In this Commentary section of this week's print edition (October 5), Daniel Karlin examines Kipling's literary relationship, during and after the Great War, with the submarine. This story is one part, of course, of Kipling's engagement with ships and boats of all kinds, in prose and verse, throughout his career.

On September 15, 2000, the TLS carried a substantial and previously unpublished poem, "Namely", marked "not to be published" by Mrs Kipling but retrieved by the editor of Kipling's Letters, Thomas Pinney, from some papers in the National Maritime Museum. The poem resumes his verse's warm relationship with the Civil Marine, proclaiming the comfort drawn by an Englishman, in peril on the sea, from his ship being manned with British names. There is even a walk-on part for "MacAndrew", the Scottish engineer who is the hero of one of his most celebrated poems, "McAndrew's Hymn", written more than forty years earlier. "Namely" reminds us, too, that it was not only Kipling's modernist contemporaries who brought everyday images into the realm of poetry: it catalogues the whole paraphernalia of life on these vessels, from obscurities like "davit-gear" to "the succulent squeejee".

Given that the poem was not offered for publication, and that it was composed through pain in the last months of Kipling's life (1934–5), it is no surprise if the verse is a little less crisp than some of his best. However rough or ready, though, Rudyard Kipling needs no apology from us.

Namely
(Chant Merchant-Maritime of Names)

Such as in Ships of Awesome Size
Into the seas descend
They roll in suites and toiletries
And bath-tubs without end.
But me no chromium plumbing thrills
Or Tudor banquet-hall.
It is her watch and station-bills
I study more than all.

So, when that first down-Channel night
Breaks in full gale to day
And Ushant's slavering leagues of white
Predict a horrid Bay,
Above my early cup of tea,
Contentedly I think
Of such as have to sail with me,
Or, peradventure, sink.

Namely: – Port Lifeboat, Twenty-two,
Bow, Blair; Stroke, Mirrielees.
Falls-Fore and After – [Kinsella], Drew –
(Both – heaven be praised – A.B.'s!)
Therewith the first Fifth Engineer,
And Stewardess Miss White
Detailed to "bring me ladies here,
And see their belts are right."

So, when that steel four-masted barque,
Unlit and undermanned,
Looms, leaps, and lunges through the dark
Entirely out of hand,
And when my chattering tooth-glass tells
How hard astern we go,
I listen to the urgent bells
Untroubled for I know

Grant, Hunter, Lindsay, Gordon, Home,
MacAndrew and McPhee,
On duty in the engine-room,
Are taking care of me.
While – nine decks up – our helm and screw
Obedient as his brain –
"The Old Man" subtly brings us through
And on our course again.

So, when the fog-bank's blinding breath
Bewilders ear and eye,
And, chillier than the couch of Death
The unseen berg slips by
On the sports-deck, invisible
Low-spoken men I hear
Taking the covers off the boats
And testing davit-gear.

Pratt, Tizard, Banstead, Whitley, Keene,
Freckleton, Shide, Bellairs –
Deck-hands who rig the weather-screen
To make a lee for chairs,
And store the toys with which we play
On hull-board, quoits and rings,
But childish things are put away
Just now – in case of things.

In the dead hours from one to three
When even bar-men snore,
I watch the succulent squeejee
Address the rubber floor.
While, up that damp white avenue
Of Stewards, suds and smells,
The Carpenter and Mate push through
To sound our myriad wells.

So, when the whole Atlantic heaves
Her mountains on our decks,
And the shocked fabric grinds and grieves
Roars, races, rears and checks,
I do not writhe at every reel,
Nor wince at every jar.
I know what ship-yard launched her keel
And whose her engines are.

Which information writ, on brass
In the companion-way
Is never read by those who pass
All day and every day
But (without naming any Line)
So far as I can see
Belfast, Southampton, Clyde and Tyne
Are good enough for me.

RUDYARD KIPLING

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