Rough Seas

 

Three Masts on a Rough Sea, 1856, Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865)

There are probably some painters who have never painted the sea nor a boat but there is an artistic fascination with the sublime. Sailing in perilous waters is one of the better known allegorical themes of the romantic age - a time that seemed fascinated by the thrill of Man using his inventive powers to confront the powers of nature. Seas had to be crossed. Men wanted to fly! In some ways the First world War was probably inevitable when the fingers of young aristocrats were just itching for a duel, blasting machine gun fire at each other at 3000 feet above the ground. Only a decade before that, the idea would have seemed preposterous. Nowadays fighters flying at 1500 mph are likely not even to see one another, so they use computer guided missiles instead but where is the fun in that?

People have now become accustomed to safe, comfortable travel in large ships and passenger planes that fly well above the weather conditions but it would do us well to not to take this convenience for granted in imagining the workings of the natural world. What can Man do without the aid of machines? Mind you, much of the world had been explored and indeed conquered well before the advent of the steam engine, so this historical fact might challenge the idea that machines are absolutely necessary for human advancement. Where there is a will, there is a way, so they say and it seems that it was the nature of that will rather than the means which made men travel and conquer.