Kathleen's Reviews > The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea

“Here again Winslow Homer can be instructive, this time as an artistic interpreter of the Atlantic. When placed against his portraits of the larger sea, his Homosassa watercolors affirm the Gulf’s distinctive qualities. Homer’s Atlantic is a roaring, agitated giant, gray and intense, stirring with water spouts, thrashing seas, and sharks. Its coastline is a display of crashing waves on jagged rocks, as dark and turbulent as the sky above. Human subjects often struggle in its crosscurrents of cold remoteness, for the Atlantic is less ‘place’ than entity, bearishly expansive and disengaged. By contrast, Homer’s Gulf is a sea of another color, with a cordial disposition. The water lies flat and serene in his paintings, except when a fish jumps to throw a hook. But this is thrill, not threat; the angler’s boat continues to drift at ease, his fishing line drawn back in a flourish. In the white-cloud sky, birds peaceably ride invisible updrafts on open wings” (15).

“Size is the principal distinction with oceans taking the top spot. They are Earth’s vast deeps and bounding mains, the collective of all interconnected saltwater. Seas come next in size, and then gulfs, although the division lacks a fixed standard, a little like inconsistent size charts across the clothing industry: one brand’s medium is another’s large. The 600,000-square mile surface of the Gulf of Mexico is one-fifth more expansive than the Sea of Okhotsk off east Russia, and even more so the Sea of Japan” (16).

“The planet’s largest gulf is tenth in size among the Earth’s bodies of water” (17).

“a basin that holds 643 quadrillion gallons of water, which is really not a lot for the dimensions cited. That’s because the Gulf’s mean depth is but a single mil. Satellite images show what looks like underwater snow drifts packing around the entire coast, with the heaviest accumulations fronting Yucatan, Louisiana, and Florida. This is the continental shelf and it’s slope, and why the Gulf contains more shallow water (about 38 percent) than deep water (about 20 percent)” (19).

“Randy Wayne White made the tarpon a regular feature in his crime novels: ‘Six feet long, most of them, rolling and diving in a frenzied carousel, gulping surface air before ascending, blowing bubbles, their huge horse-eyes vivid with life but devoid of emotion; primeval fish that were wild with purpose but as mindless as rays of light” (165).

“Tarpon fishing was an antidote for the perceived emasculation of his generation, linked to the disappearing American frontier, urban expansion, and a nation at peach. Sones of the bourgeoisie were gripped tightest by this crisis of manhood. Managing a trust fund didn’t require physical exertion, and while one could demonstration his masculinity in the dog-eat-dog world of high finance and business, he could still be weak in body. A flabby physique, once a mark of status that distinguished the manager, owner, and heir from the sinewy bodied worker—a fishing guide, for example—was falling out of fashion. A country led by effete men—‘with shoulders that slope like a champagne bottle,’ as Theodore Roosevelt put it—allegedly jeopardized national security” (171).

“In Genesis, no sea or oceanic vista graces Eden. The Old Testament sea is the ‘great abyss’; God commands it into an epic flood to wash away the wickedness of man” (230).