The Brighton steamer

Here is the 16th of 25 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. The image shows a stylised seascape in shades of blue, white and beige. At its centre is a ship with a single tall funnel and two long decks lined with rows of square windows, suggesting a passenger steamer. The vessel has a solid, rounded hull that sits low in the water, built for carrying people rather than speed. It is sailing from right to left across dark blue waves, with broad cloud shapes filling the sky above. In the foreground, sandy tones and angled forms evoke the shoreline or harbour wall, giving the impression of the ship either departing or arriving at the coast.

A limerick starter

A bright little steamer at sea

Steered a bit too close to the quay.

The captain cried, ‘Blimey

The chalk’s right before me!’

Then dodged it with surprising esprit.

The Brighton steamer (in the style of Joseph Conrad)

The Brighton steamer lay broadside to the cliffs, its hull dark against the pallor of chalk and cloud. A late tide heaved against the shingle, uneasy, as though uncertain of its errand. The vessel, with her one funnel trailing a faint stain of smoke, seemed strangely inert, half-marooned in that restless light, yet she pressed on, slow and deliberate, past the line of the pier.

I watched her from the stones, the weight of her passage pressing upon me as though I were myself embarked. Those rows of windows, dull squares under the whitening sky, were like so many blind eyes - passengers hidden, yet expectant. One imagines them sensing, as I did, the menace of the shore: the pale cliff rearing to the east, sheer and implacable, indifferent to all the little confusions of men.

It is not the sea that alarms me, for the sea, even in its sudden wrath, is honest. No, it is the coast, the narrowing margin where water and rock conspire against the traveller, where a false bearing or a moment’s pride may grind out years of labour in an instant. I thought of the master on his bridge, his hands idle on the rail, gazing ahead with the obstinacy of command, knowing that any falter of judgment would lay bare the futility of his journey.

The ship moved on, a shadow sliding under the immensity of cloud, past the bright disorder of the town’s terraces, into the channel’s uncertain breadth. I turned away then, yet her slow form remained before me, imprinted like a memory of some choice deferred, a fate hovering just beyond reach of the beach and its stones.