Water Colors
Mariners' journals from across the centuries tell stories of daring and disaster, exploration and discovery
The sea is a broad canvas for imagining, and our eyes and minds continue to be drawn to it. Ships have been a part of the human story from early on, and our efforts to overcome the challenges of the oceans began long before written accounts. Craft of all kinds have set out to sea, and people and ideas moved around the world with them. Men and women, families and nations, all have dared the impossible when setting out on their journeys. Some of the earliest stories that survive are accounts of sea voyages.
The seafaring life created a tough, uncompromising breed, experienced in nature’s frequently vicious moods. The prayer of Elizabethan captain John Davis says it all. A veteran of the Arctic, he had hoped to circumnavigate the world, but the odds were against him. In 1592 his crew was down to just five fit men. “Oh, Lord, if we are bound to die,” Davis wrote in his journal, “then I would rather have
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