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Extract, ‘That Sundered Sea’ by Sir Mortimer Lowestoft-Gaskil

Writer's picture: MANDRAKE PANMANDRAKE PAN

Updated: Jan 12

From ‘Challengingly Long Poems of the Age.’ Edited by Margery Chupps {London: Gosling & French, 1934}


Lashed to Mast, the Ocean Boils
Lashed to Mast, the Ocean Boils

Above and thunder cracks the night

Below the ocean swells,

We’d set our course for Terror Isle,

But found ourselves in Hell!


Still, Billy cries: ‘Ho! It’s land!’

‘I see beyond the spume!’

‘Then fast all hands!” I bellow loud,

‘Or we shall come to doom!’


Great waves they tossed us to and fro,

Great sharks they snap our keel,

As pitched and pulled we skirt the coast,

The Devil on our heels!


‘Lord! Give us strength, and some small hope!”

I hear the bos’un moan.

Yet clutched we are by Neptune’s net,

Split ‘cross the decks in foam!


I clawed for purchase on a rope,

My teeth clenched fast my pipe.

Huge waves rose up about us

Like blackened marbled tripe.


Yet though upon Death’s sliding cloak,

We shook and cut and reeled,

I saw that figure standing proud

His hand upon the wheel!


‘It’s Grapeshot! See! He takes the helm!”

The chief mate gave a hoot.

And in the speckled mist I spy,

The wink of that cheroot!


Aye, twas true! There Gordon Grapeshot stood,

Like a beacon for the crew!

Guiding us beyond the reefs,

And a chance to make it through!

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