Seascapes: Shaped by the Sea

Mike Brown, Barbara Humberstone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472424334
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317058533
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Despite the fact that the sea covers 70 per cent of the Earth's surface, and is integral to the workings of the world, it has been largely neglected or perceived as marginal in modern consciousness. This edited collection disrupts notions of the sea as 'other', as foreign and featureless, through specific, situated accounts which highlight the centrality of the sea for the individuals concerned. Bringing together academics who combine scholarly expertise with lived experiences on, in and with the sea, it examines humans' relationships with the sea. Through the use of auto-ethnographic accounting, the contributors reflect on how the sea has shaped their sense of identity, belonging and connection. They examine what it is to be engaged with the sea, and narrate their lived, sentient, corporeal experiences. The sea is a cultural seascape just as it is physical reality. The sea shapes us and we, in turn, attempt to 'shape it' as we construct various versions of it that reflect our on-going and mutable relationship with it. The use of embodied accounts, as a way of conveying lived-experiences, and the integration of relevant theoretical frames for understanding the broader cultural implications provide new opportunities to understand seascapes.

Chapter 1
Seascapes

Mike Brown

I roll over and knock my shoulder on the shelf that runs down the side of my berth. This space is new to me and I haven’t yet adjusted to the confines of the quarter berth. Lying on my back I can just see the underside of the deck that can easily be touched with an outstretched arm. Thirty centimetres to my left is the hull and to my right I can see through a porthole into the cockpit. The berth is only just above the waterline. It is the almost constant slopping of small waves under the stern that has woken me. The wind has obviously changed direction and, with the boat secured for and aft on a pile mooring, waves from a different angle have released a new cacophony of plopping, burping and gurgling under the stern of the boat. I can feel minute movements as the boat gently responds to the wind and waves. I hear the mooring lines stretch to take up tension and then, when the wind eases, they contract back in relief. I’m conscious of these noises – which are both familiar and new. It’s 13 years since I sold my last yacht, a steel ocean cruiser, and my new boat is a fibreglass production vessel designed for coastal passages. I know where these sounds originate and I remember the feeling of constant movement afloat – but there is also a strangeness to them. Waves on fibreglass sound different and her movements are not as sedate, but then she is light in comparison to my last boat that I lived on for three years. I turn over. I feel at home in this constantly moving and chattering world. This is a feeling I have missed and longed for. I needed to return to sea. I recall a line from Jonathan Raban’s book Passage to Juneau, ‘Being afloat gives me, at least, a heightened sense of being alive moment to moment’ (1999, p. 90). It is here that I belong.

Introduction

From his vantage point on the deck of an Atlantic liner, Simon Winchester (2010) commented that, ‘From here onward the sea yawned open wide and featureless, and soon took on the character that is generally true of all oceans – being unmarked, unclaimed, largely unknowable, and in a very large measure unknown’ (p. 8). Winchester’s assertion reflects what Mack (2011) has described as the predominant Western characterisation of the sea as ‘a quintessential wilderness, a void without community other than that temporarily established on boats crewed by those with the shared experience of being tossed about on its surface, and a space without ruins or other witness to the events which may have taken place on its surface …’ (Mack, 2011, p. 17).

Fleming (1982) suggests that while a mariner might feel at home on a ship, the ocean cannot be home as it engenders feelings of unease.

It is too deep, too dark below, too boundless. There is nothing limited or cosy or comfortable about it. Awed by its power and immensity we imbue it with magnified human emotions, behaviour, characteristics. Thus it can be sometimes cruel, hungry, mean, callous, sometimes languid, seductive, inscrutable – but never is it ordinary or trivial; never is it truly innocuous. (Fleming, 1982, p. 29)

Conceptualising the sea as featureless, unknowable or a wilderness is a reflection of ideas, imagery and metaphors that have permeated Western consciousness via literature and art. This contrasts with Mack’s (2011) account of how Pacific navigators ‘feel’ their way on Winchester’s ‘featureless’ ocean. As Mack explains, some Pacific navigators appear to give precedence to the feel of the waves over other navigational indicators such as stars. He recounts how a mariner located the vessel’s position by feeling the particular ‘signature’ of waves generated by changes in the swells as they encountered islands far beyond the horizon. Mack details how mariners may also use other sensory organs to navigate and he recounts the story of a blind mariner who was able to identify his location by taste. It appears that different sections or streams of water have different tastes and the blind mariner’s heightened sense of taste allowed him to predict landfall at a particular island group the day before arrival. The sea, or perhaps particular places on the sea, may not be as unknowable or unknown as Winchester suggests. The ‘featureless’ sea or ‘void space’ reflect particular readings or interpretations of the sea that fail to resonate with me and, I suspect, with many of the people I have associated with over the years.

