Cruising is a maritime activity that involves staying aboard a watercraft for extended periods of time when the vessel is traveling on water at a steady speed. Cruising generally refers to leisurely trips on yachts and luxury cruiseships, with durations varying from day-trips to months-long round-the-world voyages.
Plato's allegory of the cave is an allegory presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic to compare "the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature". It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates and is narrated by the latter. The allegory is presented after the analogy of the Sun (508b–509c) and the analogy of the divided line (509d–511e).
Sebastian Brant was a German humanist and satirist. He is best known for his satire Das Narrenschiff.
Captain Hector Barbossa is a fictional character of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, depicted by Geoffrey Rush and appearing in all five films in the series. He first debuted in The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) as a cursed undead skeleton, where he dies at the end of the film. However, the character is revealed to have been resurrected and brought back from the dead by Tia Dalma by the end of Dead Man's Chest, and has since appeared in an anti-heroic role. Captain Hector Barbossa was one of the nine Pirate Lords in At World's End (2007), a privateer in service to King George II and the British Navy while also seeking revenge against Blackbeard in On Stranger Tides (2011), as well as a rich rogue and influential leader of a prosperous pirate empire and fleet in Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). Throughout the series, Barbossa has been conceptualized as a "dark trickster" and the evil counterpart of Captain Jack Sparrow.
Ship of Fools is a satirical allegory in German verse published in 1494 in Basel, Switzerland, by the humanist and theologian Sebastian Brant. It is the most famous treatment of the ship of fools trope and circulated in numerous translations.
Ship of Fools is a painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Camille Benoit donated it in 1918. The Louvre restored it in 2015. The surviving painting is a fragment of a triptych that was cut into several parts. The Ship of Fools was painted on one of the wings of the altarpiece, and is about two-thirds of its original length. The bottom third of the panel belongs to Yale University Art Gallery and is exhibited under the title Allegory of Gluttony. The other wing, which has more or less retained its full length, is the Death and the Miser, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The two panels together would have represented the two extremes of prodigality and miserliness, condemning and caricaturing both. The Wayfarer (Rotterdam) was painted on the right panel rear of the triptych. The central panel, if it existed, is unknown.
The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, authored by Plato around 375 BC, concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man. It is Plato's best-known work, and one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically.
The philosopher king is a hypothetical ruler in whom political skill is combined with philosophical knowledge. The concept of a city-state ruled by philosophers is first explored in Plato's Republic, written around 375 BC. Plato argued that the ideal state – one which ensured the maximum possible happiness for all its citizens – could only be brought into being by a ruler possessed of absolute knowledge, obtained through philosophical study. From the Middle Ages onwards, Islamic and Jewish authors expanded on the theory, adapting it to suit their own conceptions of the perfect ruler.
Ship of Fools is a 1962 novel by Katherine Anne Porter, telling the tale of a group of disparate characters sailing from Mexico to Europe aboard a German passenger ship. The large cast of characters includes Germans, Mexicans, Americans, Spaniards, a group of Cuban medical students, a Swiss family, and a Swede. In steerage is a large group of Spanish workers being returned to Spain from Cuba. It is an allegory tracing the rise of Nazism and looks metaphorically at the progress of the world on its "voyage to eternity".
The Ship of State is an ancient and oft-cited metaphor, famously expounded by Plato in the Republic, which likens the governance of a city-state to the command of a vessel. Plato expands the established metaphor and ultimately argues that the only people fit to be captain of the ship are philosopher kings, benevolent men with absolute power who have access to the Form of the Good. The origins of the metaphor can be traced back to the lyric poet Alcaeus, and it is also found in Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles' Antigone and Aristophanes' Wasps before Plato. During the Renaissance Sebastian Brant amplified and reworked Plato's text in a satirical book The Ship of Fools which was translated soon in Latin, French and English
A pirate code, pirate articles, or articles of agreement were a code of conduct for governing ships of pirates, notably between the 17th and 18th centuries, during the so-called "Golden Age of Piracy". The typical pirate crew was an unorthodox mixture of former sailors, escaped convicts, disillusioned men, and possibly escapee or former slaves, among others, looking for wealth at any cost; once aboard a seafaring vessel, the group would draw-up their own ship- and crew-specific code, which listed and described the crew's policies surrounding pirate behavior and the associated disciplinary action, should a code be violated. Failing to honor the code could get a pirate marooned, whipped, beaten, or even executed. For less serious violations, a pirate may have been temporarily denied equal food rations, or made to clean or maintain parts of the ship for a time. Primarily, these articles were designed to keep order aboard the ship, avoid dissension or mutinies, and ensure the crews' loyalty, all of which was crucial to the group's mutual survival.
Saint Grobian is a fictional patron saint of vulgar and coarse people. His name is derived from the Middle High German grob or grop, meaning coarse or vulgar. The Old High German cognate is gerob, gerop. The word "grobian" has thus passed into the English language as an obscure word for any crude, sloppy, or buffoonish person.
Middle Passage (1990) is a historical novel by American writer Charles R. Johnson about the final voyage of an illegal American slave ship on the Middle Passage. Set in 1830, it presents a personal and historical perspective of the illegal slave trade in the United States, telling the story of Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave who sneaks aboard a slave ship bound for Africa in order to escape a forced marriage. The novel received critical acclaim, winning the 1990 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
Ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art.
Hugh Pigot was an officer in the Royal Navy. Through his connections and their patronage, he was able to rise to the rank of captain, despite apparently poor leadership skills and a reputation for brutality. Writing in 1826 William James stated, "...he has been described to us by those who knew him well, as one of the most cruel and oppressive captains belonging to the British navy." While he was captain of HMS Hermione (1782), he eventually provoked his men to mutiny. This mutiny became the bloodiest in the history of the Royal Navy and left Pigot and nine other officers dead. The Navy hunted down and executed a number of the mutineers and recaptured his ship from the Spanish, to whom the mutineers had turned it over.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
The Lennie was a Canadian-built barque whose crew mutinied in 1875, en route to New York for orders.
Nautical fiction, frequently also naval fiction, sea fiction, naval adventure fiction or maritime fiction, is a genre of literature with a setting on or near the sea, that focuses on the human relationship to the sea and sea voyages and highlights nautical culture in these environments. The settings of nautical fiction vary greatly, including merchant ships, liners, naval ships, fishing vessels, life boats, etc., along with sea ports and fishing villages. When describing nautical fiction, scholars most frequently refer to novels, novellas, and short stories, sometimes under the name of sea novels or sea stories. These works are sometimes adapted for the theatre, film and television.
In Plato's Republic, the character of Socrates is highly critical of democracy and instead proposes, as an ideal political state, a hierarchal system of three classes: philosopher-kings or guardians who make the decisions, soldiers or "auxiliaries" who protect the society, and producers who create goods and do other work. Despite the title Republic, Plato's characters do not propose a republic in the modern English sense of the word.
