Rolling boat on roiling seas: heaving and creaking & pitching and listing -- Decks shifting between untenable states, Crew tying in, tethering to what might become the anchor around their collective necks, pulling them all to the depths - 'til the last bubble spills upward from a nostril.
The Flor de La Mar was a Portuguese ship laden with loot stolen from Malacca when it sunk. This scale replica is a museum (Muzium Sumadera) in Malacca.
Out of a fired ship, which by no way But drowning could be rescued from the flame, Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay; So all were lost, which in the ship were found, They in the sea being burnt, They in the burnt ship drown'd.
Back in the days of wooden sailing ships
some unsaid words could never grace the lips:
the "calms," or "doldrums," signed apocalypse.
Better storm than lull end one's life of trips.
A ship
crosses the ocean,
in the darkness:
darkness, black & endless
no moon,
no stars,
just clouds -- thick & low
clouds that can't be seen
The ship has lights,
but those lights know
an event horizon
Lights sometime
glint against the waves,
those roiling & undulating
waves,
and the lights bounce off
the ship's hull
But no one can see them,
because if anyone could see them,
the seers would be seen--
unless theirs is a ghost ship,
piloted by literal ghosts,
or some other agent of observation
Maybe there is fog --
not enveloping the ship,
(such mist would be felt
on the skin of those on deck)
but, rather, a fog between
where the ship is,
and where is should be
For it is surely off course,
listlessly drifting,
all hope arrayed against edges:
edges of ice
&
edges of the world
Not that the world is flat,
but, perhaps, it's not fully sculpted:
maybe nothing lies outside
the range of the seen:
outside the bounds of experience
It sounds crazy,
but all kinds of crazy
form in a mind
submerged in darkness
At the harbor at Fort Kochi, where ships enter the Arabian Sea, there are old Chinese Fishing Nets lining the coast. The nets don’t yield many fish in this area, but exist more as a tourist attraction. The fixed, lever-lowered nets were actually introduced by the Portuguese–albeit Portuguese who had spent time in southern China (i.e. Macau.)
The port at Kochi (Cochin) is one of India’s major transportation hubs (11th largest by tonnage and 8th largest by number of containers.) In addition to modern products, the port still handles a lot of the spice that made Kochi an important center of trade since ancient times.
The channel has to be dredged to keep a clear path for the large number of ships transiting in and out of port.