ‘The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years it returned carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons.’ The translation of 'baboons' is rare, older translations have 'peacocks' instead. Therefore Masefield uses a mixture of historical periods to create a romantic cargo in stanza one. Soloman’s real trading ships may have included designs like Hatshepsut's Naval Vessels from the 15th Century BCE or may have been modeled after an Egyptian Naval Vessel of 1250 BCE. The early Phoenician trading ships of Soloman’s collaboration with Hiram of Tyre had ‘a keel, not ill shaped, a rounded hull, bulwarks, a beak, and a high seat for the steersman.

The oars, apparently, must have been passed through interstices in the bulwark.’ The exports of Phoenicia are more romantic than any description Masefield describes, but it is the contrast of ships and cargoes which is Masefield’s purpose. Yet Phoenician smelting' or 'refining ships', hauling smelted ores from the mining towns in Sardinia and Spain shares a similar purpose to the ‘Dirty British coaster’. (Report) Reply (4/5/2010 8:35:00 PM) First stanza: Nineveh was the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire, on the Tigris River, actually not in Palestine, although Palestine was included in the empire. Ophir was a land rich in gold, probably in Africa. 'Haven' is a word rich in connotation, suggesting shelter and security and peace, and adding this to 'home, ' another word with highly favorable connotations, multiplies the effect. The last line, 'Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine, ' is, in my opinion, one of the most pleasant sounding lines in English poetry.

Second stanza: The 'stately Spanish galleon' creates the image of a tall sailing vessel with billowing white sails. It is coming from the central American region, carrying a rich cargo of gold and jewels. Actually it is highly unlikely that it would have had all the different types of jewels, but the Spanish did ship a huge fortune in gold from South America. The line 'dipping through the tropics by the palm-green shores, ' like the use of the word 'sunny' in the first stanza, indicates very favorable sailing weather and gives a picture of serenity. Third stanza: Unlike the other ships, this one is a coaster, that is just sailing from one port to another on the same coast, staying close to home; and since the poet is British, this is in his own area, not a distant part of the world. Note the extreme contrast of 'Quinquireme of Nineveh' and 'Stately Spanish galleon, ' the smooth sounding 'm' and 'n's and the soft, sibilant 's's with the harsh sounding 'Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, ' with the hard 'r, ' 't, ' and 'k' consonants.

And unlike the quinquireme, rowing in sunny weather, and the galleon, dipping through the tropics, the little British steamer is 'Butting through the Channel in the mad March days'—forcing its way against the elements in the English Channel during the stormy weather of early spring. Tyne coal is from the river Tyne area in England, and the rest of the cargo is far from interesting, although it may be much more practical and useful than the exotic cargoes of the other ships. The choice of the terms 'pig-lead' and 'cheap tin trays' makes the whole thing seem rather sordid. Just compare the last line of this stanza with the beautiful line at the end of the first stanza. Of course, Masefield is doing nothing but describing the ships, their destinations, and their cargoes, but the great contrast here makes it obvious that he is implying a theme beyond mere descriptions. My understanding of his purpose is that he is saying that when we look back at the past and at exotic places, we tend to notice the unusual, the romantic, the glamorous. But when we look around us in our own time and place, we just see the very mundane and mostly uninteresting elements.

Personally I would rather be a British union member on the steamship than a slave on that rowing ship or a scarcely more free sailor on the galleon. But it is human nature to dream of the long ago and faraway and think that those were much more exciting than our humdrum existence. Have you ever read Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem 'Miniver Cheevy'? This is exactly the attitude of the protagonist of that poem. I love this little poem of Masefield's, for the thought, the vivid descriptions, and the highly skillful use of word sounds and connotations. It is a little masterpiece of a poem. (Report) Reply V.N.Seetharam Naidu Naidu (8/17/2009 10:05:00 PM) This is one of the most enduring poems I had been taught way back in 1958, along with Walter de la Mare's 'Arabia'. both poems are so modern yet so evocative. They criss cross the time lines and one is so swiftly carried across to the splendors and opulence as well as the romanticism of the past while being firmly rooted inn the present.

The rhythm produced by the masterly craftsmanship of these wordsmiths is a joy! (Report) Reply Simon Jejfries (7/20/2009 10:57:00 AM) Just for the record - a quinquireme is a ship with 5 rows of oars not sails. A great evocative poem going from the romantic to the prosaic in three verses. (Report) Reply Dirty Rotten Symbolism - KaryssaBlair KaryssaBlair Dirty Rotten Symbolism By Karyssa Blair on October 13, 2009 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) "Dirty British coaster with the a salt-caked smoke-stack, / Butting through the Channel in the made March days" (Lines 11-12). John Masefield, "Cargoes" I think Masefield wrote this poem as a way to question society of his time. The three stanzas of this poem serve as reflections of three types/times of civilization.

