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Endurance
Endurance! A three-masted barquentine
has lain a century beneath the ice.
In frigid-climed Antarctica she’s been
athwart the ocean floor. She paid the price
for Man’s relentless struggle to compete
with elements that Nature brings to bear.
For months she’d creaked and groaned as ice floes beat
against her lumbered hull, to rend and tear
until (a wreck already) she slipped down
beneath the frozen landscape, cracked and crushed,
without her polar expedition crown
while stranded crewmen watched aghast and hushed.
__Near pristine, on the sea bed she’s at rest
__where ghostly-pale anemones infest.
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Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
Extremely well written account with appropriate ice-cold frozen images that made me shiver. I can just imagine the crew being stranded under such conditions. I do wonder if they were rescued. This is my first time to acquaint myself with the word “barquentine.” The easy flow of your words across more than one line while maintaining the rhyme is exquisite and I imagine it takes considerable intellectual prowess.
Thanks for your comments, Roy. You’ll be glad to know, as I was, that all the crew survived and were rescued.
Thank you, Paul – a lovely and evocative sonnet. I especially love the expressive pairing, and the rhyme, of ‘cracked and crushed…aghast and hushed’.
Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment, Bruce. It was an exciting subject to research and write about.
Although the discovery of the Endurance was only a couple years ago, it seemed to be a story that made huge headlines and then quickly disappeared, I looked up photos of the wreck this morning, fantastic. Thank you for a great poem to start the day.
Glad I was able to start your day off so positively, Phil.
I think the fact that the ship is relatively inaccessible and unsalvageable (if indeed it’s worth salvaging) has taken it out of the news cycle, unlike that Spanish galleon with billions of dollars worth of gold beneath it.
Paul, your sonnet skillfully melds natural-sounding enjambment and perfect rhyme. As I read it, I could feel the cold.
That you ‘felt’ the poem is a great compliment, Mary.
Thank you for reading.
Isn’t it wonderful that the name of this barquentine (“Endurance”) is also the proper word for how the vessel has survived in icy waters for decades, with no major disintegration? Sometimes the Roman adage “nomen est omen” is really true.
It’s a beautiful sonnet in perfect meter. Notice that Paul has the volta after a sestet, and that the following six lines are completely enjambed as a single sentence. Also, line seven ends with the verb “beat,” which is past tense (to go along with all the other verbs in that section), but the verb “to beat” has the same form in the present tense. This adds a shiver of ambiguity and uncertainty for the reader as he looks at the line for the first time. It’s a nice touch.
Barquentine, schooner, sloop, galleon, brigantine… I wish someone would write a poem about all of the many names that are used to describe sail ships.
The name of the ship is indeed fitting.
Thank you for your positive comments, they mean a lot, especially after the time spent researching the ship’s fate and then having to tell the story within the constraints of a sonnet.
Clever idea, Paul, to replace the polar expedition crew (who did all escape and survive) with ghost anemones. Your final word “infest” suggests to the imagination a crowd of them attaching themselves to the sunken ship as they would ordinarily affix themselves to rocks on the sea floor. Good undersea visual image!
Thank you for commenting Margaret, and congrats on your recent win.
The pictures of the anemones are incredibly eerie and did indeed bring to mind the image of a replacement crew.
Thank you, Paul, for pointing out the Classical Association competition, and for suggesting me as a competitive entrant.
You’re most welcome. I had a hunch the competition could be right up your alley.
My entry was the poem about Great Zimbabwe, which although not a hit with the Classical Association, found a home here at the SCP.
You might or might not know this, Paul, but a few years ago they discovered a case of whisky from that expedition in the ice. It was the MacKinley brand, or something like that. The whisky was still good, and expert whisky tasters & blenders reconstructed its profle with malts available today, the result of which which was marketed as Shackleton. I’ve had a couple of bottles of it and it’s not bad; there may still be some available.
It must be amazing what’s preserved in the ice and old expedition buildings. I’ll look out for a bottle of 100-year old Shackleton whiskey.
It is new whisky and comes with no age-statement, Paul; it’s just a reconstruction.
A great poem, Paul, well-written and interesting. Like a good poem should, it opens a door and makes me want to learn more about Endurance and the Shackleton expedition. Thanks for broadening me a little.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Carey. I’ve always been fascinated by the Antarctic. Researching this poem broadened me, too.
Lately, I’ve been dabbling a lot in historical events, and any related poem I come across doubles my enthusiasm. This is one of those pieces. Frankly speaking, I was not aware of Endurance the barquentine but after reading your layered, well-crafted, and flawless sonnet, Mr. Freeman, I did a bit of research and learned a thing or two about it. Thank you for this informative piece!
I thank you for your humbling comments, Shamik. Endurance was from another age. As said earlier, the ship was well named.
This is an excellent, very interesting poem, which sent me to the dictionary more than once. The final line brought to mind the last line of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach. Fine work, Paul.
Thank you very much, Russel.
Paul, a great story well told. The tale of the loss of this vessel and the survival of all the crew is an epic boys own adventure. The 2002 tv series featuring Kenneth Branagh is superb.
Thanks, Jeff. I’ll have to check out the TV series.
How strange to hear someone else got an echo of Arnold as well. In other strangeness, I wonder how you happen to pronounce, “Ophir,” for Rumours of Ophir. One quirky thought: I think the “o” and “i” were originally thought of as short and that it corresponds to Afar in Ethiopia. Just a rando thought.
Back to endurance. What a great subject to choose; what a strange juxtaposition. Endurance now has rest and need endure no more.
I’m having a read of ‘Dover Beach’ now. I’m not the most well-read of poets.
Rumours of Ophir (a detective novel set in Zimbabwe) was my first serious writing undertaking. I didn’t start with short stories as I was apparently supposed to. I sent the manuscript to three local publishers about a week before I had to leave the country, it got picked up by an imprint of Macmillan and spent 4 years on the English Literature syllabus. The whole project was pre-computer, typed on a typewriter with hand-written corrections. Ophir is the mythical King Solomon’s Mines, mentioned in the Bible. I’m not 100% sure of the pronunciation, but the ‘o’ I believe is as in ‘on’, while ‘fir’ would be pronounced like ‘fear’.
Back to Endurance, the story and pictures were so haunting, I couldn’t resist.