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Chapter 4 - There Go the
Ships -
From There Go the Ships by George Shirley
Page 58
pocket-knife we had. And the music of the sea is
the spell and inspiration under which a Briton passes restless from
shore to shore. Through every valley of our isle, as through the
hollows of the ocean, still the irresistible voice of the waves
passes inland, and draws with the power of a magnet. or the voice
of a siren the country lads, and woos them to the shore and these,
gazing upon the boundless horizon, feel a desire to see what is
beyond. "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business
in great waters. These see the works of the
Lord,
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and His wonders in the deep."
I have often thought we are very much like ships. Often, when
quite a lad, have I gazed on those enormous three-deckers, pierced
for one hundred and twenty guns, that were building in our dockyards,
on the slips from which they were to be launched, when I looked
up standing under the stern, and saw twenty-six feet. water mark,
that was to be the draught when she was afloat, and then above
that three gun decks, and the quarter-deck, and the poop rising
above that again-altogether more than fifty feet deep and sixty
feet wide, with a length of three hundred feet.. Then the immense
amount of timber of such wonderful shapes and sizes, so nicely
fitted as to make a complete structure, and strike the beholder
with wonder. But they are a thing of the past, none building in
our dockyards now.
David looked at his body and said "I am fearfully and wonderfully
made, and that my soul knoweth right well." Our body is indeed
" curiously wrought," wonderfully framed together, similar
to ships in their
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© Peter Smith 2009
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