The first stanza describes the cargoes of ancient ships as carrying "ivory, / and apes and peacocks, / sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white whine" (Lines 3-5). Everything sounds grand, and almost regal since peacocks generally represent pride and whine gives the sense of the upper class. Even the ship's destination is described as a "haven in sunny Palestine" (Line 2). Nothing in this stanza displays negative imagery. The second stanza, though depicting a different civilization through its cargo, also provides positive imagery to the reader. This ship's cargo is full of "diamonds, / emeralds, amethysts, / topazes, cinnamons, and gold moidores" (Lines 8-10). Again, the reader is given the sense of royalty and riches through the description of jewels and other valued items. The ship journeys through the "Tropics by the palm-green shores" (Line 7), further suggesting a peaceful, wealthy trip. I do not see any negative imagery here at all. In the last stanza, however, the imagery is much darker and grimier.

Right away, Masefield describes the British ship as being "dirty" with a "salt-caked smoke-stack" (Line 11), suggesting the degradation that has occurred over time in society between that of the previous two stanzas and that of Masefield's England. The ship's cargo seems poor and inferior to the cargo of previous, richer societies, a fact that is emphasized through Masefield's imagery. The ship doesn't move as smoothly as the previous ones seemed to sail, as the British ship is described as "butting through the Channel in the mad March days" (Line 12). Perhaps Masefield is using this imagery to suggest that British society has lost some of the better qualities of previous civilizations during the time Masefield was alive, when the steam engine was the world's most efficient means of transport. Melissa provides a different but very interesting interpretation in her blog, Passage of Time .

Our Quiet Life In Suffolk: Dirty British Coaster - A bit more poetry by John Masefield Wednesday, 25 May 2016 Dirty British Coaster - A bit more poetry by John Masefield The ships out at sea heading into The Port of Felixstowe are no longer Dirty British Coasters but ships like Majestic Mearsk a huge container vessel approximately 399 metres long, 44 metres wide, carrying 194,000 tonnes of c**p from Asia that will be on the shelves of a shop near you in a week or two. That very small boat behind the monster is the Pilot boat which comes out from the port with the Pilot to guide the container ship safely into dock. I suppose in fairness it may contain a few useful things - clothes perhaps? but I bet a lot is stuff people buy and then throw out a year or two later! Some of these containers will go by train but most will be on the backs of lorries heading through Suffolk and all round the country. I remember this poem from primary school.

Cargoes John Masefield by Conor O'Callaghan | Poetry Magazine John Masefield by Conor O'Callaghan Poetry By Conor O'Callaghan Introduction "He was born the year British Imperial forces were squaring up to the Zulus and Tennyson’s death was still fourteen years in the offing." He was born the year British Imperial forces were squaring up to the Zulus and Tennyson’s death was still fourteen years in the offing. He once met someone who had met Napoleon. He held a door for Lenin at the British Museum. He was deemed by Ramsay McDonald to be the natural successor to Robert Bridges, a voice-of-the-voiceless laureate for Britain’s first labour prime minister. He lost his son in WWII. He died the year the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper and Norman Mailer was jailed after Vietnam protests in Washington. More than any poet I can think of, his life and work straddle two irreconcilable worlds. Nowadays it is difficult to credit his fame. The Everlasting Mercy was declared “nine-tenths sheer filth” by that paragon of piety Lord Alfred Douglas. The 1923 edition of Collected Poems sold eighty thousand copies.

It is equally difficult to make any serious critical defense. Even Yeats, who was among his closest literary allies, advised him to sing in music halls. He wrote far too much. He did not, as John Betjeman tactfully pointed out, “specialize in brevity.” Nowadays, whenever his name comes to us, it comes to us with a faintly ludicrous patina. He is the seaman poet who suffered chronic seasickness; whose bestseller Gallipoli hailed that squalid massacre as a glorious victory; who died of gangrene brought on by a split toe. I have liked John Masefield’s poetry for over twenty years. My maternal grandfather, a self-taught detective sergeant from a landlocked county of South Ulster, loved to recite the swaying opening stanza of “Sea-Fever.” I learned “Tewkesbury Road” by heart at secondary school. What class of genius, I wondered, could compose “the grey light drift of the dust”? Until recently, admitting to liking Masefield’s poetry was like confessing sympathy with some far right-wing militia or saying you listen to the Carpenters. Then Manchester’s Carcanet Press brought out a Selected earlier this year.

The unexpectedly enthusiastic reviews that have greeted its publication suggest a dormant following. Masefield’s first book, Salt-Water Ballads, appeared in 1903. By 1913, with fifty-four years still on the clock, his significant poetry had been published. To this day he gets itemized as the original of the Georgian species, even though his first three books were, technically speaking, Edwardian. Those early lyrics possess nothing of the tweedy hothouse pastoral of their age. They are breezy, visceral, caught placelessly between two yearnings like “anchors hungry for English ground.” They impose the see-saw of shanties onto drier literary meters. They have stories, direct speech. They are littered with words—fo’c’s’le, goneys, skysail, spunyarn—that you suspect had not appeared in poetry up until then and have not since. Masefield’s best poems escape the autopilot optimism of those of his contemporaries. His vision is so clear and realistic that his palette risks appearing monochrome: “the grey dawn breaking,” “the cool grey rush of the dusk.” His lines can be so accentual as to sound vaguely jazzy.

