What do you think?
Rate this book
Skibet Gaar Videre
Den indeholder kritiske skildringer af det daglige liv om bord på et norsk lastskib på langfart
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1924
3 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 29, 2025
Note: This essay appears in a better format on Bartleby The Sailor's Substack.
It's really not good for a man, if at sea, to think too much. (Pg. 111, translation mine).
After learning that Malcolm Lowry’s first novel, Ultramarine (1933), was highly influenced by Norwegian Nordahl Grieg’s Skibet gaar videre (1924),1 which appeared in English translation as The Ship Sails On, Knopf (1927), I decided to locate a copy of the translation. My fascination with “Young Man Goes to Sea” novels fall into my realm of expertise since, a few decades ago, I had gone to sea thinking I would eventually incorporate the experiences in a novel. That goal has proved elusive partly because, as I later learned, the first sea-going experience is often so typical that the themes of such novels border on cliché. The best authors can avoid the cliché, but the more the cliché is avoided, the less universal the experience. Only a truly unique author like Melville can opt for a depiction of young Redburn stumbling upon an effete fop who brings him to a posh gay club while ashore in circa 1837 Liverpool, rather than the more common one involving sailors making a beeline for known brothels, or—if they are on the stupid side or sexually timid—to modern “buy me drink” clip joints where coitus is an illusion, but the outrageous bar tab is not.
Finding a copy of the 1927 English translation proved harder than expected. The translation appeared in only one printing and was never reissued in English. Web searches and queries to rare book dealers, including the Maritime dealer Ten Pund Island Books in Gloucester, MA, were all in vain. I eventually resorted to a German translation that was reissued with the complete works of Nordahl Grieg in the mid-60’s. I supplements this with a Google PDF of the English edition. I was not enthused to read a whole book on my laptop and just used that PDF as a reference tool to elucidate tricky German passages, particularly those with nautical terminology.
After reading Und Das Schiff Geht Weiter, I am utterly baffled as to why it is not still in print and not currently available in more languages than French.2 As far as “Young Man Goes to Sea” novels go, the account is top notch and steeped in verité. Based on the young author’s seagoing experiences in the early 1920’s, the book firmly encapsulates the experience of an ordinary seaman in the era when steam engines had become predominant, relegating deck hands to the role of professional rust chippers and stevedores;3 there were no longer any sails to tend, which differentiates Grieg’s chronicle from some of the most famous that preceded his including Melville’s Redburn, Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s Two Year Before the Mast and Conrad’s “Youth.”4 If anything, Grieg’s depictions is more closely aligned with B. Traven’s The Death Ship which vilifies the maritime industry as a tool for capitalist exploitation and the dehumanization of the crew on a “modern” steam ship. The depictions of the engine room and engine room labor in Traven’s book harken comparisons to Dante’s Inferno.5 Indeed, such comparisons were intended by the enigmatic elusive Traven.
As I mention above, British Modernist Malcolm Lowry was so enchanted and captivated by Grieg’s book that he, too, opted to go to sea and chronicled his account in a first novel, Ultramarine, the only novel he ever completed other than his masterpiece Under the Volcano. Since the experiences of a neophyte seaman has remained rather constant throughout the centuries, regardless of whether a ship be propelled by wind or steam, it is hard to accuse any author of actual plagiarism. However, to say the least, Malcolm Lowry’s work is highly derivative of Grieg’s in that a major them in both works is the sexual mores of the crew and the young protagonist’s fear of contracting syphilis while pining for a letter from his sweetheart at home. According to the afterward in the German edition by Horst Bien, Grieg’s novel created a sensation in Norway and led to the International Red Cross taking a more active role in the world’s harbors to aid seamen in distress, including those who had contracted venereal diseases.
In addition to the ubiquitous theme—if we are to be completely honest—of sexually transmitted diseases and their tacit acknowledgment or willing avoidance by a crew boasting of sexual exploits, The Ship Sails On contains all the hallmarks of other “A Young Man Goes to Sea” novels. As in all of them, the young man stems from a better family than most of the crew who, as a rule, resort to sailing as a last resort. Benjamin, the 19-year-old protagonist in Grieg’s novel is the son of a ship’s broker and plans on just the one voyage to gain “experience” before joining the family business. However, since he is presumably knowledgeable about the industry, he carried none of the pretensions on board that led to Melville’s and Lowry’s protagonists being treated with derision and scorn by hardened crew members. Benjamin makes no absurd efforts to befriend the captain or other officers, one of whom is admonished by the captain for “familiarity” with a helmsman. Benjamin fits in almost immediately to a routine of utter drudgery and boredom, chipping rust most of the day.
