At the beginning of Derek Walcott’s poem, “The Sea is History,” the poet rethinks the idea that history is solely confined to land by noting that the sea holds remnants of history and can act as an archive of historical events. The sea becomes a history book that catalogs the many incidents that have occurred on or around the Caribbean waters. This shift in viewpoint becomes significant because it gives a voice to those who have long been silenced by the denial and erasure of Caribbean history as a result of not being seen as tangible or documented as other Western narratives.

Right from the start of the poem, Walcott begins questioning the definition of history by asking people of the Caribbean where their “monuments,” “battles,” “martyrs,” and “tribal memories” are (1-2). Here, Walcott engages with the traditional idea of history as something that is recorded on land and has concrete artifacts to solidify its validity. History is limited to things that have written accounts or artifacts that people can study and inspect. However, Walcott repositions this outlook when answering the question in the subsequent lines as he notes that Caribbean history is “in the grey vault” (3), also known as the sea. Rather than history being found in museums or archived on paper, “The Sea is History”(Walcott 4) and contains the narrative of Caribbean ancestry. The audience is no longer in the realm of traditional Western history since it becomes something that is written in the waves and below the water. Their identity is intermingled with the sea that witnessed the suffering of many of their ancestors and is the resting spot of those who were thrown overboard before they could be sold into slavery in a new land, making their bones the “mosaics” (Walcott 14) that become the artifacts of Caribbean history. Walcott embraces a more inclusive view of history that encompasses the environment as a place where humans can find out more about historical occurrences, since nature has been a constant throughout history. Looking at history through this environmental lens allows us to uncover the stories and histories of people who have been left out of more traditional narratives because of a lack of tangible history. We are then able to get a fuller picture of history since it becomes more inclusive with the addition of historical stories that have been locked in “the grey vault.” They are brought out from the depths of the sea to showcase how these communities do have a history and are not confined to a Western account of Caribbean history.