“ The true peace of God ,” Joseph Conrad wrote , “ begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land .” Conrad knew the oceans , their rages and their might , but when you talk to master mariners it is the wonder and the balm of the seas that moves them , not the storms . I went around the world on freighters , with the captains and crews of container ships . My first captain was like a Danish bear , grizzled with bulk and taciturnity . Great seas and hard-working ships make and reward strong , unsentimental people , and Captain Larsen was such a man . He expressed his orders curtly and his kindness gruffly , and taking our ship across the Atlantic , across the Mediterranean , through Suez and the Indian Ocean , through the Malacca Straits , across the South China Sea and across the Pacific kept him very busy . But in the midst of a lifetime of voyages he was still as delighted as I was by the universe that is the sea . We came across whales several times ; to encounter those great citizens of the blue world is to understand how truly rich and strange our planet is . “ I want to get that whale and take him home to my wife !” the captain said . I knew what he
Words HORATIO CLARE