The Spectator at war: The spirit of the sailor

The most curious thing of all is that the sailor should become so much a part of his peculiar element that his detachment from the land is even more marked than the landsman’s imperfect acquaintance with the sea. The sailor comes on shore like a man penetrating doubtfully into an unknown hinterland; he has the air of a foreign being in the streets of his native land; he looks about him as though adventures might fall out of the sky. The author of The Ingoldsby Legends has described the impression made by the sailor on others :

“It’s very odd that sailor-men should talk so very queer—

And then he hitched his trousers up, as is, I’m told, their use ;

It’s very odd that sailor-men should wear those things so loose.”

And yet—to impose paradox on paradox—the sailor is not at all conscious that his peculiar element has constituted him the inhabitant of another world.