What do you do with a drunken sailor?

The Tall Ships came to Duluth today and paraded into the harbor through the Lift Bridge. We tracked their progress from the shore of Lake Superior.

With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,

Like stars in heaven, and joyously it showed;

Some lying fast at anchor in the road,

Some veering up and down, one knew not why.

William Wordsworth

With sloping masts and dipping prow,

As who pursued with yell and blow

Still treads the shadow of his foe

And forward bends his head,

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,

And southward aye we fled.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests—and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. ....Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires." Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

After the Sea-Ship—after the whistling winds;
After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship Walt Whitman