Category Archives: Week 12: The Ocean as Archive

What Lies Beneath: The Meaning of “The Sea Is History”

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In “The Sea Is History,” Derek Walcott transforms the ocean into a living archive of colonial trauma and suppressed memory by using biblical allusions to explore how the histories of enslaved and colonized peoples have been submerged beneath the surface of Western historical narratives. Through his own reworking of Genesis, Exodus, and other scriptural imagery, Walcott suggests that the sea holds not only the remains of the dead but also the spiritual and cultural foundations of a displaced people. His poem argues that history–the true and honest history–exists not in monuments or written records, but in the depths of the natural world, where human suffering has been both concealed and preserved.

The poem’s opening question, “Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?” (line 1) mimics the authoritative tone of a historian demanding evidence of a civilization. The speaker’s response, “in that grey vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History,” (lines 3-4) reverses this expectation by locating history not in material ruins but in the immaterial, unfathomable depths of the ocean. The repetition of “The sea. The sea” echoes like waves, grounding the poem’s mediation in the physicality of the natural world while highlighting its function as a repository or memory. When Walcott later writes, “Bone soldered by coral to bone, mosaics mantled by the benediction of the shark’s shadow,” (lines 13-15), he fuses the sacred with the violent. The “mosaics” and “benediction” evoke religious sanctity, yet the imagery of bone and shark transforms the ocean floor into a brutal cathedral built upon human suffering.

By structuring the poem as a distorted biblical timeline–moving from Genesis to Lamentations and the New Testament–Walcott critiques how colonial and Christian narratives have overwritten indigenous and African histories. The biblical framework becomes a way of reclaiming sacred language to tell a different kind of origin story, one that is rooted in the Middle Passage and the resilience of the oppressed. When he writes, “as the sea’s lace dries in the sun but that was not History, that was only faith,” (lines 64-66), Walcott emphasizes the fragility of liberation and remembrance, suggesting that official accounts of emancipation fail to capture the depth of lived experience.

Ultimately, Walcott’s poem insists that the ocean’s silence is deceptive–it is not empty but resonant, containing the echoes of every lost voice. Through the sea, Walcott redefines history itself as an act of remembrance and resistance.

Hidden by History

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In the “Sea is History” Derek Walcott juxtaposes humanity’s conventional history in relation to the ocean with biblical references. Humanity hunting for whale oil, for land, for toiling bodies. Tsunamis purging wanton cities. Piracy, progress, the separation of nations. All, like the bible, history is made of social construct; hoisted to importance to impart control and manipulate erasure. Conventional human history is not the sea’s history or earth’s history. By contrasting transcribed history to the documented bible, Walcott demonstrates how history is picked apart and molded to maintain dominance. Also tangled among the typical images of transcribed history are fragments of submerged history: “bone soldered by coral to bone” and “the white cowries clustered like manacles on the drowned women”. Hidden by history are the enslaved who never braced American soil. Those who never had the chance to seek freedom, still fettered to the ocean floor. “but where is your renaissance?” the poem asks. “Strop on these goggles, I’ll guide you there myself.” Their renaissance is tombed in coral and sand. One that could not exist because the men and women who would have constituted this renaissance have been silenced. Instead millions of minds are lain beneath sheets of lapping waves.

At first when Walcott presented the animals in his explanation of History “really beginning” I read it as the Earth’s and the Sea’s history coinciding with natural events. A representation of animals and nature being true history. But another look showed that the animals resemble the oppressor. The Clergy of flies, bullfrog voters, bat ambassadors, mantis police, and caterpillar judges. What is happening here? Are animals creating their own system, demonstrating that earth and its other inhabitants can thrive independent of us. Or are they us? An explanation that we are just animals, surrounded by sea, erecting systems of manipulation.

Archive of the Sea

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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.

The Grey Archive

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In Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History” there is a conversation within the poem that analyzes the concept of origin stories and what is marked a history as opposed to myth. What is considered history is framed in terrestrial markers by the speaker of the question at the beginning of the poem. The question is answered with elements of the reoccurring concept in our mermaid readings of the below surface ocean being a locked up and restricted place, but the poem will unlock that history that has always been there. While the themes of religious myth work as an entry point for comparison Walcott blends the events that happened on and within the ocean to link the land events that was remembered in the ocean. Walcott brings History as being measured outside the confines of imperialist definitions.

What stood out to me was his play on language with the ocean creatures and oceanic elements carrying double meanings to aid in the historic importance of the ocean. He links oceanic terms to the terrestrial, bringing balance and attention to a connection the terra-dominant language typically denies. Lines such as “the white cowries clustered like manacles on the drowned women…”. Yellow cowries (on land) were used as a shell money in Africa (“cowrie”). Being made into manacles also known as handcuffs, references the enslavement of African people who were monetarily measured in their worth to the system they were violently dragged in to.

