Kelley England
ENG-200/Dr. Roemer
12/14/05

“Cargoes”
By: John Masefield

In the poem “Cargoes,” the author, John Masefield, writes about nostalgia and progress. The gritty realities of modern life are set against the golden age of the “Stately Spanish galleon” and the even more distant glamour of the “Quinquereme of Ninevah.” The author evokes the senses using multiple kinds of imagery in each stanza of the poem. The poem encompasses the past and the future of the changing ships and cargoes throughout various periods of history. John Masefield was born in 1878 in Ledbury, England. He married his wife, Constance, at the age of 23 and had two children, a boy and a girl. He suffered tragedies early in his life such as his mother’s death when he was 6, both of his grandparents’ deaths at the age of 7, and his father having a mental breakdown five years later and then dying when John was 12 years old. His Aunt and Uncle took on the responsibility of raising him and at the age of 13, his Aunt sent him to the sea-cadet ship the HMS Conway to train for a life at sea. It was aboard this ship that he developed a love for story telling. Sea life did not suit John and on his second voyage he deserted his ship in New York City and began to travel the countryside, taking whatever odd jobs he could find, often sleeping outdoors and eating very little. After 3 years, he was ready to return to England. John became a very big admirer of William Butler Yeats and after many letters to him, Mr. Yeats became John’s friend and mentor. This brought John into the inner circle of Mr. Yeats’ poet friends and publishers. Subsequently, John went on to have many of his works published that were met with praise and positive criticism. In 1930, he became the Official Poet Laureate until his death in 1967. While John was alive as well as after his death, his work was and is highly regarded and he has been called a “poetic genius.” His ashes are appropriately scattered in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. There are 3 stanzas in the poem. Each stanza consists of five lines, which could be a reference to the five lines of oarsmen the first sailing vessel, the Quinquereme, needed. There are no complete sentences in the poem and there are no verbals. There are only present participles instead of finite verbs. If finite verbs were to be substituted, each stanza would be a complete sentence rather than a sentence fragment. The first stanza is all luxury goods (ivory, apes, peacocks, sandalwood, cedarwood and sweet white wine) and is set in a slave-based culture. The “apes and peacocks” in line 4 are references to the bible in which King Soloman was delivered these goods (considered riches) which made him richer than all the kings of the earth. The reference to the city of Nineveh tells the reader that this stanza is set in ancient times.
Nineveh was an Assyrian city in what is now northern Iraq. This stanza evokes positive feelings with words such as “sunny Palestine” and “sweet white wine.” The second stanza is mostly pillage-based, and the moidores (coins used in Brazil and Portugal) could suggest the Spanish exploitation of the Americas. In this stanza, the poem moves up in history from one of man-propelled ships to one of sail-powered vessels. The cargo, money and jewels, had become the co-important trade objects with the European contest to rob the Americas of its wealth.