The humdrum depictions of the daily routine are what makes the novel such a lost classic. Modern mariners who stumble upon this work will be amazed at how little has changed in the industry. There is the inevitable food beef with the steward who serves up substandard fare; the constant palaver (boasting) of a bantering crew with relatively little of worth being stated; and depictions of the overwhelming boredom being punctuated by moments of overwhelming transcendent beauty of the sky and sea, with flying fish bouncing off the hull and dolphins gamboling around the bow. But mostly there is the sense of solitude an isolation, a theme which Grieg emphasizes, but other “Young Man Goes To Sea” authors not so much.
When I speak of “modern” mariners, I must preface my word choice by emphasizing that I signed on my first vessel, the LNG Taurus, in November of 1988 after finishing an apprentice program at Piney Point, the Seafarers International Union’s quasi-military training facility. Thus, I had had to attend mandatory classes on “AIDS Awareness,” the 1980’s syphilis.6 Additionally, I still remember the utter isolation where the only mode of communication with the land world involved an extremely expensive satellite phone call; a call from the middle of the Pacific meant either a birth or a death. Thus, many crew members longed for air mail letters from loved ones when they arrived in ports where there was a diligent ship’s agent. If a phone was available, there would be an inevitable line and sign-up sheet. Since circa 2000, email has been available on most ships. By the time I retired, each room had internet—albeit sometimes with a spotty connection--even in the middle of the ocean.
While the isolation and solitude has decreased due to internet and email, the individual isolation of crew members from one another has increased greatly due to improvements which have led to virtually all crew members having their own private room, quarters I have snidely referred to as individual onanistic wank chambers. The forecastle or fo’c’sle, the nasty common quarters for the unlicensed crew of bygone eras (thus the title of Dana’s book), is gone (the forepeak is now a nasty space reserved for grease and line stowage); even Lowry, in the late 1920’s, was surprised to learn that his ship did not have this common living and sleeping area that was the centerpiece in Grieg’s depictions of crew camaraderie less than a decade earlier. The sequestering of crew in their own private rooms with the availability of mass media has led to much less crew interaction during off hours; largely gone are cutthroat poker games, and inevitable brawls that accompany them, and crews sharing a lounge. Though ship lounges still exist, they are largely ghost rooms these days, mere meeting places for watching mandatory training and safety videos and not much else.
In this sense, the depiction of the crew on Grieg’s Mignon in The Ship Sails On longing for mail in Cape Town hit home with me as I remembered anticipating mail call after my ship’s arrival in Japan in the late 80’s. Mail call! Otherwise, the port time on a ship In Grieg’s era was vastly superior to the modern experience, where containerization has reduced port stays to a mere 12-24 hours. The crew of the Mignon had weeks to find “love” or trouble or both during the ships stay in Cape Town, the scenes of which propel the novel to its tragic conclusion:
They had reached a slummy quarter, loafers and hooligans scowled at every corner, and half-naked girls leaned out of the windows and hailed them. [. . .]
The man limped in front and they entered a big room thick with the fumes of beer and tobacco. [. . .] A big blond in a loose wrap went up to Benjamin.
"I love you,” she whispered, nestling up to him. (Pg. 156)
From the “Afterward” in the German edition and a quick perusal of his Wikipedia page, Nordahl Grieg—a distant relative of the composer—lived quite an adventurous life. He wrote nearly twenty books, including a book of poetry also based on the experiences in The Ship Sails On, was active in the Norwegian resistance during World War II and was killed when the plane he was on as a reporter accompanying a crew on a bombing raid over Berlin was shot down. It is an utter shame that The Ship Sails On is not still in print and is only available as a PDF document in English. His account of a young man’s experiences at sea rivals those of Melville and others. The depictions are brutally accurate and psychologically honest as far as the both the external conditions and the interior travails of a young protagonist on his first voyage.
