This week’s choice is another that was prompted by Jesse Gilbert. It is “The White Ships and the Red” by Joyce Kilmer.
The ghostly vessels trembled
Joyce Kilmer (1886—1918)
From ruined stern to prow;
What was this thing of terror
That broke their vigil now?
Down through the startled ocean
A mighty vessel came,
Not white, as all dead ships must be,
But red, like living flame!
Poem 431. The White Ships and the Red
With dropping sail and pennant
That never a wind may reach,
They float in sunless waters
Beside a sunless beach.
Their mighty masts and funnels
Are white as driven snow,
And with a pallid radiance
Their ghostly bulwarks glow.
Here is a Spanish galleon
That once with gold was gay,
Here is a Roman trireme
Whose hues outshone the day.
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
And prows that once were bright
With rainbow stains wear only
Death’s livid, dreadful white.
White as the ice that clove her
That unforgotten day,
Among her pallid sisters
the grim Titanic lay.
And through the leagues above her
She looked aghast, and said:
“What is this living ship that comes
Where every ship is dead?”
The ghostly vessels trembled
From ruined stern to prow;
What was this thing of terror
That broke their vigil now?
Down through the startled ocean
A mighty vessel came,
Not white, as all dead ships must be,
But red, like living flame!
The pale green waves about her
Were swiftly, strangely dyed,
By the great scarlet stream that flowed
From out her wounded side.
And all her decks were scarlet
And all her shattered crew.
She sank among the white ghost ships
And stained them through and through.
The grim Titanic greeted her.
“And who art thou?” she said;
“Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet
Arrayed in living red?
We are the ships of sorrow
Who spend the weary night,
Until the dawn of Judgement Day,
Obscure and still and white.”
“Nay,” said the scarlet visitor,
“Though I sink through the sea,
A ruined thing that was a ship,
I sink not as did ye.
For ye met with your destiny
By storm or rock or fight,
So through the lagging centuries
Ye wear your robes of white.
“But never crashing iceberg
Nor honest shot of foe,
Nor hidden reef has sent me
The way that I must go.
My wound that stains the waters,
My blood that is like flame,
Bear witness to a loathly deed,
A deed without a name.
“I went not forth to battle,
I carried friendly men,
The children played about my decks,
The women sang—and then—
And then—the sun blushed scarlet
And Heaven hid its face,
The world that God created
Became a shameful place!
“My wrong cries out for vengeance,
The blow that sent me here
Was aimed in Hell. My dying scream
Has reached Jehovah’s ear.
Not all the seven oceans
Shall wash away that stain;
Upon a brow that wears a crown
I am the brand of Cain.”
When God’s great voice assembles
The fleet of Judgement Day,
The ghosts of ruined ships will rise
In sea and strait and bay.
though they have lain for ages
Beneath the changeless flood,
They shall be white as silver,
But one—shall be like blood.
This poem was written in response to one of the great tragedies of the First World War. In 1915, the RMS Lusitania was crossing the Atlantic from New York to Liverpool with nearly 2,000 people on board, mostly British, Canadian and American citizens. As she passed along the south coast of Ireland, a German U-boat hit her with a torpedo and she sank in less than 20 minutes, only six of her four dozen lifeboats being launched due to the way in which she sank. There were 767 survivors, four of whom later died.
The attack brought widespread condemnation and contributed to the eventual declaration of war by the USA on Germany in 1917. The Germans considered it a legitimate target because they claimed it was carrying ammunition, was an armed warship and was carrying Canadian troops. The last two of these claims were firmly debunked by the American authorities who had inspected the ship before it sailed from New York—it was unarmed and carried no troops. The ammunition on board was part of a declared cargo of ‘war materials’ totalling 173 tons (on a 44,000-ton liner).
The American journalist, editor and poet Joyce Kilmer read the report of the sinking and was inspired to write this poem which contrasts the sinking of the innocent Lusitania with that of other ships who sank in battle or by honest accident. The other named ship in the poem is the Titanic, whose loss was so keenly felt just three years previously, and which Kilmer personifies as a kind of authority figure speaking for the others. He uses a striking opposition of colours: white to signify the ships who had met their ends legitimately and red for the Lusitania, sunk (as he saw it) by an underhand act.
The poem begins with the sunken ships pictured at rest on the sea floor, bleached by their years under water and glowing with the phosphorescence of marine animals. A Spanish galleon that carried gold from the New World to the Old, a trireme of the Roman Empire and “the grim Titanic”—the bright colours they sported in life faded to a livid white.
Their repose is interrupted by the arrival of another ship that disturbs and outrages them: a ship that, far from being cloaked in decent white “as all dead ships must be”, it is “red, like living flame” and has a cruel gash on her side that streams scarlet, staining the pristine colourlessness of the others. The Titanic challenges the newcomer—“Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet/Arrayed in living red?” and the visitor explains that though she sinks just as the others sank, her destruction came as the result of “a loathly deed,/A deed without a name.”
She describes the innocence of her passengers: the men, women and children on the decks unsuspecting of the dreadful fate that suddenly encompassed them, the shameful act prompting Heaven to hide its face. She says that the cowardly and evil blow “aimed in Hell” has placed the mark of Cain (the first murderer in the Bible) on “a brow that wears a crown” (I presume Kilmer is branding the Kaiser here).
The poem ends with Kilmer imagining the scene on Judgment Day: when all the sunken ships are raised from the deep, there will be a fleet of ghostly white ships but one will be red as blood. Sadly, in the years that have passed since Kilmer wrote “The White Ships and the Red” there have been more such tragedies where civilians have suffered through the acts of war, and the Day of Judgment will likely see many more vessels and other means of transport dyed scarlet than Kilmer suggests.
The British soldier-poet Rupert Brooke had died of blood poisoning the same year as the sinking of the Lusitania and Kilmer wrote the poem “In Memory of Rupert Brooke” for him. After the USA joined the war in 1917, Kilmer himself fought in the trenches of France and was killed by a sniper’s bullet on 19 July 1918. He is now remembered chiefly for his poem “Trees”, and I have to admit that I had no idea of his story until I listened to Jesse Gilbert’s musical setting of the poem and read more about him.
Much of the factual information on this poem comes from David F. Beer’s fascinating article, “Alfred Joyce Kilmer, Poet and War Poet” and from the Wikipedia article on the Lusitania.
I like it because it tells the story obliquely but effectively and it describes the sunken ships and the stricken Lusitania so well.
The performance I have chosen is Jesse Gilbert’s.