Ps 107: 23-30

Those who go down to the sea in ships …

 

   Here is an old friend who stands his watch unwaveringly. We have eaten on the pier down the street  on more than one occasion, walked the drawbridge into Gloucester time and again,  and  sat on the bench before  him  gazing out past the breakers watching the ships go in and out of the harbor. We leave, come back, age, and change, but he remains timeless and unchanging, there on his on his endless watch.

      Dressed in oilskins that never wear out, gnarled hands forever gripping the wheel, peering through salt encrusted eyelids over the railing on Stacey Street, he searches  forever for those long lost at sea. The sign under the famous statue of the Gloucester fisherman reads; “They that go down to the sea in ships; 1623-1927”

            What does he see out there, out beyond the breakers, out where they tankers wait to unload and the trawlers prowl? What do those eyes that look forever outward see? If we could get his attention for just a moment, what would he say?

       Would he have a timeless message, or a warning to the wary traveler? Would he recount the tale of Howard Blackburn and his dorymate who set off for shore from their schooner one night in 1887 and were quickly covered with a dense fog. Would he remind of how, after three days in the freezing fog, Howard arrived in Newfoundland with fingers frozen hard to the oars, his doryman covered in ice, resting in eternal sleep?

         He would need a hundred years to tell of the 10 thousand who have gone down to the seas in ships, the ten thousand honored there who now rest in those watery graves.

         But maybe, just maybe, he might read you the Psalm that more clearly portrays the final resting place of many of these ancient mariners, the Psalm placed there upon the plaque of the Gloucester Fisherman.

  Those who go down to the sea in ships …They see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.  ……He makes the storm into a calm, so that the waves are at peace.  Then they are glad, because the sea is quiet, and he takes them to the harbor of their desire.