Why Associate Pipes and the Ocean?

[cosmicfolklore]

I'm pretty sure sailors smoke for a lot of the same reasons we all do. Plus, what else they gonna do out there with just a bunch of other men... :::cough cough:::

But, if you think about it, a pipe is merely a vessel for our tobacco fire to ride on the ocean of our space, as a ship rides on the water. Fire, that thing that we control in which separates us from other animals. I'm sure that the fires of tobacco brought comfort to weary travelers, reminding them of the home fires that they left behind.

 

[Derby]

I visited a small whaling museum in upstate New York a few years ago while my wife and her friend shopped. The museum had a lot of good relics -- harpoons, rope work, a small boat or two, some rigging. In among the exhibits was one depicting the sea chest of a typical worker-bee sailor. As with a sailor's sea bag today, it had to hold all of his worldly possessions and personal effects that weren't back home with his family, if any. One of the items was a small drawstring cloth bag of tobacco. I was pleased to see that, while they hadn't searched out an actual pipe from the era, they added a Missouri Meerschaum hardwood to the kit, which seemed like a fair choice for the purpose. A clay pipe might have served too. Speaking of rope work, my dad could splice rope in a professional way and also did a fine monkey's fist, a tight little woven ball of the several strands of a single line (length of rope).

I've been wondering lately if I served on the last class of commissioned U.S. Navy ships with a wood hull, U.S.S. Gallant, MSO 489, with a hull entirely of Washington spruce, built in Tacoma, Washington. This was to make the hull anti-magnetic against magnetic mines, along with a degaussing system that electronically served the same purpose. MSO stands for minesweeper ocean going.

Did a little research. The USN still has eleven wooden hulled minesweepers in service. The hulls are wood with a fiberglass sheath. Used in the recent Middle East wars.
I received a all expenses paid tour of South East Asia at about the same time you were bobbing around the South China Sea/ Pacific.

 

[swampgrizzly]

Did a little research. The USN still has eleven wooden hulled minesweepers in service. The hulls are wood with a fiberglass sheath. Used in the recent Middle East wars.
I received a all expenses paid tour of South East Asia at about the same time you were bobbing around the South China Sea/ Pacific.

Thank you for your service!

 

[The Clay King]

The most common archeological item to be found when it comes to pirate was clay pipe , i know this is not a WHY just a fun fact.

@WalrusMustache I had a smoke of a clay pipe at the Matlock Bath Pirate Festival; it went very well with my costume!

 

[crashthegrey]

I think it really comes down to pipe tobacco travelling well.

 

[Grangerous]

This didn’t hurt the association.

 

[macaroni]

I'm looking at the tin art of my Windjammer, Sextant, Black Frigate, and John Marr, as I type....

But having said that, have we said all that can be said? Does the association in our mental imagery owe nothing to anything other than that history?

Is it in any way supported by a deeper association? I think so.

The sea in its vastness and power -- and in its mirroring of the firmament -- evokes in us a memory of The Transcendent.

Pipe smoking, for its part, is a deeply personal incense, offered upward, toward The Transcendent. It strikes me as more personal than incense offered from a censer, because, having taken it into yourself, you exhale it out from yourself. Remember that the Hebrew word for "breath" and "spirit" is the same, and that God "breathed" life into Adam. Incese that we breathe out is as our very spirit, offered up out of ourselves to God.

The sea, as the second greatest type of The Transcendent (after the heavens), is fittingly associated with pipe smoke, a uniquely meaningful type of our prayers, our very soul, offered up to The Transcendent....

Thanks, SBC. I will revisit your post. "Eine Kleine Nachtphilosophie," to borrow from Walter Kaufmann. You bless me and enrich my mind with this. Thanks.
kindly
mike

 

[Chasing Embers]

I'm looking at the tin art of my Windjammer, Sextant, Black Frigate, and John Marr

The liquor in those has more nautical connections than the tobacco. Craig Tarler just thought it would be fun to run with the rum and pirate theme when he made Black Frigate and Blockade Runner. Greg Pease being one of Craig's close friends and often blending partner likely thought along the same lines.

 

[makhorkasmoker]

I think the association has been created by in large part by art, literature, film (and, yes, even Popeye). We also associate pipe smoking with philosophers, contemplative older men, and a few other "types." No doubt these types in real life often smoked pipes (Kant is said to have smoked a pipe every morning). And I suppose there is some life imitating art going on too, creating a cycle.

I watch a lot of old films on TCM and I read a lot of old/classic novels and it is interesting to me how much broader was the range of pipe smokers depicted in earlier eras-- in part no doubt because so many more people smoked pipes. I feel that there were many connotations to pipes and types of pipes that are lost to us now (or lost certainly to me). I get the feeling that pipe-sailor and pipe-philosopher pairings we still make are the crude remnants of a much more sophisticated "language" of pipes that audiences once understood intuitively.

 

[Chasing Embers]

We also associate pipe smoking with philosophers, contemplative older men

Only because a few notable ones did. In their time many people did. I always associated it more with farmers and ranch hands.