The Ancient Mariner

Galápagos, Ecuador

Albatrosses are considered to be the souls of dead sailors and a good-luck charm.

In “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samual Taylor Coleridge (1798), a sailor shoots an albatross.

From that day forward, the ship and crew experience extreme hardship.  They are blown south into dangerous Antarctic waters and suffer great hardship due to cold and ice. The wind eventually shifts and carries the beleaguered sailing vessel and its crew to the equator where they get stranded mid-ocean without food or water. 

The other sailors blame the Mariner for their misfortune and string the dead albatross around his neck as penance for his misdeed.   

“An albatross around the neck”, became an idiom meaning, “a heavy burden of guilt”.

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In the story, the ship is becalmed on the equator, hundreds of miles from the Galápagos islands.  The heat is unbearable, and the crew has exhausted their fresh water supply.   Thirsty sailors look for land in every direction, they see nothing but ocean.  One of them makes the comment,

Water, water, everywhere, And not a drop to drink.

Being surrounded by water but dying of thirst, is a gift of irony given to us by the albatross and…

…The Ancient Mariner.

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Albatross nostrils are comparable in function to pitot tubes in modern aircraft. The bird in flight measures air rammed through the small forward-facing opening in the beak to accurately calibrate airspeed, just like a Cessna.

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We never actually saw an albatross. The islands where they nest have been quarantined because of avian flu concerns. It is just as well. If we were to cause the destruction of even one bird the guilt would be an albatross around our neck we could not bear.

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