Green Dolphin at Sea

"Clipper" sailing ships in the 1840's

Viermast-Klipperbark Great Republic painting by James Buttersworth

“(Marianne) could hear the creaking of the cordage and the ripple of water along the ship's side, and see the arrow-shaped white water speeding away from the proud curve of the moving prow. And now the clipper was outside the harbor, and Marianne felt in her own body the great lift of the ship as the sea took her.

She hung out of the window and watched till her eyes ached, her pulses leaping as one sail after another blossomed like flowers on the masts. Ah, but she was lovely, that ship, the loveliest thing in all the world! And now she was running swiftly before the wind, a wake of white foam behind her. She was like a bird now, like a speeding gull, her wings alight in the sunlight, alive from prow to stern, in every fiber of her, a creature spun out of sun and air, free and indestructible, the spirit of the sea.

Marianne watched for a long while, yet it seemed but a moment. Now the clipper was hull down over the horizon, and now, like petals falling, her sails dropped one by one from sight. A mast-tip gleamed in the sunlight and then she was gone, a dream, an immortal memory, the loveliest that earth could give.”

🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Green Dolphin Street

Goudge’s love of ships

It is easy to tell from Goudge’s stories that she had a real fondness for ships of all sorts. Whether in her children’s tale, The Valley of Song, or in her collection of short stories entitled White Wings, she was enamored of the wild, free romantic ideals of sailing ships. Living her whole life in the UK never more than 50 miles from the British coast, she seems to have spent many an hour watching sailing ships, and also learned much about British navel and merchant history.

In fact, Goudge spent much of her early writing life in Marldon, UK just 2.5 miles from the coast, and also only 70 nautical miles from Guernsey across the English Channel. It was in Marldon that she wrote Green Dolphin Street (aka Green Dolphin Country). During the height of WWII, Goudge was working away at her lengthy novel, dreaming of the wild beauty of ships and freedom to distract herself from the tragic reality of a German-occupied Guernsey just across the water.

And who can blame her! Sailing ships have a dramatic look and history all their own.

Today, for our Goudge Readalong of Green Dolphin Street for September, we are going to take a quick look at the ship that inspires this story, the clipper ship.

Hornet – an American clipper ship of the 1850s