The blessing of the sea

Brighton’s seafront witnessed a striking fusion of ritual, performance and protest this afternoon at the annual ‘Blessing of the Sea’. Clergy in white robes stood at the Doughnut Groyne beside the Palace Pier, leading prayers over the waters while a banner proclaimed ‘The sea is rising and so are we’. A few feet away, the Red Rebels of Extinction Rebellion moved in silent procession, their scarlet veils lifted in slow gestures of lament and warning. The scene unfolded beneath a cloudless August sky, the green bronze ‘Afloat’ sculpture framing both the pier and the gathering of worshippers. (See also Hamish Black’s Afloat.)

This year’s service was announced by the Diocese of Chichester on Instagram and widely shared on local forums such as Anthony Murley’s post to the Brighton & Hove Notice Board. Organisers called it both a Christian rite and an act of ecological witness, recognising the sea as a source of sustenance, beauty and peril. The clergy’s words of blessing were joined by calls for responsibility toward the coast at a time of rising tides and intensifying storms.

The ceremony is not without precedent. Brighton’s fishing town ancestors sought blessings over their nets each spring, a custom enshrined in the 1580 Book of all the Auncient Customs and revived in the late twentieth century as the ‘Blessing of the Nets’ on the beach by the Fishing Museum -  for more on this, see the Brighton Seafront Heritage Trust and My Brighton and Hove. Meanwhile, the city’s Greek Orthodox community has long marked Epiphany with the ‘Blessing of the Waters’, casting a cross into the waves from the pier. Today’s event consciously draws on both traditions, updating them with a climate-conscious emphasis suited to Brighton’s identity as a coastal city where faith, protest and performance often overlap.

What emerged on the groyne today was therefore more than symbolic: it was a reminder of the continuing link between the sea and the city, between prayer and protest, and between past traditions and present anxieties.