Crossing the Bar
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1889)
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
The Tyne Bar
Before the piers were built and the river dredged, ships intending to enter or leave the Tyne had the agonising wait for the tide and weather to be favourable. At low tide, the sand bar to the south of Battery Rocks was only 6 feet deep and collectively moving thousands of tons of shipping across it at full flood was a perilous task. If an easterly wind was prevailing, it could take days for ships to enter the harbour, and vessels anchored off Tynemouth were simply left at the mercy of the elements.
Then when their turn arrived to cross the dreaded Bar, they were faced with the uneasy run between the Scylla and Charybdis of the Black Middens and the Herd Sands, using only the leading lights on both banks to guide them. Many ships as a matter of course, became stuck on these hazards, sometimes with the loss of their cargoes and occasionally with the loss of life.
The Tyne had two whaling fleets: one stationed at the Low Lights, North Shields, and the other at Dent’s Hole, Byker. In this painting by renowned local marine specialist, Carmichael, two whalers wait their turn to cross the bar in a choppy sea, as pilot boats approach the vessels.
You can buy a copy of this masterpiece here:
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