***********************************
1
For the language geeks, the book in the original Norwegian is also available as a PDF: Skibet gaar videre
2
Goodreads lists very few editions, mostly French ones. The German edition that I resorted to wasn’t even listed on Goodreads.
3
While other novels give a hint at the mundane labor, none emphasize the ubiquity of chipping rust in a deckhand’s day. As one engineer derisively spoke to an Able-Bodied seaman on one of the last vessels I sailed on, “Engineers are busy with making the ship run. You are responsible for using an inanimate object to knock rust off another inanimate object.”
4
Though Joseph Conrad doesn’t really count in this genre because he sailed in a licensed capacity.
5
Grieg has a chapter devoted to his protagonist, Benjamin, having to work as a coal trimmer by the boilers after the death of a stoker forces an emergency realignment of the crew. Thus, there are scenes from a ship’s engine room that rival B. Traven’s, which, if read carefully, will dissuade a young man of any romantic notion of life at sea.
6
Grieg, is merely following in the footsteps of his fellow countryman in creating a work with a sexually transmitted disease as a major theme. Ibsen’s Ghosts is the first work that comes to mind.
It's really not good for a man, if at sea, to think too much. (Pg. 111, translation mine).
After learning that Malcolm Lowry’s first novel, Ultramarine (1933), was highly influenced by Norwegian Nordahl Grieg’s Skibet gaar videre (1924),1 which appeared in English translation as The Ship Sails On, Knopf (1927), I decided to locate a copy of the translation. My fascination with “Young Man Goes to Sea” novels fall into my realm of expertise since, a few decades ago, I had gone to sea thinking I would eventually incorporate the experiences in a novel. That goal has proved elusive partly because, as I later learned, the first sea-going experience is often so typical that the themes of such novels border on cliché. The best authors can avoid the cliché, but the more the cliché is avoided, the less universal the experience. Only a truly unique author like Melville can opt for a depiction of young Redburn stumbling upon an effete fop who brings him to a posh gay club while ashore in circa 1837 Liverpool, rather than the more common one involving sailors making a beeline for known brothels, or—if they are on the stupid side or sexually timid—to modern “buy me drink” clip joints where coitus is an illusion, but the outrageous bar tab is not.
Finding a copy of the 1927 English translation proved harder than expected. The translation appeared in only one printing and was never reissued in English. Web searches and queries to rare book dealers, including the Maritime dealer Ten Pund Island Books in Gloucester, MA, were all in vain. I eventually resorted to a German translation that was reissued with the complete works of Nordahl Grieg in the mid-60’s. I supplements this with a Google PDF of the English edition. I was not enthused to read a whole book on my laptop and just used that PDF as a reference tool to elucidate tricky German passages, particularly those with nautical terminology.
After reading Und Das Schiff Geht Weiter, I am utterly baffled as to why it is not still in print and not currently available in more languages than French.2 As far as “Young Man Goes to Sea” novels go, the account is top notch and steeped in verité. Based on the young author’s seagoing experiences in the early 1920’s, the book firmly encapsulates the experience of an ordinary seaman in the era when steam engines had become predominant, relegating deck hands to the role of professional rust chippers and stevedores;3 there were no longer any sails to tend, which differentiates Grieg’s chronicle from some of the most famous that preceded his including Melville’s Redburn, Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s Two Year Before the Mast and Conrad’s “Youth.”4 If anything, Grieg’s depictions is more closely aligned with B. Traven’s The Death Ship which vilifies the maritime industry as a tool for capitalist exploitation and the dehumanization of the crew on a “modern” steam ship. The depictions of the engine room and engine room labor in Traven’s book harken comparisons to Dante’s Inferno.5 Indeed, such comparisons were intended by the enigmatic elusive Traven.
