Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

I have just read "Alone on a Wide Wide Sea" by Michael Morpurgo, prompted by the enthusiasm of my Granddaughter. A children’s adventure novel certainly, but beneath that it is really a meditation on exile, memory, loss, survival, and the sea as both destroyer and redeemer.

Morpurgo’s novel draws on the real history of post-war British child migration schemes that sent thousands of children to Australia, often with terrible consequences.

The novel is divided into two linked journeys.

The first half tells the story of Arthur Hobhouse, an orphaned boy separated from his sister Kitty after the Second World War and shipped to Australia as part of a child migration programme. He arrives believing he is being given a new life, but instead finds exploitation and brutality on an isolated farm in the outback. 

Arthur survives through friendship and resilience. Morpurgo drives the narrative forward, describing a series of Arthur's life-events which captivate the imagination, and links us seamlessly to the second half.

The second half shifts to Arthur’s daughter Allie, who undertakes a solo voyage from Australia back to England. I will avoid spoilers, tempted as I am to share some magical moments which permeate this narrative. Suffice it to say that Allie's journey becomes both literal and spiritual: an attempt to reconnect broken family lines across oceans and generations.

What makes the book linger in the mind is not merely the plot, but its atmosphere of immense distances — emotional as much as geographical.

Morpurgo uses images of horizons, empty oceans, birds, stars, and weather. The title itself comes from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the albatross motif consciously echoes that poem, which is a feature of the story. The sea becomes almost metaphysical: indifferent, beautiful, terrifying, and yet somehow healing too.

In this novel, the story of healing is sublimely told.

I reflect on two themes here: the story of the Cospatrick disaster which I researched with colleagues in 2024 for our local history group. And then my recent reflections on the life of H.W. "Bill" Tilman, whose many sailing adventures included the ocean around Cape Horn and the Atlantic, traversed also by Allie and described so dramatically and engagingly.

This story also belongs to the larger emotional history of British emigration — especially the severing of family ties through oceanic distance. The Cospatrick tragedy represented the Victorian age of migration: long sea passages, uncertain futures, and the terrible vulnerability of emigrants once they crossed the horizon. [ More about the Cospatrick is here ]

Here is a clip from a 1991 talk for the Wychwoods Local History Society. It is a moving account of the fate of one individual child at journey's end. 

There are several particularly striking parallels for those post-war journeys undertaken by Arthur in the novel: conditions in the 1870s, of course, were vastly different from those on post-WW2  vessels, but children were still travelling into the unknown with little agency over their fate, the sea functioning simultaneously as pathway and threat, the emotional violence of permanent separation from homeland and kin.

Memory preserved through small personal relics — in this novel, Arthur's talismanic key; in emigrant histories often letters, or keepsakes, discovered through research and enquiry over time.

In both the Cospatrick story and Morpurgo’s novel, one senses how migration was often narrated publicly as opportunity, while privately it could feel like abandonment, rupture, or exile, or worse.

Albeit in simpler language, Morpurgo writes about the the sea almost in the older literary tradition of, say,  Joseph Conrad  rather than modern children’s fiction. The sea is not merely scenery; it forms character and challenges assumptions. And we can see this operating in the stories of Tilman's expeditions, certainly.

Another interesting aspect  is how the novel treats memory across generations. Arthur’s memories are fragmentary and damaged — he barely trusts them himself by the end. Allie effectively becomes the historian of her father’s life, working with her family to trace her family story, piecing together identity through , travel, testimony, and objects. This resembles the work of local history societies in miniature such as ours: recovering broken human narratives from traces left behind.

Morpurgo’s prose is deceptively simple. Sure, we can classify him only as a children’s author, but books like this work because they understand that children’s literature of this quality can carry adult historical themes with skill and panache.

Two Small Figures: a History of Introspection

 

Here we are with some thoughts around two images I encountered over  half-century apart.  I came across the first image in  1967, when I was doing  German literature  at school. The course included Alfred Andersch’s novel Sansibar oder der Letzte Grund, in which the work of Ernst Barlach, his Lesender Klosterschüler — the Reading Monk — was a central image and important symbol. My copy of the book had the photo of the carving. I wrote about this here : Der Lesender Klosterschüler

The second encounter came recently, while revisiting the BBC documentary series Art That Made Us, which opens with the Anglo‑Saxon “Spong Man,” discovered in Norfolk. I enjoyed the co-incidence that  Norfolk was my domicile for many years, and that earlier blog piece on Barlach had been written there. The BBC documentary’s brief glimpse of the Spong Man prompted me to think some more about the clear and instinctive parallels which these figures present.

Two Figures, Two Worlds

At first glance, the Spong Man and Barlach’s Reading Monk belong to entirely different cultural universes. One is a small clay figure from the 5th or 6th century, found on top of  a cremation urn in an early Anglo‑Saxon cemetery. The other is a modernist sculpture carved in 1930, shaped by the artistic and political tensions of interwar Germany. Yet both are seated human figures gathered into themselves, their postures expressing a timeless interiority, in spite of the 1,500 years between their creation.

