The Wreck of the Hesperus

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"The Wreck of the Hesperus" is a poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, first published in Ballads and Other Poems in 1842.^[1]

Contents 1 Overview 2 Inspiration 3 In popular culture 4 References

[edit] Overview

"The Wreck of the Hesperus" is a story that presents the tragic consequences of a sea captain's pride. On an ill-fated voyage in the winter, he had his daughter aboard ship for company. The disaster came when the captain ignored the advice of one of his experienced men, who feared that a hurricane was approaching. When the hurricane arrives, he ties his daughter to the mast to prevent her from being swept overboard; she calls out to her dying father as she hears the surf beating on the shore, then prays to Christ to calm the seas. The ship crashes onto the reef of Norman's Woe and sinks; a horrified fisherman finds her body, still tied to the mast, drifting in the surf the next morning. The poem ends with a prayer that we all be spared such a fate "on the reef of Norman's Woe".

[edit] Inspiration

Longfellow combined fact and fancy to create this, one of his best-known, most macabre, and most enduring poems. His inspiration was the great Blizzard of 1839, which ravaged the northeast coast of the United States for 12 hours starting January 6, 1929, destroying over 1000 ships with a loss of over 40,000 lives.^[2] He probably drew specifically on the destruction of the Wiscasset, Maine ship Favorite on the reef of Norman's Woe (located off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts); all hands were lost, one of whom was a woman, who reportedly floated to shore dead but still tied to the mast.^[3] It is possible that this detail was taken from a different ship that foundered during the same storm, however.

[edit] In popular culture

Mad Magazine, in its early years, parodied much poetry by presenting the text with little or no change but with bizarre illustration by a member of its art staff. Wallace Wood took Longfellow's somber poem and illustrated it in a ridiculous manner, with a pint-sized captain, and a hideous, tall, buck-toothed daughter. The ship is found wrecked the morning after the storm, but the captain and his daughter survive and walk off along the shore (she is still tied to the broken-off twenty-foot-tall massive mainmast!), and the fisherman chases after them with her wig, shouting "Norman! Whoa!"

The Wreck of the Hesperus is also referenced in the comic song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg and performed by Groucho Marx in the Marx Brothers movie At the Circus (1939). It became one of Groucho's signature tunes.

Oh Lydia, oh Lydia, say, have you met Lydia?

Lydia The Tattooed Lady.

She has eyes that folks adore so,

And a torso, even more so.

Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclopedia,

Oh Lydia The Queen of Tattoo.

On her back is The Battle of Waterloo.

Beside it The Wreck of the Hesperus too.

And proudly above waves the red, white, and blue.

You can learn a lot from Lydia!"

The title phrase has also been used as a colloquial term in the UK to mean a "disheveled appearance," spoken as "You look like the wreck of the Hespress!". Its everyday use was greater in the 1950s to 1970s, and it is uncommon to hear it in the 21st century. Former Beatle George Harrison referenced this colloquial usage in writing his song "Wreck of the Hesperus," included on his 1987 album Cloud Nine.

[edit] References