My Family and the Sea

I wrote a poem about the sea when I was young. I was around 12. My teacher asked me about it and I said my grandfathers had been sailors, and she said so the sea is in your blood. I felt embarrassed. I didn't understand what that meant. Perhaps now I do, but I am still embarrassed. 

Some people have interests. I have a love of the sea. I sometimes long to be out on the water. It is hard to explain. Not everyone in my family loves the sea, it depends upon your personal experience of it all. 

Yes, my grandfathers and their fathers were sailing men. Thought I guess I don't tell their stories too often. They weren't easy men and my grandfather wasn't a family favourite. He was older than my grandmother and had been through the Second World War in the Navy, and after that was in the Merchant Navy. He was that generation who never talked about it all.

My grandfather was born in such a way that he would never drown according to legend. 

His father was a merchant sailor and well...a smuggler. I guess they were sailors by day and smugglers by night. They called him Sir George, and he always knew when a ship would go down. I wonder how he knew; was he 'connected.' 

Anyway, I think my mother said he was a Jonah but I am not sure. I am worried no one would sail with me if they knew. George wasn't the best father and abandoned the family at one time. A part of me sort of resents him for it even though I never knew him. 

Sir George's father, Llewellyn, was also a sailor, and I am sure I have many relatives who were fishermen. One of my great great uncles died on his fishing boat from the fumes.

All three generations of sailors, my grandfather Basil, Sir George, and Llewellyn, shared the name Llewellyn. They were Cornish men originally.  

My other grandfather was a naval officer. We weren't close, though, he was the one paying for some of my sailing lessons as a child. I was grateful for that. Both of my grandfathers died in my youth. 

My grandmothers were strong women who held their families together and I adored both of them and miss them greatly. 

My father never went to sea, and my mother hates the sea. But we all worked in the dockyard in Portsmouth at one time. We all went down to the cotton mill.