Musical Shipwrecks: The Tragically Hip--"Nautical Disaster"

With the news that Gord Downie, the lead singer and songwriter for The Tragically Hip, was diagnosed with a terrible form of brain cancer, and with the giant (possibly farewell) concert they put on in August, The Hip are in the spotlight in a way that they haven’t been for a long time. So although I’ve never been very concerned with being current, since their song “Nautical Disaster” is definitely on my list of songs about shipwrecks, I think this is a good time to look at it (it also happens to be my favorite Hip song anyway, so that doesn’t hurt).

In terms of discussion of the song, a lot of people get hung up on trying to identify the historical referent for this particular disaster, citing anything from the landing at Dieppe in WW2, to the sinking of the Bismarck, to the Lancastria. But I am inclined to agree with the commenter wonderdog from songmeanings.com (http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/65612/ --his post is the top one, and its also useful because summarizes these historical possibilities) that connecting it to any particular historical even really doesn’t add much to the understanding of the song. If you know anything about what happens in a nautical disaster in general, then you know enough for this song. The song itself hedges its bets about the reality of this experience through the language it uses at the beginning (“I had this dream”; “It was as though”).

But what does need to be grasped is the emotional truth of this nautical disaster, and part of the reason why I think that this is the greatest song of the Hip’s is that Downie’s lyrics are so evocative. One of the high points is the imagery of “five hundred more [men] thrashing madly / As parasites might, in your blood.” The image of men struggling for their lives in the water (and 8 times their number already dead) is horrific enough, but to introduce the parasite image is to draw that horror into oneself, or imagine oneself infected by the sight of it and inspire a kind of revulsion. In part that revulsion comes from the content of the image. I think of wriggling leeches somehow on the inside, but whatever you picture when someone says parasite, I’m sure its not pretty.

What makes the image even worse, however, is if you think through the consequences of thinking of these people as internal parasites. The contempt and revulsion that we associate with parasites get transferred to these poor souls and that seems especially cruel and awful. But as the next lines in the song reveal, this attitude is necessary: these parasites must be dispatched so that we may live. In this case, it is a matter of limited space within a lifeboat:

Now I was in a lifeboat designed for ten, ten only
Anything that systematic would get you hated
It's not a deal nor a test nor a love of something fated

These lines spell out the terms of survival, with the main constraint being how many can fit into the lifeboat. This discussion comes up, I suspect, because of the guilt related to it. It is hard to cling to accept that the distinction between the living and the dead, the drowned and the saved (whichever side of it you’re on), comes down to something as banal as a number, a safety recommendation. There’s nothing preordained or noble or necessary about it, it just is what it is, and that’s hard to live with or die because of. And the same goes with the selection of the crew itself, its cold and heartless:

The selection was quick, the crew was picked in order
And those left in the water
Got kicked off our pant leg
And we headed for home

But this decision, this whole situation, is not cold and heartless in the sense of something detached or abstract like a “deal or a test or a love of something fated.” No, the sheer physicality of this decision—pick the survivors and actively fight off those who cling on anyways and head for home (without looking back? At least not immediately?)--again centres this decision squarely within the realm of survival.

But the heart of this song is the idea that no matter what justifies such a break (even survival), justification is not always enough to avoid the consequences, as the final verse in the song reminds its listeners that the previous scene was a dream:

Then the dream ends when the phone rings
"You doing all right?"
He said, "It's out there most days and nights
But only a fool would complain"
Anyway, Susan, if you like
Our conversation is as faint a sound in my memory
As those fingernails scratching on my hull

But it is not just the dream element that adds ambiguity to the song, but the abrupt shift from reporting to direct address that happens at the “Anyway, Susan” line. The phone call speaks to the existence of some kind of guilt (presumably from the events that inspired the dream, although the song never actually confirms the reality of this experience), but the end of the quote of this conversation also ends the report that began the song with “I had this dream.....” The final lines directed to Susan (which are quite devastating) is a shift that has the potential to redirect the meaning of everything that came before. Is the whole shipwreck dream simply meant to be an illustration of what is going on between the narrator and Susan—is the shipwreck at issue in this song actually the wreck of a relationship, a rumination of getting over the guilt of leaving? It may be and that’s a compelling reading, or it also may be a song about how we get on with things, where the pragmatic answer to survivor’s guilt (“only a fool would complain”) provides the context for how to deal with less troubles such as may have come up with Susan (the positive reading of that “if you like”). Or it may be about the cost of that survivor’s guilt where the narrator has trouble dealing with such troubles except through a kind of repression or active forgetting (the sarcastic reading of the “if you like”). I don’t think there is an answer, but that is what makes this so interesting.

But in praising the song it is important to give props to the music as well—the swirling guitar and bass of the intro creates an appropriate eerie and dreamlike atmosphere for Downie to set the scene. We get the musical equivalent of groping our way through the fog (perhaps the fog of a dream) before it lifts at about 0:53 to begin revealing the horror with an appropriate shift in musical intensity. At this point the drums crash insistently, almost chaotically, the cymbals being especially prominent, reflecting the general clamour and tumult off the scene. The guitar begins to pick up pace, working through faster variations of the swirling arpeggios with which the the song began, taking on a stronger presence by 1:10 (“Thrashing madly as parasite might, in your blood”) and finally becoming the signature guitar line of the song 1:43 (“It’s not a deal nor a test...). What does this guitar line “mean,” and what does it do for the song? Its insistent wavering back and forth makes me think of it as the sonic representation of the search for escape, or trying to break free. This fits with its prominence at 2:07, the point where they finally “head for home,” we begin the bridge in which that underlying guitar line winds its way through a little solo as if seeking resolution, seeking home.

Then at 2:23 we get a brief rest, almost a return to the peace of the intro (as the dream ends) but then the emotional tenor almost immediately ramps up again and the Susan section marks the return of the winding guitar line which leads to the outro sol at 3:03, an extended riff on that guitar line seeking some kind of resolution across an even broader range before the guitar line exhaust itself (perhaps) without relief at 3:40. It’s an appropriately ambiguous ending for the song and an example of how to end songs right.