In “The Cruise of the Nona”, Hilaire Belloc sets off "to sail the English seas again, and to pursue from thought to thought and from memory to memory such things as have occupied one human soul." On one level a breezy record of an adventurous journey; underneath the surface, a wise and insightful study of modern life, particularly in its transition from the Victorian to the early modern period. Belloc's prose glitters and crashes like ocean breakers.
Belloc sees sailing as an analogy to life: full of "great visions" and "intolerable tediums," "alive with discovery, emotion, adventure, peril, and repose." For Belloc, the sea "presents, upon the greatest scale we mortals can bear, those not mortal powers which brought us into being. It is not only the symbol or the mirror, but especially is it the messenger of the Divine."
Belloc leads his reader over the changing seas, treating of many questions, including:
How did the Vikings land in what are today impassable harbors?
When and why did the British Parliament become so corrupt?
What is the difference between prose and rhetoric?
Can you trust learned scholars?
Are sea monsters real?
Will Alice in Wonderland remain a popular book?
Why are oceans so different from one another?
Is "equality" a Catholic doctrine?
Mulling over half a century of memories and experiences, the seaman-philosopher shares a hundred and one reflections, flights of fancy, and tongue-in-cheek observations on England and Europe, Catholicism, atheism, sailing techniques, and common-sense. From his memories of the outbreak of the first World War to denunciations of rationalism, this cruise can transport the reader from his armchair to the lashing spray and biting wit of this monumental figure of English literature
