The History of English Podcast · Kevin Stroud

Episode 187: Islands and Sea

·1 hr 13 min·4 clips

John Donne writes, "No man is an island, entire of itself."

1. The History of English Podcast episode 187, "Islands and Sea," covers English history and English vocabulary from 1624 to 1630. 2. Host Kevin Stroud connects John Donne, Charles I, Thomas Warner, and John Smith to show why ships, islands, and Parliament matter in this period. 3. The episode asks how English moved outward from Britain while the monarchy and Parliament argued over war, money, and authority. 4. Donne’s 1624 collection Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Several Steps in My Sickness gives the lines "No man is an island" and "For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." 5. The episode notes that Ernest Hemingway later used "For whom the bell tolls" as a novel title, keeping Donne’s phrase in modern English. 6. The discussion uses Donne’s imagery to introduce England as an island nation that began building a colonial empire in the early 1600s. 7. Charles I succeeds James I in 1625 and immediately clashes with Parliament over the costs of war. 8. The episode describes English efforts in the Thirty Years’ War, including the plan to relieve Breda and the later raid on the Spanish coast. 9. Parliament accepts naval action more readily than a land war in Europe, but the English expedition to the Netherlands fails badly. 10. Three-quarters of the 12,000 men sent to the Netherlands die within a few months, and the raid on Spain brings back only about 5,000 of 12,000 troops. 11. The episode links those political and military problems to a decline in England’s navy compared with the Dutch fleet. 12. It also explains CANOE, the acronym for the conspiracy or committee to attribute nautical origins to everything. 13. Verified nautical terms discussed include flagship, red flag, wide berth, leeway, broadside, white flag, and cut and run. 14. The phrase "between the devil and the deep blue sea" is traced to earlier forms like "betwixt the devil and the dead sea" and "betwixt the devil and the deep sea." 15. The episode cautions that some proposed ship-based explanations, especially the seam called "the devil," are weaker than the recorded evidence. 16. English contact with North America and the Caribbean appears in words such as wigwam, powwow, rattlesnake, swamp, pineapple, allspice, and patty. 17. John Smith’s General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles from 1624 provides first recorded uses for swamp and pineapple in an English document. 18. The tone stays explanatory and chronological, with short detours into etymology, colonial history, and examples from John Smith’s and Donne’s writings. 19. Listeners interested in English etymology, early colonial America, and seventeenth-century politics will get the most from it. 20. Listeners wanting a fast entertainment episode with little historical background may skip it.

As heard by us

A steady maritime history of early shipboard language moving into everyday English during a politically unsettled decade.

Episode 187 follows the arrival of seafaring language into English in the late 1620s, placing shipboard terms alongside Charles I's succession, his clashes with Parliament, and England's early Caribbean colonies on St. Kitts and Barbados.

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Why you'd press play

You can hear familiar phrases take shape at sea, with Charles I and the uneasy 1620s waiting on shore.

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