The Spong Man was unearthed at Spong Hill, Norfolk — the largest early Anglo‑Saxon cremation cemetery known in England. Its date places it in the turbulent period following the end of Roman rule New migrant communities were establishing themselves and religious life was a mixture of ancestral practices and emerging influences.

The posture is simple: elbows on knees, hands raised to the cheeks. Whether guardian, mourner, or ancestral presence, the figure conveys a moment of inward attention. The rough modelling does not disguise – but actually enhances -  the emotional clarity. It expresses a  capacity to turn inward to find solace  in times of uncertainty.

Ernst Barlach’s Lesender Klosterschüler belongs to a very different moment of transition. Created in 1930, it reflects the spiritual searching and political unease of the Weimar years. Barlach’s simplified forms and inward‑turned figures stood in opposition to the rising ideological rigidity of the period. His work was later denounced as “degenerate,” removed from public spaces, and in some cases destroyed.

In Andersch’s novel, the Reading Monk becomes a focal point for the moral imagination. Each character sees something different in the figure — spiritual inheritance, intellectual freedom, resistance to oppression. The sculpture’s bowed head and gathered posture represent an enduring stillnes. More about this is in my earlier notes in  : Der Lesender Klosterschüler

Despite their differences, both sculptures rely on posture as the primary means of expression. Their inwardness is conveyed not through facial detail but through the geometry of the body: the Spong Man forms a compact loop of thought, the limbs enclosing the head. The Reading Monk forms a downward arc, the robe and bowed head creating a sheltered space of concentration.

Both figures simplify the human form to reveal an interior life. Each came into being at at time of cultural instability — one after the collapse of Roman Britain, the other on the eve of totalitarianism.

Notes:

The comparative observations on posture and inwardness draw on  publicly available information from:

- Norfolk Museums Service for archaeological information on Spong Hill

- The British Museum (which holds the Spong Man) for basic object detail

- The Ernst Barlach Stiftung (Foundation) for biographical and catalogue information on Barlach

H.W. 'Bill' Tilman Remembered

I have just returned from a fine event arranged with great tenacity and dedication by Nick Parker, my good friend and friend to many. Appropriately called "The Tilman Experience" , the event was a 50th anniversary commemoration of Major H. W. 'Bill' Tilman’s final departure aboard his Bristol Channel  Pilot Cutter 'Baroque'.  The programme proved to be a memorable and  enjoyable weekend experience. 

The event brought together former crew members (including Nick himself, John Shipton and Bob Comlay), admirers of Tilman’s achievements, and friends old and new, in a spirit of companionship, shared remembrance, and adventure.

The event, May 15th to May 18th, centred around the Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter 'Letty', with two separate southbound and northbound passages out of Barmouth. Former Tilman crew members,  accompanied one or both of these trips, offering participants a rare opportunity to share first-hand recollections of sailing in Arctic waters during Tilman’s later expeditions.

On Friday evening, the programme at the Dragon Theatre in Barmouth provided both historical depth and personal reflection. I was glad to have been able to attend the evening with my wife. A talk by Bob Comlay after Nick's introductory remarks (in Welsh and in English) kicked off the evening . Bob traced Tilman’s remarkable life, from the trenches of the First World War to the Himalayas, wartime operations in Europe, and his celebrated Arctic and Antarctic voyages aboard Mischief and Sea Breeze. 

Bob was one of a very select few who travelled on two separate voyages with Tilman, and so was well-placed to capture Tilman’s characteristic simplicity of approach, summed up in the famous observation that “any worthwhile expedition can be planned on the back of an envelope". Bob also shared some of the letters Tilman had written to him which demonstrated a no-nonsense approach to recruitment planning.

The interval allowed attendees to mingle socially while viewing exhibits of traditional navigation and photography from the pre-GPS era, alongside reprints of Tilman’s books. The second half - which sadly I could not attend - featured John Shipton’s perspective on Tilman through the experiences of his father, Eric Shipton. This was  followed by warmly received recollections from surviving members of Tilman’s crews from the Baroque years between 1971 and 1975.

Saturday’s sailing aboard Letty gave participants a practical sense of the type of vessel and seamanship associated with Tilman’s voyages, while Sunday’s minibus excursion to Bodowen, Tilman’s former home above the Mawddach estuary, provided a fitting conclusion to the weekend. 

The kindness of Bodowen's current owner, Chris Harrison, in welcoming visitors to the house was greatly appreciated. His hospitality extended to a fine buffet spread, cocktails in beautifully presented goblets and a souvenir gift for all. I was pleased to join the several participants who completed the weekend with a guided walk from Bodowen back to Barmouth via the Panorama, enjoying fine views of the estuary and coastline that Tilman himself knew well.

Barmouth at the conclusion of the Panorama walk

Throughout the weekend there was a strong sense not only of commemorating an extraordinary explorer and seaman, but also of celebrating the enduring fellowship, curiosity, and spirit of adventure that Tilman inspired in others. The occasion combined history, storytelling, sailing, landscape, and friendship in a way that would probably have bemused Tilman himself, but was nevertheless a humble and fitting tribute to his memory.

Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter (Impression)