Seascapes and Sailors

Sandy Campbell: In this clip, Hughes interweaves two of his poems, “Seascape” and “Sailor,” with stories from his seafaring days.

Langston Hughes: Later, I made a trip as a seaman to Europe. As we neared the English Channel one day, off the coast of Ireland, as our ship passed by, we saw a line of fishing ships etched against the sky. Off the coast of England, as we rode the foam, we saw an Indian merchant man coming home. From foreign ports sailors often bring home souvenirs. From Africa, I brought back a monkey. Some of the sailors brought back parrots or slippers made of leopard skin, or little statuettes of brass or wood. Some sailors collect souvenirs on their own bodies in the form of tattoos, drawings made directly on their skins by tattooing artists in different ports. I once knew such a sailor. He sat up on the rolling deck, half a world away from home and smoked a Capstan cigarette and watched the blue waves tipped with foam. He had a mermaid on his arm, an anchor on his breast, and tattooed on his back he had a blue bird in a nest.