Watson and the Shark, by John Singleton Copley, 1778.

Watson and the Shark, by John Singleton Copley, 1778. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

The Sea

Volume VI, Number 3 | summer 2013

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Preamble

Sea Change

By Lewis H. Lapham

The sea offers a particular kind of freedom, though it’s one that comes at a price.

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A Winelike Sea

By Caroline Alexander

Homer’s famous “wine-dark sea” has left scholars wondering: how did the Greeks truly see the sea?

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Map

Water World

From radioactive waste to underwater cables, the world under the sea.

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Miscellany

According to a 2012 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, over 87 percent of global fish stocks are either “fully exploited” or “overexploited.”

c. 1880 | London

Love of the Sea

Joseph Conrad’s complicated relationship with the briny deep.More

1995 | Suffolk

Gazing into Eternity

W.G. Sebald goes fishing.More

c. 1856 | Louisiana

Liquid Eternity

Lafcadio Hearn on the shore and the “infinite blue ghost” beyond.More

Charts & Graphs

Talking Like a Sailor

Definitions from Admiral William Henry Smyth’s “The Sailor’s Word Book” (1867).

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Photograph of American dramatist Eugene O’Neill.

Engraving of Greek satirist Lucian.

Engraving of Scottish economist Adam Smith.

Painting of an older Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Portrait bust of presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey Homer.

Image of Japanese poet Kakinomoto Hitomaro.

Photograph of Rachel Carson

Manuscript image of St. Bede.

The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.

—Pliny the Elder, 77

Portrait bust of Roman poet Virgil.

Photograph of French writer Guy de Maupassant.

Virgil & Guy de Maupassant

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