In Competition No. 3243, you were invited to submit a poem about the recent discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance.
This comp, suggested by a kind reader who thought a chink of good cheer amid the general bleakness worth celebrating, elicited a smallish entry in which echoes ranged from Keats to Benny Hill. An honourable mention to David Silverman’s haiku:
Fuss over a boat Goes to show the importance Of being Ernest
The winners, printed below, net their authors £25 each.
Chill polar sirens wooed Ernest H. Shackleton, Singing him southward with Wintry allure. Ice trapped and sank him, then Hypergelidity Deep undersea helped his Ship to endure. Weddell Sea life forms are Contra-xylophagous. Vessels of wood are a Snack they abjure. Far from a warmer sea’s Biodiversity, Shackleton sank where his Ship could endure. Chris O’Carroll
Two thousand fathoms deep Endurance lies at rest upon the Weddell Sea’s soft bed, and, though abandoned, finds a different guise, suff’ring a sea-change once her crew had fled. The hull survives, and nothing of her fades – with creatures of the depths she lives again, a crew of sea-stars, sponges, now invades the empty space once occupied by men. Anemones upon the starboard bow, another takes its place behind the wheel, a ghostly-white ‘squat’ lobster claims the prow and colonies of sea-squirts clutch the keel. Now, undisturbed, the ship rests in the deep While, rich and strange, these creatures guard her sleep. Sylvia Fairley
That ship was filmed in nineteen-fifteen, when It sank below the ice. And then again Cameras were on hand when it was found. The ship’s crew had escaped. No one was drowned When it went down beneath the Weddell Sea, To lie there for more than a century, But other young men died that very day In Flanders, more than half a world away. The crew, the soldiers, all of them are gone. We check the dates, remember Shackleton From the Boys’ Book of Heroes long ago, And seek on maps places we do not know. Near
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in