No. 647: The winners

Charles Seaton reports: Competitors were asked to add to our store of poetical sea-pieces by commenting on the impressive spectacle of huge oil tankers apparently queueing up to col- lide, run aground or just fall apart all along our coast. And how they responded! Visions of the Channel covered with a two-inch layer of crude oil and sludge, the product of collisions, wrecks, leaks or just plain illegal tank-cleaning, and a dirty tidemark all along the English and French coasts, brought out a bigger entry than for some weeks. Whither, 0 splendid ship, indeed!

The prospect may not really be as bad as that, but if Henry Newbolt (along with Mase- field, Kipling and Thomas Campbell, to men- tion the particularly marine, and Cowper, Blake, Noyes and Whitman among their not-so-marine progenitors-at-one-remove) is still sleeping there below, the backwash of this week's entries should bring him to. Masefield's 'Sea Fever,' was by far the most frequently imitated piece (and he wrote: 'I must down to the seas again . . .' Perhaps the musi- cal version by John Ireland is to blame for the almost universal 'I must go down . . .'). It produced one of the winners but also several admirable antidotes to the pressing earnestness of the original. Here are lines from two of them: I must go down to the sea again, if there's room to get afloat, And all I ask is a lot of luck and a non- capsizable boat . . . (Vincent Strudwick) Oh I must go down to the seas again, though it isn't all that urgent, And all I ask is some rubber boots, and a bucket of detergent .. a (C. H. W. Roll) The next most popular source of inspiration was also from Masefield—his 'Cargoes', but it lent itself less well to being sent up. At any rate it produced no winners.

It was evidently difficult to deal with the subject at all seriously, and get away with it. P. W. R. Foot did it as well as anyone and gets a prize. Nor is it easy to parody success- fully at any length, and the competition threw up a lot of quotable snippets, but few that were good all through.

Among the touches I liked best were these: Ye sailors of Liberia Who block the narrow seas!

Whose flag has graced uncounted wrecks Through grudging pilots' fees! (Peter Peterson) Tanker, tanker—left or right, Steaming coastwise—day or night; Have you starboard light and port— Warning, watching, as you ought?

Due to recent Channel wrecks Mutanda est Marina Lex .. (W. F. Owtram) Across the seas of Summertime To England's shore we speeded, Forty tanker sailors

With our oil-filled hold y g y

(H. A. C. Evans) Pakistans of Manupur from distant Bengal Rowing home to haven in rainy British soa, With a cargo of saris, And rice and chutney, False passports, currency, for illegal entry.

(T. Griffiths) Ahoy there, Grecian tanker, with a Panamanian flag.

Your Chinese helmsman's zigging when he surely ought to zag; Your Turkish master may have only qualified last June But if he's bound for Fawley he should alter course quite soon, (George van Schaick) V.L.C.C.* I see you, can you see me?

Skipper shouting 'Look, no hands' Grounds you on the Goodwin Sands.

(Vivian Wadham) *Very Large Crude Carrier, the oilmen's jargon for supertankers.

Commendations to all those quoted and prizes to J.E.C. (five pounds). P. W. R. Foot (four pounds) and L, E. C. Evans (three pounds).

(J.E.C.) (Sir Eric) Drake's Oil-Drum* Drake he's in his office nearly fifty storeys high (Chairman, art tha' lookin' down below?) While tankers cross each other's boivs so very closely by, An' o'er the wrecks an' through the shallows go. Yarnder leaks the crude oil, yarnder lie the slicks, Wi' Council Men a'sprayin' on the shore, An' the beach folk flyin' an' the sea-birds dyin' We'll see et an on telly as we've seen et an before.

Drake he's in his office while the Super Tankers come, (Chairman, art tha' lookin' down below?) Tankers of a million tons which greater depths can plumb, Whose foul pollution further still can flow. Yarnder lies our Island, a-shinin' black as pitch, Wi' scientists a-tcstin' of the soil,

'If we crash our Super Tankers we'll give folk this cause to thank us—

Not one ship comes up the Channel when it all gums up wi' oil'.

*Sir Eric Drake is Chairman of (P. W. R. Foot) I must go down to the seas again, to the lovely blue sea that's now gone, And all I ask is a tanker and some rocks to steer her on, And the oil slick and the sick swell and the white sand caking, And the dark slime on the sea's face, and the grey ships breaking.

I must go down to the seas again to the oily ships of death, The gull's way and the whale's way all choked by the stinking breath, And all I ask is a windy day with the bird life crying. And the oil-spray and the brown spume and the sea-gulls dying.

(L. E. C. Evans) Ye Mariners of England, Ye Coastguards of our shore, Prepare to meet a fiercer threat Than ever loured before.

From every undeveloped— The drained, exploited lands! They bring your hated riches, To pour them on your sands.

The fleets of the avengers Now blacken all the waves, On courses strange aberrant They seek for British graves.

Call out the washerwomen! Bring each detergent pack! Go meet them on the beaches! And drive the vandals back !