sea tales

The Wrecker

Quintus Curtius Literature, Thought , ,

Some time in the 1840s—the precise year is not certain—a British ship returning from the Mediterranean was obliged to delay its arrival in England for a few days, due to the persistence of stormy weather and thick fog in the Channel.  One of the landsmen passengers found it difficult to sleep; and, to pass the time less fretfully, he took to conversing with an experienced old tar, a grizzled Cornishman, who proved to be a fascinating night-watch companion.  He had mastered the lore and history of his native country. This mariner told our landsman many ancient tales of disasters, shipwrecks, escapes, and raw courage.  One unsettling story, however, proved to be more memorable than all the others.  And it is this one which we will now relate.      

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Even A Small Cave May Hold Calamities

Quintus Curtius Thought , , ,

The decrees of Fortune may be postponed, but they can never be vacated.  He who imagines that he can avoid these rulings is like the man who exerts his limited control over a raft traveling on a swiftly-moving river; he may be able to organize the furnishings on his raft, but it is the river that decides his course.  It swirls him about in its currents and eddies; it pushes him against projecting rocks and rapids; and its flux holds him firmly in its aquatic grip.  Individual effort can arrest or divert this course, but only under certain conditions.  Most men are unable to summon the required exertions of will necessary to resist such implacable torrents.  We celebrate heroism because it is so uncommon, and because it represents, in some ways, a kind of conscious rebellion against Fortune’s unfeeling mandates.

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