ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to rethink maritime anthropology considering human life from the sea instead of from land by following Ingold’s steps in movement and ontogenesis. On board tall ships, and traditional rigged sailing boats, movement provides ‘becoming to life’ or ontogenesis by our relationship with the ocean environment. This chapter analyses new trainees and permanent crew’s animated sea ground, a term that emphasises the permeability of the ground, by referring to the ocean environment with both characteristics: the unstable support we have inhabiting it and the more-than-surface of the ocean as a zone of intermingling mediums. Seafaring is experienced by the encounter in-between two mediums, the sky above with wind currents filling the sails and the ocean below with its tides and swells lapping against the boat hull. Taskship, the dialogue between lines of task and the unpredictable phenomena of the environment, is what makes the boat and its correspondences an impressive experience of movement and social becomings. This research demonstrates that at sea, more than anywhere else, the shared responsibility of commitment to the response that makes crew members be ‘all on board’ shows that a life at sea is, par excellence, a process of differentiated social adjustments.
