Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

We weighed anchor about 8.30 a.m. on Monday, February 19th, 1866, and were towed by a steam tug as far as the mouth of the Humber. Our departure seemed to create an immense sensation amongst the seafaring population, and also with the workmen in the dockyards, crews of other vessels, and, in short, amongst the inhabitants of Hull generally. Every pier, wharf, ship, and “coign of vantage” was covered by a multitude of well-wishers, who cheered lustily. I am told this public interest attaches to all whale-ships, their arrival and departure causing the greatest excitement amongst the seafaring classes and attracting the attention of all classes in the town to which the ship belongs. I conclude this arises from the novel and precarious nature of the voyage, and the inevitable dangers and risk attending the whale fishery.

Comment

Comment

I suggest that Philip Larkin, in the cycle “The north ship,” which I think was written in summer and autumn of 1944 (see e.g. the letter to J.B. Sutton on 17 October 1944 (Larkin 2018)), uses the Diana’s voyage to the north as a (non-geographical?) metaphor for his thoughts on his own professional prospects, where the north is perhaps the bleak winter of librarianship. Smith’s diary (Smith 1922), published in 1922, the year of Larkin’s birth, was very popular with boys in the 20s and 30s (my well-thumbed copy belonged to Arthur ApSimon (1927-2019)). Maybe Larkin read and registered the tale, and then didn’t notice or advertise his prescience when, in 1955, he moved forever to (moderately northern) Hull, home of the Diana. Several stanzas from the first poem, “Legend”:

I saw three ships go sailing by,
Over the sea, the lifting sea,
And the wind rose in the morning sky,
And one was rigged for a long journey.

[…]

The third ship drove towards the north,
Over the sea, the darkening sea,
But no breath of wind came forth,
And the decks shone frostily.

The northern sky rose high and black
Over the proud unfruitful sea,
East and west the ships came back
Happily or unhappily:

But the third went wide and far
Into an unforgiving sea
Under a fire-spilling star,
And it was rigged for a long journey.
(Larkin 2014)

The subsequent poems traverse the ever more northerly parallels in a style that is increasingly hallucinatory and decreasingly relatable to the Diana, from “65º N (Songs)” through “70º N (Fortunetelling)” and “75º N (Blizzard),” to, finally, “Above 80º N”, which, fortunately, the Diana didn’t reach:

‘A woman has ten claws,’
Sang the drunken boatswain;
Farther than Betelgeuse,
More brilliant than Orion
Or the planets Venus and Mars,
The star flames on the ocean;
‘A woman has ten claws,’
Sang the drunken boatswain.

I reckon Philip Larkin's early cycle, The North Ship, derives from childhood recollections of the diaries of Charles Smith, surgeon on the Diana, a Hull whaler famously marooned in Arctic ice off Baffin Bay in 1866-7 https://t.co/CzGlBxVh4c

— SingingOrganGrinder (@elorganillero) October 15, 2022

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Original

We weighed anchor about 8.30 a.m. on Monday, February 19th, 1866, and were towed by a steam tug as far as the mouth of the Humber. Our departure seemed to create an immense sensation amongst the seafaring population, and also with the workmen in the dockyards, crews of other vessels, and, in short, amongst the inhabitants of Hull generally. Every pier, wharf, ship, and “coign of vantage” was covered by a multitude of well-wishers who cheered lustily. I am told this public interest attaches to all whale-ships, their arrival and departure causing the greatest excitement amongst the seafaring classes, and attracting the attention of all classes in the town to which the ship belongs. I conclude this arises from the novel and precarious nature of the voyage, and the inevitable dangers and risk attending the whale fishery.

138 words.

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• 80th parallel north (1) ·
• Arctic Ocean (9) ·
• Atlantic Ocean (5) ·
• Baffin Bay (2) ·
• Diana (1840 ship) (8) ·
• Humber (20) ·
• 📌Kingston upon Hull (65) ·
• Larkin, Philip (1922-1985) (2), poet, novelist, librarian ·
• Poetry (69) ·
• 📌Port of Hull (17) ·
• Seal hunting (4) ·
• Steam engine (5) ·
• Steamship (5) ·
• The North Ship (1) ·
• Whaler (4) ·
• Whaling in the United Kingdom (11) ·
• Whaling (9) ·

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