ABSTRACT
The moment of actual shipwreck is not the only form in which the situation of the imperilled mariner appears. Granted, shipwrecks were common enough that they provided an obvious example of dramatic disaster and crisis. Carlyle's adept manipulation of the metaphor of ships and shipwrecks plays an important role in his success. John Brett's Shipwreck and Danby's Shipwreck against a Setting Sun, which also take place on the open sea, represent the next stage of maritime disaster since the sailors have already taken to the lifeboats and abandoned their doomed ships. The next stage that of the castaway is represented by I. K. Aivazovskii's The Ninth Wave. Gricault's The Raft of the Medusa, one of the most important and influential images created by the Romantic imagination, provides another version of the castaway situation. Carlyle's concluding figure makes one perceive how much the significance of disaster on the life-journey has changed.