I grew up surrounded by boats. My father was introduced to the sea and allure of the Hauraki Gulf (Auckland) via his compulsory military training in the New Zealand Navy. As a young man from the southern city of Dunedin he sought job opportunities in Auckland, where he was based during his time in the navy, and he was transferred north in the early 1960s. As a young boy I went sailing in a series of small centreboard dinghies and over about a decade I helped my father build a 12-metre motorboat. New Zealand and American boating magazines were staple reading at home and, for a period of time, Christmas and birthday presents consisted of books on most matters nautical. In the early 1990s I worked in the United Kingdom for a sailing training organisation on 70-foot boats with a crew of up to 18. On my return to New Zealand I purchased an offshore yacht and cruised the south west Pacific. In more recent years I have sailed Outward Bound cutters (open boats designed along the lines of traditional Royal Naval vessels as used by Captain Bligh), racing yachts and now on my own boat. I have also sea kayaked in Scotland, south east Australia and New Zealand. For me, the sea is far from featureless. The Irish Sea is different from the Hauraki Gulf, which is different from the slow rolling mass of Pacific swells. The colour, the temperature, the shape of the waves, the types of boats and the people who inhabit these sea places differ. The professional Scottish fisher, used to toiling in the Atlantic, is a different character from the Tongan fisher who fishes for family and community from an open canoe, who is in turn different from the Moreton Bay (Australia) recreational fisher in a purpose-built day-boat. Each of these illustrative groups enters into a relationship with the sea on which they fish. This relationship is impacted by the economic importance of their task (occupation, source of necessary nutrition, or leisure activity); the nature of the sea on which they perform their tasks (depth of water, level of exposure to wind/waves, water temperature); the materiality of their environment (access to steel, timber, aluminium or fibreglass) and their cultural history with the sea (economic resource to be exploited/conserved, a sacred ‘spiritscape’, or a playground). Each of these examples serves to point out the reciprocity between people and the sea that they inhabit; some by choice and others by necessity.

The meanings that are given to the sea have been referred to as timeless, in that we have always tried to make meaning of our relationship, but they are certainly not changeless (Osborn, 1977). Osborn has argued that ‘the changing face of the sea symbol illustrates how even the archetype can be transformed by dramatic changes in human circumstance’ (p. 347). In the section that follows I provide a brief outline of some of the major representations of the sea that have shaped Western thought.

Representations of the Sea

Steinberg (1999a) points out that, ‘Modern-era representations and regulations of ocean spaces are particular to our society and have their origins in underlying social structures and uses of the sea’ (p. 408). A number of authors have provided detailed analyses of the changing representations of the sea in Western thought that are worthy of further exploration (see Auden, 1951; Connery, 2006; Ford and Brown, 2006; Lambert, Martins and Ogborn, 2006; Peters, 2010; Phelan, 2007; Raban, 1992; Steinberg, 2001).

The Sea as Dangerous and Chaotic

Auden (1951) outlines how Western societies have been influenced by the Judaeo-Christian narratives of Genesis and Greek cosmologies to construct a view of the seas that has created a powerful metaphor of the sea as dangerous and chaotic. Connery (2006) details Biblical influences on Western understandings of the sea and notes that Revelation (21:1) portrays an apocalyptic vision in which a new earth will be rid of the disorderly sea. In mapping the influence of these early representations Auden (1951) noted that the sea was positioned as a ‘barbaric vagueness and disorder out of which civilisation has emerged and into which, unless saved by the efforts of gods and men, it is always liable to relapse’ (pp. 18–19). Early representations reinforced conceptions of the sea as a place of fear and repulsion that are still manifest in contemporary discourses (Ford and Brown, 2006). For example, see Brown and Penney’s (2014) analysis of public reaction to Jessica Watson’s solo sailing circumnavigation.

