MASEFIELD'S EULOGY
To those who expected that John Masofield's first book since his elevation to the Poet Laureateship of England would be a book of poems, "Tho Wanderer of Liverpool" must have come as somewhat as a surprise. Thero is some poetry in "Tho "Wanderer of Liverpool," and this is of the sea-bal-lad kind that has made tho poet popular; but tho book is chiefly an account of the life and death of a strong and beautiful sailing ship. . Tho Wanderer was a four-masted barque built at Liverpool in 1890-1891 by AY. 11. Potter. The builder, Mr. Masefield tells us, "was daily about her on the slips, and often worked upon her with his own hands. He meant to make her the strongest and the most beautiful ship afloat. In this, in the opinion of many sailors, he succeeded. Mr. Masefield adds his own tribute: '' Of all the many, marvellous ships of that time, she moves me the most, ao the strongest, the. loveliest, and the one I am gladdest to have seen." Her first captain, who was ■• hurt so that he died in the storm that overwhelmed her the first time she put to sea, was "genial George Currie" of San Francisco. Her first long voyage was to San Francisco, in 1891. She was three times afterward in San Francisco Bay, in 1902, in 1904, and in 1906, only a day or so after the disaster of earthquake and fire. Old salts remember her; she was a glory on the 'seas. The greater part of Mr. Masefield's book is just the kind of talk about her that old sailors like, and it is a kind that only they can fully comprehend; it is Greek to landlubbers. Mr..Masefield rfot only tells, in nautical prose, and with the aid of pictures, plans, and diagrams, just what manner of ship the AVanderer was, and just nrhere she went on the seas, and just what her freights and adventures were; he also celebrates in narrative verse her beauty, her first putting to sea in a storm, and her last voyage. It is not by any means his best verse, yet there is in it some of the magic that onty Masefield can make.'
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 32, 7 February 1931, Page 21
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370MASEFIELD'S EULOGY Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 32, 7 February 1931, Page 21
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