Coleridge: Darker Reflections

Darker Reflections

“Signals, Drums, Guns, Bells, & the sound of Voices weighing up & clearing Anchors”. So Coleridge fled south aboard the Speedwell, expecting to die but half-hoping to be reborn. “Monday April 9th, 1804, really set sail…No health or Happiness without Work.”^>1

Behind him he left his family under Southey’s care in the Lake District; he left the Wordsworths and his love Sara Hutchinson; he left Charles Lamb and Daniel Stuart and all his London friends; each of them anxiously speculating about his future. “Far art thou wandered now,” wrote Wordsworth in The Prelude, “in search of health,/And milder breezes…Speed thee well”.^>2

Ahead of him lay the glittering Mediterranean, the legendary outposts of Gibraltar, Malta and Sicily, a war-zone of fleets and harbour-fortresses, where he would fight his own battles against opium and despair. “Do we not pity our past selves?” he reflected in his new Notebook, using a special metallic pencil designed to withstand sea-salt. “Is not this always accompanied by Hope? It makes the Images of the Past vivid…Are not vivid Ideas themselves a sort of pleasure, as Music whether sad or lively, is always Music?”^>3

Down in his cabin on the first night, he watched the lights of England recede along the Cornish coast through the brass porthole above his narrow berth. The 130-ton ship moved uneasily, not rolling on its beam, but rocking sharply from stem to stern, “as a cruel Nurse rocks a screaming baby”.^>4 Coleridge lay with his eyes closed, thirty-one years old, but hearing childhood music. “Thought of a Lullaby song, to a Child on a Ship: great rocking Cradle…creak of main top Irons, rattle of Ropes, & squeak of the Rudder…And so play Bo-peep with the Rising Moon, and the Lizard Light. ‘There is thy native country, Boy! Whither art thou going to…’”^>5

Coleridge’s ship the Speedwell was a two-masted merchant brig, lightly armed with fourteen guns, but carrying a heavy cargo of eighty-four cannons in her hold destined for Trieste.^>6 Smartly trimmed in silver and gold, she was one of the fastest merchants in the fleet, commanded by a thoughtful Scotsman, Captain John Findlay, from whom Coleridge gradually extracted much sea-lore, sailor’s yarns and sea-shanties.

She was part of the spring-time convoy of thirty-five ships, escorted by ten men-o’-war and the flagship HMS Leviathan, going to join Nelson’s fleet in the Mediterranean and carrying supplies to British and allied ports in the war against France and Spain. Having finally left Spithead on 9 April 1804, the first leg of their journey ran through the Bay of Biscay and round Cape St Vincent to Gibraltar.

As the French fleet under Villeneuve was bottled up by Nelson’s squadron off Toulon, the greatest danger came from privateers and corsairs operating out of Spanish and North African ports. So Captain Findlay cheerfully instructed Coleridge: “in a calm [they] will run out, pick up a merchant Vessel under the very stern of the Commodore, as a Fox will a Fowl when the Wolf dog that guards the poultry yard can only bark at him from his Chain”.^>7 Coleridge kept a close eye on the wind throughout their voyage, as he did on all other maritime matters, so the whole imagery of the sea journey came to possess him.

By the second day he had found his sea-legs, and with hair flying and double-waistcoats flapping, he patrolled the deck agog with excitement, questioning and noting. Nothing seemed to escape his attention. If a merchantman lagged behind or failed to obey signals, the seventy-four-gun Leviathan fired warning shots at her – “Commodore’s strengthening Pills for the Memory”, and a fine of five shillings.^>8 Down in the first hold, a sheep abandoned its hay, “kneeling its poor face to the Deck, its knees black, worn and sore…alas! it came from flat peaceable meadows”.^>9 At victuals, a ship’s boy ran up the rigging to the main top “with a large Leg of Mutton swung, Albatross-fashion about his neck”.^>10

Always there was “great sea-Savannah” rolling unpastured about them, in all its changing lights and sounds. “The beautiful bright Slate, & the Soap stone colour by the Vessel’s side, in a brisk gale, immediately under the mast in a froth-cream, that throws itself into network, with its brisk sound, which the word brisk itself may be made to imitate by hissing on the ‘isk’…”^>11 These observations went on constantly, by day and night, and several were later incorporated into the 1817 edition of the “Mariner”, such as the eerie light of the compass and rudder-man’s lamp “reflected with forms on the Main Sail”.