Ford and Brown (2006) suggest that Renaissance perspectives (for example, exemplified by Shakespeare) provide a ‘bridge between the primarily dark and negative classical and medieval attitudes to the sea and the later more positive perspectives’ (Ford and Brown, 2006, p. 10). They suggest that Shakespeare’s work illustrates a transition from portraying the sea as a site of fear to one where the sea, and a voyage on it, could become a site for cleansing and transformation. This re-shaping of the sea mixed notions of fear and repulsion with the possibility for redemption in and though the sea (Osborn, 1977).

Sea as a Blank Public Space

Ford and Brown (2006) suggest that advances in science and the development of new technologies have reshaped perceptions of the sea. As our understanding of the natural world increased, ancient myths and misconceptions about the sea were supplemented by more reasoned understandings.

These advances underlay Europe’s ‘Age of Discovery’ as imperial expansion and state rivalries led to voyages to ever-more distant parts of the globe, fuelled by a sense of adventure, enchantment with and attraction to exotic shores in search of profit and glory. (Ford and Brown, 2006, p. 11)

Imperial agendas and capitalism had a profound effect on the production of sea space as a blank public space. Steinberg (1999a) details the rise of the modern sea-space regime based on the legal principle of imperium derived from the Roman control of the Mediterranean. ‘According to this doctrine, the ocean is immune to incorporation within the territory of any individual state, but, as an essential space of society …’ (Steinberg, 1999a, p. 408). This was expressed in Grotius’ 1608 influential treatise Mare Liberum [Freedom of the Seas] (Steinberg, 2001). This approach was well suited to the mercantile trade; the sea could not be possessed. According to Steinberg (2001), mare liberum was central to capitalist constructions of the ocean-space as an empty, non-territorial domain, an ‘asocial space between societies’ (p. 208). McNiven (2008) has argued that this emptiness is manifest in the ‘cartographic tradition of representing sea-space two dimensionally as homogenized blue space and necessitated a new (arbitrary) geo-referencing grid system of latitude and longitude for European ocean navigation’ (p. 150).

‘Mare liberum’ is a construct that has served particular economic and political agendas. McNiven (2008), drawing on Nonie Sharp, suggests that the notion of mare liberum concealed more complex and localised associations with particular seascapes in small indigenous communities – including those in Scandinavia. Likewise Steinberg (1999a) has compared the notion of mare liberum, as a social construction of the ocean, to a range of other societies. He notes that in some societies in Oceania, for example, the sea is an integral space of society and is governed like the land. Hence Steinberg’s (2001) assertion that what we take to ‘be’ the ocean, and our understandings of it (for example, the extent of the freedom of the sea and what might fall within the realm of territorial jurisdiction), is a social construction.

Sea as Sublime, Wild Nature

European Romanticism, as a reaction against rationalism, materialism, imperial expansionism, industrialisation and environmental despoliation, gave rise to a new way to view the sea as an exemplar of the sublime. It has been argued that romanticism marked a fundamental change in the symbolic meaning ascribed to the sea (Auden, 1951; Osborn, 1977).

Auden (1951) suggests that the Romantic inclination heralded in a new attitude to the sea. However, Osborn (1977) argues that the Romantic conception was a development of ideas that featured in many of the early epic poems. In these epic accounts, the sea dealt harshly with ships that carried ‘wicked or morally polluted persons’ (Osborn, 1977, p. 349). Auden (1951) suggests that the Romantic movement stressed firstly, that men of sense and honour should desire to leave the land and city; secondly, ‘the sea is the real situation and the voyage is the true condition of man’; and thirdly, ‘The sea is where decisive events, the moments of eternal choice, of temptation, fall and redemption occur. The shore life is always trivial’ (p. 23).

Romanticism drew on the discontent with industrialisation and the notions of the sea as a blank site where one might be free. Through adventure one might escape the banalities of shore-based life and its contaminating influences.

