' There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, & enslaving than the life at sea' wrote Joseph Conrad. In The Sea: A Cultural History John Mack considers the ways in which human beings interact because of the sea, navigate their course across it, & live on & around it
- whether promontories, estuaries, ports or coves. The Sea considers the characteristics of different seas & oceans & investigates how the sea is conceptualized in various cultures. It looks at the diversity of maritime technologies, especially the practice of navigation & the 'society' of the sea
- in many cultures all-male, often cosmopolitan, always hierarchical. The separation of the sea & the land is evident in the use of different vocabularies for the same things, the change in a mariner's behaviour when on land for a period, & in the liminal status of points of interaction between the two realms, notably on beaches & at ports. Ships are also deployed in symbolic contexts on land from ship burials, such as that at Sutton Hoo, to ecclesiastical & public architecture. The two realms are thus in dialogue in both symbolic & economic terms, rather than irrevocably separated. In describing the diversities of maritime cultures, this book moves beyond conventional boundaries, using histories, maritime archaeology, biography, art history & literary sources to provide an innovative & experiential account of 'the great blue yonder'.