The White Ship (story)

For the twelfth century vessel, see White Ship.

"The White Ship"
Author	H.P. Lovecraft
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror short story
Published in	The United Amateur
Publication date	November 1919

"The White Ship" is a short story written by science fiction and horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was first published in The United Amateur (Volume 19) #2, November 1919.

Unlike many of Lovecraft's other tales, "The White Ship" does not directly tie into the popularized Cthulhu Mythos. However, the story cannot be entirely excluded from mythos continuity either, since it makes reference to preternatural, godlike beings. The tone and temperament of "The White Ship" speaks largely of the Dream Cycle literary structure that Lovecraft utilized in other stories such as The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926) and "The Cats of Ulthar" (1920).

The story was also adapted into a song by the 1960s psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft on their self-titled debut album. Additionally, doom metal band, Solitude Aeturnus, wrote and played a song on their debut album, Into the Depths of Sorrow, called “White Ship.”

Plot summary

A lighthouse keeper named Basil Elton engages upon a peculiar fantasy in which a robed, bearded man is piloting a mystical white ship which appears when the moon is full. Elton walks out across the water on a bridge of moonbeams and joins the bearded man on this ship, and together they explore a mystical chain of islands unlike anything that can be found on Earth.

They travel past Zar, a green land where "dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten", then the majestic city of Thalarion, "City of a Thousand Wonders", where dwell frightful demons. They pass Akariel, the huge carven gate of Thalarion, and continue their voyage. Elton is informed that those who enter both places have never returned. During the voyage they seem to be following an azure celestial bird. They also pass Xura, the "Land of Pleasures Unattained", which seems pleasant from a distance but reeks of plague upon getting nearer. They finally settle in Sona-Nyl, the "Land of Fancy", where Elton spends a period of time which he describes as "many aeons", living in what seems to be a perfect society. In his time in Sona-Nyl, Basil learns of Cathuria, the "Land of Hope". Though no man truly knows where Cathuria is or what lies there, Elton is thrilled with the idea, fantasizing about it wildly, and urges the bearded man to take him there; a request which the latter reluctantly agrees to. They follow the celestial bird westward. After a perilous journey to where the crew believes Cathuria to be, the ship instead finds itself at the edge of the world, and plummets to its doom.

Elton awakens to find himself on the wet rocks next to his lighthouse, mere moments after he first departed on the white ship - and just in time to witness a catastrophic shipwreck caused by the light having gone out for the first time. Nothing remains of this wreck the next morning but the corpse of a bird familiar from his dream-journey, and a single brilliant white wooden spar. Elton does not see the white ship again.

Publication history

"The White Ship" has been published in the following collections.

Note: Most of this bibliography comes from The H. P. Lovecraft Archive. This list should not be considered complete.

The United Amateur (Volume 19) #2 – November 1919 (pp 30–33)
Weird Tales - May 1927
The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath – Ballantine Books, New York – 1970 (pp 220–228)
The Lurking Fear and Other Stories – Ballantine Books, New York – 1971 (pp 41–48)
Dagon and Other Macabre Tales – Arkham House, Sauk City, WI – 1987 (pp 36–42) (definitive version)
The Transition of H. P. Lovecraft: The Road To Madness – Ballantine Books, New York – 1996 (pp53–58)
The Thing On The Doorstep and Other Weird Stories – Penguin Books, New York – 2001 (pp 21–26)
Waking Up Screaming: Haunting Tales Of Terror – Del Rey, New York – 2003 (pp 224–231)

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The White Ship (H. P. Lovecraft)

Full text at The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
The White Ship public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Works by H. P. Lovecraft

Cthulhu Mythos Dream Cycle

Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Case of Charles Dexter Ward The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time

Short stories	"The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom that Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"

Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" "The Curse of Yig" "The Mound" "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A’the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx" "The Thing in the Moonlight"

Juvenilia	"The Mystery of the Grave-Yard" "The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist"

Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth

Essays	"Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars The Cancer of Superstition Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity

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