Men came to find in the ocean a large-scale, concrete projection of what they felt in grander moments to be their own depth, immensity, mystery, and permanence … For such persons, the sea came to represent freedom, an opportunity for the self-realization which had been denied on shore. (Osborn, 1977, p. 357)

Interestingly, Osborn observed that, though the newer poetic metaphors of the sublime gained traction, elements of traditional perspectives of the sea, as immense and dangerous, remained. This was no placid tamed sea. It was a wilderness that stood in contrast to the domesticated and despoiled landscape.

It was a wilderness in which one could venture and create one’s own destiny. As Ford and Brown (2006) note, ‘The sea, especially in its wild and stormy incarnation, appeared as a recurring symbol of wild nature beyond the stifling control of reason … the creative contribution of the Romantic movement was to propound a coherent discourse of the sea, which enhanced the emotional strategy of enjoying the seashore’ (p. 12).

Ford and Brown (2006) argue that the Romantic image of the sea continues to shape contemporary perceptions. I am reminded of the opening chapter in Jonathan Raban’s (1987) Coasting, in which he describes the preparations for his sailing trip around the British Isles. Tracing a lineage of coasters who recorded their journeys (McGregor, Middleton and Belloc), Raban describes his search for a suitable boat and the conversations he has with men who share similar dreams. ‘What unites us more deeply is a compulsive itch for the escape valve of a wilderness, an open frontier, and that even now Britain does have a last frontier, in the sea’ (p. 35).

I wonder if I am ‘afflicted’ with a dose of romanticism. There is something special and satisfying about rounding a headland and entering the lee of the land, dropping anchor and relaxing after a ‘fair old bashing’. Yet I’ve never thought of the sea as a wilderness – to me wilderness conjures up images of high mountain peaks or dense forests. It involves consciously embarking on an adventure and embracing risks. I’ve never thought of the sea in this way. At times it fills me with anxiety, and boredom and pleasure. Sometimes when I’m at sea I can think of nothing more pleasant than being in a warm dry café. Sometimes being out here is just shitty, when my stomach has turned itself inside out and I’m cold and tired it’s not much fun. I’m not escaping ‘civilisation’. I’m not looking to build character or reveal my ‘true’ nature – being at sea is just what I enjoy – despite the shitty moments. It’s not a battle against the elements (I’m far too much of a fair weather sailor to want to conquer anything). The sea is, just as the land is, and the air is. Seasickness quickly dispels the poetic or sublime images of the sea. But I’m also conscious of that which is difficult to articulate, that sense of being that cannot be adequately described in words or rational explanations. To try and progress this chapter I’ve come to the boat. But I haven’t gone anywhere – I’m still gently rocking on the pile moorings. I came here because I knew that the movement, the creaks and groans and the wind in the rigging would help me to think and write.

This brief sketch of key elements in representations of the sea highlights the changing perspectives of the sea, which Ford and Brown suggest act ‘as a mirror to humankind and the human condition’ (2006, p. 12). Our relationship with the sea reflects the myths, beliefs and knowledge of our times. Through time, our understandings of the sea have changed as a result of social and technological changes in society. However, elements of these conceptions continue to permeate Western attitudes to the sea. For example, Steinberg (1999a) suggests that the seas are still seen ‘as an empty void to be annihilated by hypermobile capital’ (p. 403). Bespoke sailing events provide amateur adventurers with the opportunity to test themselves against the challenges of the Southern Ocean (for example, www.clipperroundtheworld.com). The sea, as a site of fear and repulsion, continues to feature in movies aimed at the general public (for example, Deep...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Seascapes
• 2 Embodied Narratives: Being with the Sea
• 3 Seaspaces: Surfing the Sea as Pedagogy of Self
• 4 On Being Shaped by Surfing: Experiencing the World of the Littoral Zone
• 5 Sailing across the Cook Strait
• 6 Being a Brown Bodyboarder
• 7 Sailing with Gregory Bateson
• 8 In the Middle of the Deep Blue Sea
• 9 Standing then Floating: Searching for a Sense of Sea-Place on the South Coast of Australia
• 10 In the Name of the Whale
• 11 Unlikely Becomings: Passion, Swimming and Learning to Love the Sea
• 12 ‘Do we keel haul the little %$#@ or chuck him in the chain locker?’ How Life at Sea Becomes ‘Stories to Live By’ for a Woman on a Fishing Vessel
• 13 Embodied Narratives and Fluid Geographies
• Index