As I mention above, British Modernist Malcolm Lowry was so enchanted and captivated by Grieg’s book that he, too, opted to go to sea and chronicled his account in a first novel, Ultramarine, the only novel he ever completed other than his masterpiece Under the Volcano. Since the experiences of a neophyte seaman has remained rather constant throughout the centuries, regardless of whether a ship be propelled by wind or steam, it is hard to accuse any author of actual plagiarism. However, to say the least, Malcolm Lowry’s work is highly derivative of Grieg’s in that a major them in both works is the sexual mores of the crew and the young protagonist’s fear of contracting syphilis while pining for a letter from his sweetheart at home. According to the afterward in the German edition by Horst Bien, Grieg’s novel created a sensation in Norway and led to the International Red Cross taking a more active role in the world’s harbors to aid seamen in distress, including those who had contracted venereal diseases.
In addition to the ubiquitous theme—if we are to be completely honest—of sexually transmitted diseases and their tacit acknowledgment or willing avoidance by a crew boasting of sexual exploits, The Ship Sails On contains all the hallmarks of other “A Young Man Goes to Sea” novels. As in all of them, the young man stems from a better family than most of the crew who, as a rule, resort to sailing as a last resort. Benjamin, the 19-year-old protagonist in Grieg’s novel is the son of a ship’s broker and plans on just the one voyage to gain “experience” before joining the family business. However, since he is presumably knowledgeable about the industry, he carried none of the pretensions on board that led to Melville’s and Lowry’s protagonists being treated with derision and scorn by hardened crew members. Benjamin makes no absurd efforts to befriend the captain or other officers, one of whom is admonished by the captain for “familiarity” with a helmsman. Benjamin fits in almost immediately to a routine of utter drudgery and boredom, chipping rust most of the day.
The humdrum depictions of the daily routine are what makes the novel such a lost classic. Modern mariners who stumble upon this work will be amazed at how little has changed in the industry. There is the inevitable food beef with the steward who serves up substandard fare; the constant palaver (boasting) of a bantering crew with relatively little of worth being stated; and depictions of the overwhelming boredom being punctuated by moments of overwhelming transcendent beauty of the sky and sea, with flying fish bouncing off the hull and dolphins gamboling around the bow. But mostly there is the sense of solitude an isolation, a theme which Grieg emphasizes, but other “Young Man Goes To Sea” authors not so much.
When I speak of “modern” mariners, I must preface my word choice by emphasizing that I signed on my first vessel, the LNG Taurus, in November of 1988 after finishing an apprentice program at Piney Point, the Seafarers International Union’s quasi-military training facility. Thus, I had had to attend mandatory classes on “AIDS Awareness,” the 1980’s syphilis.6 Additionally, I still remember the utter isolation where the only mode of communication with the land world involved an extremely expensive satellite phone call; a call from the middle of the Pacific meant either a birth or a death. Thus, many crew members longed for air mail letters from loved ones when they arrived in ports where there was a diligent ship’s agent. If a phone was available, there would be an inevitable line and sign-up sheet. Since circa 2000, email has been available on most ships. By the time I retired, each room had internet—albeit sometimes with a spotty connection--even in the middle of the ocean.
While the isolation and solitude has decreased due to internet and email, the individual isolation of crew members from one another has increased greatly due to improvements which have led to virtually all crew members having their own private room, quarters I have snidely referred to as individual onanistic wank chambers. The forecastle or fo’c’sle, the nasty common quarters for the unlicensed crew of bygone eras (thus the title of Dana’s book), is gone (the forepeak is now a nasty space reserved for grease and line stowage); even Lowry, in the late 1920’s, was surprised to learn that his ship did not have this common living and sleeping area that was the centerpiece in Grieg’s depictions of crew camaraderie less than a decade earlier. The sequestering of crew in their own private rooms with the availability of mass media has led to much less crew interaction during off hours; largely gone are cutthroat poker games, and inevitable brawls that accompany them, and crews sharing a lounge. Though ship lounges still exist, they are largely ghost rooms these days, mere meeting places for watching mandatory training and safety videos and not much else.
In this sense, the depiction of the crew on Grieg’s Mignon in The Ship Sails On longing for mail in Cape Town hit home with me as I remembered anticipating mail call after my ship’s arrival in Japan in the late 80’s. Mail call! Otherwise, the port time on a ship In Grieg’s era was vastly superior to the modern experience, where containerization has reduced port stays to a mere 12-24 hours. The crew of the Mignon had weeks to find “love” or trouble or both during the ships stay in Cape Town, the scenes of which propel the novel to its tragic conclusion:
They had reached a slummy quarter, loafers and hooligans scowled at every corner, and half-naked girls leaned out of the windows and hailed them. [. . .]
