Ship of State

The Ship of State is an ancient and oft-cited metaphor, famously expounded by Plato in the Republic (Book 6, 488a–489d), which likens the governance of a city-state to the command of a vessel.

The Ship of State as a symbol of the Treaty of Breda, 1667

Our country is the ship that bears us safe, and only while she prospers in our voyage can we make true friends —Sophocles

Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm —Thomas Gray

The ship of state glided noiselessly to her doom —P. W. Dooner

Quotes

Arranged chronologically

• CHORUS: And now a sea of troubles, as it were, driveth on its billows; as one wave sinks, another, of triple crest, it reareth aloft, even that which now seethes about the ship of State. Narrow the space that stretches between as a defence—no wider than a wall.
  • Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes, 750–757 (tr. H. W. Smyth)

• CREON: No man can be fully known, in soul and spirit and mind, until he hath been seen versed in rule and law-giving. For if any, being supreme guide of the State, cleaves not to the best counsels, but, through some fear, keeps his lips locked, I hold, and have ever held, him most base; and if any makes a friend of more account than his fatherland, that man hath no place in my regard. For I—be Zeus my witness, who sees all things always—would not be silent if I saw ruin, instead of safety, coming to the citizens; nor would I ever deem the country's foe a friend to myself; remembering this, that our country is the ship that bears us safe, and that only while she prospers in our voyage can we make true friends.
  • Sophocles, Antigone, 175–190 (tr. R. C. Jebb)

• SOCRATES to ADEIMANTUS: Conceive the captain of a ship, taller by a head and shoulders than any of the crew, yet a little deaf, a little blind, and rather ignorant of the seaman’s art. The sailors want to steer, although they know nothing of the art; and they have a theory that it cannot be learned. If the helm is refused them, they drug the captain’s posset, bind him hand and foot, and take possession of the ship. He who joins in the mutiny is termed a good pilot and what not; they have no conception that the true pilot must observe the winds and the stars, and must be their master, whether they like it or not;—such an one would be called by them fool, prater, star-gazer. This is my parable; which I will beg you to interpret for me to those gentlemen who ask why the philosopher has such an evil name, and to explain to them that not he, but those who will not use him, are to blame for his uselessness. The philosopher should not beg of mankind to be put in authority over them. The wise man should not seek the rich, as the proverb bids, but every man, whether rich or poor, must knock at the door of the physician when he has need of him. Now the pilot is the philosopher—he whom in the parable they call star-gazer, and the mutinous sailors are the mob of politicians by whom he is rendered useless.
  • Plato, Republic, VI, 488 (tr. Benjamin Jowett)

• XANTHIAS: [...] But what was your dream? Let me hear.
  SOSIAS: Oh! it is a dream of high import. It has reference to the hull of the State; to nothing less.
  XANTHIAS: Tell it to me quickly; show me its very keel.
  SOSIAS: In my first slumber I thought I saw sheep, wearing cloaks and carrying staves, met in assembly on the Pnyx; a rapacious whale was haranguing them and screaming like a pig that is being grilled.
  XANTHIAS: Faugh! faugh!
  SOSIAS: What's the matter?
  XANTHIAS: Enough, enough, spare me. Your dream stinks vilely of old leather.
  SOSIAS: Then this scoundrelly whale seized a balance and set to weighing ox-fat.
  XANTHIAS: Alas! it's our poor Athenian people, whom this accursed beast wishes to cut up and despoil of their fat.
  • Aristophanes, Wasps, 29–40 (ed. Eugene O'Neill Jr.)

• O ship, new billows threaten to bear thee out to sea again. Beware! Haste valiantly to reach the haven! Seest thou not how thy bulwarks are bereft of oars, how thy shattered mast and yards are creaking in the driving gale, and how thy hull without a girding-rope can scarce withstand the overmastering sea? Thy canvas is no longer whole, nor hast thou gods to call upon when again beset by trouble. Though thou be built of Pontic pine, a child of far-famed forests, and though thou boast thy stock and useless name, yet the timid sailor puts no faith in gaudy sterns. Beware lest thou become the wild gale’s sport! Do thou, who wert not long ago to me a source of worry and of weariness, but art now my love and anxious care, avoid the seas that course between the glistening Cyclades!
  • Horace, Odes, I, xiv (tr. C. E. Bennett)

• Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
  While proudly riding o’er the azure realm
  In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;
    Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
  Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind’s sway,
  That, hush’d in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
  • Thomas Gray, The Bard (1757), II.2; on the misrule of the young Richard II

• Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State!
  Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
  Humanity, with all its fears,
  With all the hopes of future years,
  Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
  We know what Master laid thy keel,
  What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
  Who made each mast, and sail, and rope;
  What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
  In what a forge and what a heat
  Were forged the anchors of thy hope!
  Fear not each sudden sound and shock—
  'Tis of the wave, and not the rock;
  'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
  And not a rent made by the gale!
  In spite of rock, and tempest roar,
  In spite of false lights on the shore,
  Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
  Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
  Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
  Our faith, triumphant o'er our fears,
  Are all with thee, are all with thee!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from The Building of the Ship (1850)

• Forever occupied and diverted by its factions and its politicians, in their local intrigues for the acquisition of political power, the Ship of State sailed proudly on, too blinded by her preoccupation and too reliant in her strength to bestow a thought upon the perils of the sea. She sighted afar the foam of the maelstrom, and tossed her haughty pennants in sovereign disdain of its power. But its current was around her, and she glided unconsciously to her doom. In vain the exercise of her giant strength; in vain that her factions, in happy forgetfulness of their petty antipathies, united their powers to save! Too late! She was hurled, helpless and struggling, to ruin and annihilation; and as she sank, engulfed, she carried with her the prestige of a race; for in America the representatives of the one race of man, which, in its relation to the family of men, had borne upon its crest the emblem of sovereign power since the dawn of history, saw now the ancestral diadem plucked from its proud repose, to shed its lustre upon an alien crown. Thus passed away the glory of the Union of States, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century.
  • Pierton W. Dooner, Last Days of the Republic (1880), Ch. XV

Bibliography

• W. J. Oates & Eugene O'Neill Jr., eds. The Complete Greek Drama, Vol. 2 (New York: Random House 1938), p. 610