ABSTRACT
Dated as above in Esd, and probably written during or immediately after S.’s passage from Ilfracombe to Swansea in the regular packet-boat on 31 August 1812 (see headnote to No. 88). The disjointed structure and diffuse style suggest that its composition might have occupied S. during the actual 30-mile crossing. However, as Cameron assumes in his full account of the poem (Esd Nbk 229–35), the occasion was probably a composite one. S.’s title was altered from an earlier ‘The Journey’, which could imply that at one stage the poem had contained some description of overland as well as oversea travel. His ‘voyages’ had so far consisted in: (a) a crossing from Whitehaven to Dublin via the Isle of Man, February 1812, which took several days through his being ‘driven by a storm quite to the North of Ireland’ (L i 250); (b) the return crossing Dublin-Holyhead (again a long one) in April, followed by ten days’ journey through Wales, including a coastal voyage ‘from Barmouth to Aberystwyth 30 miles in an open boat’ (L i 281); (c) the crossing of the Bristol Channel, 31 August, followed by a journey through the length of Wales to Tremadoc in September. Any or all of these could have contributed details: thus the description of the storm (lines 74–111) in an ‘arctic clime’ (88) may draw on S.’s experiences ‘to the North of Ireland’.