The designation of “white” cowries, carries with it the meaning of the monetary price placed on black African people enslaved by white (European/imperialist) forces. As Walcott characterizes the sea as grey, it brings not only imagery of the ocean in stormy conditions but of the result of the colors of black and white combined together. This not only holds the meaning of the acts witnessed by the ocean, but integrates the ocean into being part of the human experience, not just the other or a setting.

Work Cited

“Cowrie.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/animal/cowrie. Accessed 8 Nov. 2025. 

Walcott, Derek. “The Sea Is History.” Poets.Org, Academy of American Poets, 28 Mar. 2025, poets.org/poem/sea-history. 

Walcott’s Challenge to Eurocentric History

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In stanzas ten and eleven of Derek Walcott’s “The Sea is History” employs vivid imagery, allusions, and metaphors to argue that the Caribbean’s true history is buried beneath the surface of Western narratives. Walcott’s poem asks his readers to look deeper into who gets remembered and who gets erased in history, and that history is not simply something written in stone but alive in people and places (such as the sea) that has been long silenced. 

Stanza ten of the poem challenges Eurocentric understandings and definitions of “history” and “civilization.” Walcott starts the stanza by describing “the tidal wave swallowing Port Royal, / and that was Jonah, / but where is your Renaissance?” In light of some research, the poem’s allusion to Port Royal is a reference to a wealthy city, a haven for debauchery and pirates, in Jamaica which was destroyed by an earthquake and massive tidal wave in 1692. Furthermore, the poem also alludes to Jonah, the prophet swallowed by a whale. The combination of these two allusions with the tidal wave “swallowing” Port Royal parallels Jonah’s swallowing by the whale, symbolizing natural retribution and an almost divine judgement. Walcott, in tandem with the allusions, reflects on a Eurocentric narrative of progress and civilization rhetorically posing the question: “where is your Renaissance?” The question presents the audience with a sense of irony, a contrast of Europe’s time of cultural rebirth with the Caribbean’s history of destruction and loss. The tenth stanza is a reframing of Western progress taking into account the Caribbean’s past, of slavery and conquest, and gives the Caribbean a “renaissance” of its own.  

Then going into stanza eleven Walcott depicts the sea’s history, specifically the Caribbean, as something that is “submerged” not erased. Stanza eleven begins by “answering” the rhetorical question from stanza ten: “Sir, it is locked in them sea-sands / out there past the reef’s mailing shelf, / where the men-o’-war floated down” The speaker notably uses a creole-inflected dialect, “them sea-sands,” which emphasizes and asserts Caribbean identity and oral storytelling tradition. This type of narration frames the poem in a point of view that isn’t Western, but from someone and someplace that version of history has yet to be told. A version of history “locked in them sea-sands” implying that the ocean is an archive for a past tossed in the ocean at the hands of colonial suffering. 

Week 12: The Sea is history

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This week’s poem, The Sea is History by Derek Walcott, was incredibly thought-provoking for me. I really loved how much it related to last week’s film, The Water Will Carry Us Home. Specifically, this stanza,

the plangent harps of the Babylonian bondage,
as the white cowries clustered like manacles
on the drowned women

I really appreciate the comparison used here. equating the sorrow of the Jews who were exiled in Babylonia to the cries of the slaves being transported to the Americas. Using the Old Testament and ancient religious history to make the history of the sea (a setting for slavery) more comprehensible or digestible. The use of “plangent” tells us that the cries of the enslaved people were incredibly loud and mournful and will forever echo in the sea. The shells of the sea (cowries), compared to shackles, highlight just how awful the deaths of these drowned women really were. Even in their death, they were still slaves, but now bound to a different kind of brutality. Although they have passed, they are still shackled to the horrific circumstances that brought them to their watery graves.

This relates to The Water Will Carry Us Home in the sense that these women’s souls still linger in the ocean. The sea holds history in the form of the lives that it has taken and the bodies it holds. After all, the sea may have filled their lungs with water and may hold thousands of slaves, but it was humans who cast those bodies out and disregarded them. It is not humans that remember those horrible acts or hold the evidence, but rather the ocean itself.

Week 12: The Ocean as Archive

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 Enslavement of the African people and colonization of the Americas took place during what is described as the ‘rebirth’ or the peak of Western European civilization, the Renaissance. It is omitted from History or purposely emphasized as two separate entities of human cultural movements. The exploration of the seas, the discovery of the Americas, enslavement and massacre of indigenous Americans, and the forced enslavement and commodification of Black Africans occurred at the same time that all these civilizations were experiencing a strong rebirth in culture, that were the result of complex and intricate organizations of cities and kingdoms. However, the European perspective of history can only attest to its own grandeur.

Derek Walcott reminds us of this in ‘The Sea is History’ when he links the movements of the middle passage, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, to a period highly regarded as the scientific, artistic, and architectural overhaul of European culture:

“but where is your Renaissance?