Even the anthology anthems, “Sea-Fever” and “Cargoes,” hit willful bum notes. They harbor tongue twisters, at once cherished and unsayable, like “the flung spume and the blown spray and the seagulls crying” or the “Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir” that Muldoon ventriloquizes via MacNeice in “7 Middagh Street.” “Cargoes,” among popular favorites in English poetry, has to be one of the most pessimistic: Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rail, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays. Muriel Spark, in her book-length study, argues that Masefield’s gift was for narrative. However untenable that claim seems now, “The Everlasting Mercy” and “Dauber” deserve at least partial survival on the grounds of importance if not sustained quality. The former’s realism broke real ground and influenced a generation. Sassoon happened upon the style of his war poetry by lampooning it.

Graves described how its “fresh wind ... exhilarated us youngsters.” While its narrative is off-puttingly moral, the early fight sequence remains vivid and gritty. The latter, a semi-autobiographical tale of the eponymous painter-cum-cabin boy, contains some of the truest, most beautiful images of the sea and seafaring: the swift ship Tore on out of the tropics, straining her sheets, Whitening her trackway into a milky strip, Dim with green bubbles and twisted water-meets, Her clacking tackle tugged at pins and cleats, Her great sails bellied stiff, her great masts leaned: They watched how the sea struck and burst and greened. Masefield matured into mediocrity. He became an authority on Chaucerian meter, and his own work drifted slowly into the canon’s Bermuda Triangle. Not a solitary line appears in Paul Keegan’s otherwise magisterial New Penguin Book of English Verse. “I am like the dodo,” the man mused, “no longer known as a bird at all.” Only a twit would argue the case of Masefield’s greatness.

Better, I suggest, to see him occupying a position within British poetry similar to that of Edward Arlington Robinson here: a minor poet whose career became an important stepping stone between the Victorian and the modern (both Auden and Larkin acknowledged a debt), and who wrote a few gems of his own that remain unworthy of neglect. Originally Published: March 2nd, 2006 Hanging On My Word: Mad March Days Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road rails, pig lead, Firewood, iron ware, and cheap tin trays. We're back with John Masefield again this week, following on from my Box of Delights last week. I learned his poem 'Cargoes' at school and the rhythm of the verse rolls along just like the waves. The description of the three vessels has stayed with me, and was the first thing which came into my mind when Alan suggested boats as a possible theme for this week's Sepia Saturday.

The Thames Steamboat Company's paddle steamer 'Mermaid', National Maritime Museum c1900 The picture is not of a 'Dirty British steamer' nor is it 'butting through the Channel, but as we are well into the 'Mad March days', I think I can get away with it. Our prompt picture actually features a steamer on the river at Mosman in Australia, about a hundred years ago. Also in the picture are buildings, trees, boats and a pier, all of which would have made admirable theme choices. I was quite taken with the picture of 'Mermaid' but even more by this one. Now there's a poem waiting to be written! Sail and Steam. Changing Tides. The Museum of Hartlepool Researching John Masefield (1878-1967) for both last week and this week's post, I was fascinated by his story. After an unhappy start in life he was sent to train to for a life at sea, to break his addiction to reading, which is aunt, who was his guardian, thought little of.

Poor John; fortunately her ploy didn't work or we would have been deprived of the rich heritage of his many stories and poems which stemmed from his love of words. Listening to stories of sea-lore on board ship only served to develop his craft. Unfortunately he suffered badly from seasickness and eventually he deserted ship. He lived as a vagrant for several months and then took odd jobs in New York, including as an assistant to a barkeeper. By the time he was 24 his first collection, 'Salt Water Ballads' was published, containing that other poem well-known to schoolchildren, 'Sea Fever'. I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and sky, And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking. Evidently, although he was a poor sailor, his love of the sea and ships was undiminished.

There's no room to write the details of his life here, but he went on to become British Poet Laureate and garnered doctorates from Yale and Harvard universities, in America, and from Oxford University, among many others, in England. He continued to be a colourful and interesting character, numbering bee-keeping, goatherding and poultry-keeping amongst his pursuits. He continued his duties as Laureate into old age, publishing his last book at the age of 88. He died in 1967 and his ashes rest in Poet's Corner , in Westminster Abbey. I can't let you steam away without sharing this remarkable three-minute movie clip of a 1900 paddle steamer, 'Brighton Queen', pulling into a jetty. There is an interesting parade of disembarking passengers, some of whom wave to the camera, and one gentleman even doffs his cap. It could even be the young John Masefield, gathering more material for the book he was about to publish. PADDLE STEAMER If you've found your sea-legs by now, roll over to Sepia Saturday to find what other contributors have made of the prompt.

If you have a love of old photos, or are just overtaken by waves of nostalgia you could even join in the fun of our Facebook group. Posted by

Question: """Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack butting through the channel in the mad March days"" were lines written by John Masefield, from what poem?"
Answer: CARGOES