Mariner Quotes

“An orphans curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! How more horrible that that
Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“One of the few entry points to the Baltic Sea, the Kattegat passage is a busy and treacherous waterway. The entire region is a maze of fractured islands, shallow waters and tricky cur-rents which test the skills of all mariners. A vital sea route, the strait is used by large container ships, oil tankers and cruise ships alike and provides a crucial link between the Baltic coun-tries and Europe and the rest of the world. Navigating is difficult even in calm weather and clear visibility is a rare occurrence in these higher latitudes. During severe winters, it’s not uncommon for sections of the Baltic Sea to freeze, with ice occasionally drifting out of the straits, carried by the surface currents.
The ship I was commandeering was on a back-and-forth ‘pendulum’ run, stopping at the ports of St Petersburg (Russia), Kotka (Finland), Gdańsk (Poland), Aarhus (Denmark) and Klaipėda (Lithuania) in the Baltic Sea, and Bremerhaven (Ger-many) and Rotterdam (Netherlands) in the North Sea. On this particular trip, the weather gods were in a benevolent mood and we were transiting under a faultless blue sky in one of the most picturesque regions of the world. The strait got narrower as we sailed closer to Zealand (Sjælland), the largest of the off-lying Danish islands. Up ahead, as we zigzagged through the laby-rinth of islands, the tall and majestic Great Belt Bridge sprang into view. The pylons lift the suspension bridge some sixty-five metres above sea level allowing it to accommodate the largest of the ocean cruise liners that frequently pass under its domi-nating expanse.”
― Jason Rebello, Red Earth Diaries: A Migrant Couple's Backpacking Adventure in Australia

“He prayed for the day when he'd become her North Star, a trusted and true destination she longed for. He would then be awakened in the night and she would be there, not as an aberration but as safe a port as he had ever known and one he would never want to leave. He, in turn, would light her sky with a love she had never known, and would never need search for again.”
― Tom Grasso