Sir, it is locked in them sea-sands
out there past the reef’s moiling shelf,
where the men-o’-war floated down;

strop on these goggles, I’ll guide you there myself.
It’s all subtle and submarine (lines 33-38)”

A civilization underwater is a byproduct of the atrocities committed against black bodies on a crowded cargo ship, which, like we saw in Gabrielle Tesfaye’s short film “The Water Will Carry Us Home,” readily disposed of unwanted bodies in the waters of the Atlantic: children, pregnant women, the sick, the dying, or dead.

The ocean represents the history stripped from the people that were conquered and enslaved, a massive interruption and erasure of the written and oral histories of multiple cultures, and the disappearance of their people. Walcott shows us a culture carried down to the depths of the ocean, a history as distorted as our vision underwater, of which we need goggles to see better.

This poem, which repeatedly tells us what isn’t history, until nations are organized, which is history, makes us question the validity of History. Why are certain events omitted? Why do some histories count but others do not. Is there a danger in verifying that while millions of people were forced across the middle passage, and thrown into the ocean, and the survivors forced into harsh labor; that Europeans were luxuriating in what slavery and colonization had to offer: raw materials, sugar, gold, silver?

Under History, our legacy and contribution to the world did not exist until the moment everyone arrived on solid land and worked for one crown or another. What is taken from us when history is viewed from this lens but proof of our existence on earth: our lineage, our story, where and who we come from. What was experienced in the water is erased by History, but is witnessed by the Ocean and the ones buried in “that grey vault, the sea,” and there is still more to learn and recover.

The Sea as History

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In Derek Walcott’s “The Sea Is History” one line that really stood out to me was “Bone scolded by coral to bone”. This line comes in the part that is describing the middle passage which was the forced journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. This shows us that human loss becomes part of the natural world. When Walcott chooses to blend bone and coral and death and growth it shows us that the sea doesn’t just hide history, it transforms it. Walcott is suggesting that the Caribbean’s identity is literally built on the remains of its past. 

When Walcott writes of bones “soldered” by coral he turns the ocean into both a graveyard and an artist. “Soldered” is usually a word used in metalwork. It means to fuse pieces together permanently. By using this word it makes me think that the sea itself is welding different fragments of lives into a new creation. The coral becomes a natural sculptor that binds human remains into living coral reefs. In this poem, death doesn’t end the story, it becomes a foundation for a new life to begin in an ecosystem that keeps growing. The bones are never truly gone; they now become a part of the sea’s body. 

This line also shows us how history in the Caribbean isn’t written in books, it’s embedded in the landscapes. When Walcott says the sea “has locked them up” he’s talking about memories being submerged but not erased. The coral literally covers the bones of the enslaved and preserves them. This is sort of like a natural archive that holds memory in silence instead of language. For Walcott, the sea is beautiful but inseparable from the violence that shaped it. When you look at the ocean you don’t just see water but centuries of hidden stories. 

By fusing bones and coral, this poem brings the idea that history is something that is separate from nature. The Caribbean’s landscape is historical because it carries physical evidence of what happened. The line “bone soldered by coral to bone” captures the scary truth that the past is never gone. It’s still there living quietly beneath the surface. The Caribbean’s history is not shown in books but in the coral’s slow but persistent growth. 

Week 12 Reading Response

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“ plangent harps of the Babylonian bondage,
as the white cowries clustered like manacles
on the drowned women, “

In the poem, “The Sea is History” by Derek Walcott the excerpt above caught my attention because it shines a light on lost history of slaves while on ships, especially the enslaved women who were often thrown overboard while being pregnant.

Dissecting the first line, “plangent harps of the Babylonian bondage,” with finding the meaning of each word. Plangent definition, according to Cambridge English Dictionary, is a deep/low sound expressing sadness. A Harp is a large wooden stringed instrument. The phrase, Babylonian bondage, is closely referencing The Holy Bible and when the enslavement of Jews occurred in Babylon. So, the author is comparing the sorrowful music of Jewish people being enslaved to black people being enslaved as well. Suffering the same, if not worse, fate like them. It’s a bitter way of showing how history tends to repeat itself and colonization and superiority never dies.

The second line, “as the white cowries clustered like manacles on the drowned women,” is more focused on the enslaved females being drowned and forgotten that upon discovering their corpses their shackles seemed to be lined with white cowries. White cowries are a shell for a sea snail. During the TransAtlantic slave trade, cowries were used as currency to purchase slaves. So there is a heavy negative connection to this sea made item and it’s still in control of deceased slaves by having something concrete and constricting on their body.

In the ocean, the manacles of white cowries will remain as evidence and a makeshift tomb embedded with history in the sea, because even if human bodies disintegrate over time, the history of our truth is there where no white man is willing to explore and manipulate.