Captain of a Sinking Ship

Carlos Espinoza

January 12, 2010

ENL 3

Mr. Hageman

Captain of a Sinking Ship

As I read “Casabianca” by Felicia Dorothen Hemans, I was immediately transported to the middle of the ocean where I was introduced to the death and destruction of a man and his crew. The poem is about a boy who stays on his father’s sinking ship as it is slowly being eaten away by flames. The boy is the only survivor left on the ship. He refuses to abandon ship without the consent from his father, who died during the ship’s ambush.

The poem begins by describing the setting, “The boy stood on the burning deck/ Whence all but him had fled; / The flame that lit the battle’s wreck/ Shone round him o’er the dead,” (1-4). The first quatrain portrays the child as a lone soldier standing above the death and destruction of his father’s ship and crew. The boy is depicted as being heroic and proud as he stands upon the slowly burning vessel. As I read the poem I kept forgetting that the boy was not an adult, but a child. I would have expected an adult to stand tall as the last survivor, not a young boy. The poem describes the boy with phrases such as: beautiful and bright, born to rule, and creature of heroic blood to acknowledge this amazing and incredible accomplishment of his survival.

In the third quatrain, Felicia Dorothea Hemans demonstrates the loyalty and faithfulness of the boy to his father. “The flames rolled on—he would not go/ Without his father’s word; / That father, faint in death below,/ His voice no longer heard,” (9-12). The boy does not plan on abandoning the ship without the captain, his father’s, approval. His father, being captain of the ship, most likely taught his son to be a good captain. A quality of a good captain would be to never abandon ship or the crew. This is demonstrated by the boy’s tenacity toward staying on the ship until further word from his father, who had passed away.

In the last quatrain, Hemans concludes the poem with an aftermath of the destroyed ship. “With mast, and helm, and pennon fair/ That well had borne their part--/ But the noblest thing that perished there/ was that young, faithful heart,” (37-40). The flames continue to eat away at the ship and eventually take the boy with them. The boy dies because of his loyalty to his father. The last two lines of the poem again reminded me that it was a child who decided to die rather than to save himself, showing fidelity to his father until the very last moment of his life.