The man limped in front and they entered a big room thick with the fumes of beer and tobacco. [. . .] A big blond in a loose wrap went up to Benjamin.
"I love you,” she whispered, nestling up to him. (Pg. 156)
From the “Afterward” in the German edition and a quick perusal of his Wikipedia page, Nordahl Grieg—a distant relative of the composer—lived quite an adventurous life. He wrote nearly twenty books, including a book of poetry also based on the experiences in The Ship Sails On, was active in the Norwegian resistance during World War II and was killed when the plane he was on as a reporter accompanying a crew on a bombing raid over Berlin was shot down. It is an utter shame that The Ship Sails On is not still in print and is only available as a PDF document in English. His account of a young man’s experiences at sea rivals those of Melville and others. The depictions are brutally accurate and psychologically honest as far as the both the external conditions and the interior travails of a young protagonist on his first voyage.
***********************************
1
For the language geeks, the book in the original Norwegian is also available as a PDF: Skibet gaar videre
2
Goodreads lists very few editions, mostly French ones. The German edition that I resorted to wasn’t even listed on Goodreads.
3
While other novels give a hint at the mundane labor, none emphasize the ubiquity of chipping rust in a deckhand’s day. As one engineer derisively spoke to an Able-Bodied seaman on one of the last vessels I sailed on, “Engineers are busy with making the ship run. You are responsible for using an inanimate object to knock rust off another inanimate object.”
4
Though Joseph Conrad doesn’t really count in this genre because he sailed in a licensed capacity.
5
Grieg has a chapter devoted to his protagonist, Benjamin, having to work as a coal trimmer by the boilers after the death of a stoker forces an emergency realignment of the crew. Thus, there are scenes from a ship’s engine room that rival B. Traven’s, which, if read carefully, will dissuade a young man of any romantic notion of life at sea.
6
Grieg, is merely following in the footsteps of his fellow countryman in creating a work with a sexually transmitted disease as a major theme. Ibsen’s Ghosts is the first work that comes to mind.
October 4, 2020
Slightly weird in the sense that it reads as YA fiction, but with STD as one of its main themes. This short novel follows Benjamin, an idealist young man who chooses to enrol as a simple sailor for a crossing from Norway to Cape Town although he is a shipowner's son and doesn't quite fit in with the rough guys below deck. But that's the very reason Benjamin yearns to experience the fabled camaraderie of men braving the odds together on the high seas. "Le navire" reads very much like the lesser novels of Conrad or Jack London. It's a coming-of-age narrative with set pieces highlighting Benjamin's big moments of fear, doubt and even despair. Feeling betrayed because he finds no letter from his beloved upon his arrival in Cape Town, Benjamin follows his mates to the brothel, only to regret his lack of faith when the eagerly anticipated letter reaches him the very next day. Disillusioned and afraid of having contracted syphilis, like most of the others, Benjamin toys with the idea of suicide, but overcomes his self-loathing and chooses to struggle on. I find it weird that this book was controversial when it was first published in 1924. Even the most hypocritical readers must have been well aware that whoring and STD were part and parcel of the sailor's life, and in no way is it as disturbing as "Billy Budd, Sailor", which saw the light of print posthumously that same year.
August 17, 2023
Écriture poétique aux images neuves (ça fait du bien) qui emmène au cœur de la violence, de la douceur et des liens d'amitié qui peuvent exister dans un groupe d'hommes sur un bateau parfois impitoyable. Un beau tableau de l'homosociabilité en mer.
February 23, 2017
I read the 1927 English translation of this novel about the experiences of a young boy on the cusp of manhood who signs on as a crewman on a ship in the early 20th century before antibiotics. The book portrays the seamen's fears of tropical diseases and venereal disease, as well as the deprivations and crashing boredom while on voyages. The book is nearly impossible to find in English translation, despite the fact that it raised social consciousness of the plights of sailors and brought about reform legislation in Norway.
May 26, 2020
Titre français : Le navire poursuit sa route
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews