To begin with the latter issue it can be observed that the primary function of shipwreck in the plays is not to cause death and destruction, but to separate main characters, as many observers have stated.^[i]
A fatal outcome is very much the exception. Of course, there is the sinking of Antigonus’s ship off the coast of Bohemia in The Winter’s Tale, which prevents any news about Perdita reaching Sicily. And there is the destruction of the Turkish fleet in Othello. All other shipwreck victims not only survive, but stay unharmed.

It has been observed that the plots of Shakespeare’s plays are basically fuelled by separation or by conflict. Any plot has to involve characters in whom the audience is in some way interested. This can be achieved by changing the conditions or relationships in which characters are presented. The goal is that the ‘audience, or reader, wishes … to see [the situation to be] changed, or to remain unchanged’.^[ii]

In the plays involving shipwreck, we have to wait for the protagonists to be reunited. Usually, any reunion will not happen directly or easily, but only after some ‘swerving’. In any case, the shipwreck will foreground or create relations between people and situate them in space.^[iii]

Now to the first part of the question: one must be able to afford to be shipwrecked in the first place. All the farmers and shepherds we meet where they live. But if we list all the persons shipwrecked (or captured by pirates) in the plays, we get an impressive line-up, which gives sea travel and shipwreck quite an upper-class tinge and allure (like reading aristocracy reports in the tabloids):

• the king of Naples and his entourage
• Hamlet, prince of Denmark
• Pericles, a prince of Tyros
• Margaret, a princess
• Othello, a general
• Viola, a lady, daughter of Sebastian of Messaline (a merchant? an aristocrat? … certainly rich)
• Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse (probably rich) and his family
• Antonio, a rich merchant in Venice (doesn’t travel himself, but sends his ships)
• Antigonus, a courtier

The leading characters of the play, which are separated by shipwreck, certainly are upper-class. The sailors and ship crews, for whom storms and shipwrecks are part of the occupational hazard, are rather treated as by-catch and hardly ever mentioned. Only in The Tempest is care taken to stow them safely below the hatches, and in Twelfth Night they provide the ‘minor characters’ of the mariners helpful to both Viola and Sebastian.

---

[i] Morrison, 2014, Shipwrecked, p. 35;
Stafford, 1966, ‘Shakespeare’s Use of the Sea’, p. 49;
Jones, 2015, Shakespeare’s Storms, p. 2;
Schalkwyck, 2019, ‘Storms and Drops, Bonds and Chains’, p. 67.
Snider, 1874, ‘Shakespeare’s “Tempest” ’, p. 198: shipwreck is ‘an artifice of the poet for scattering, or possibly uniting, his characters in an external manner’.

[ii] Williams, 1951, ‘Shakespeare’s Basic Plot Situation’, p. 314. Williams identifies ‘unnatural division’ as the driver of the plot in the comedies and lists following examples:

• ‘the unnatural resolve of the men in Love’s Labour’s Lost to separate themselves from womankind;
• the abnormal, if accidental, separation of twin brothers in The Comedy of Errors;
• the unnatural and abnormal separations of husbands and wives in All’s Well that Ends Well, Cymbeline, and The Winter’s Tale;
• the abnormal enmity of brothers, and the physical banishment of three of them, in As You Like it and The Tempest …

Only The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Merchant of Venice do not conform to the pattern.’ Williams provides a similar listing for the tragedies.

[iii] Habermann, 2012, ‘ “I Shall Have Share of This Most Happy Wreck” ’, p. 59.

Several commonalities or patterns concerning Shakespeare’s shipwreck plays can be found. One main conclusion is that almost all shipwrecks are caused by storms, sometimes in combination with a lee coast.

In The Comedy of Errors, the storm is mainly identified by the dark sky (the ‘obscurèd light the heavens did grant’ CE 1.1.66). That Egeon’s family was also exposed to high seas is only given away indirectly by his mention of the sea becoming calm afterwards.

In Twelfth Night, we are not easily told but have to infer ourselves in the last act from one of the allusions to high seas, that a storm was the cause: Antonio mentions how he saved Sebastian ‘from the rude sea’s enraged and foamy mouth’ (TN 5.1.72).

In Pericles there is little doubt, as the first storm is described by the Chorus and discussed by the fishermen ashore before Pericles stumbles ashore under the storm insignia of ‘thunder and lightning.’ Pericles’s ship can ride out the second storm, for it has enough sea room this time.

In The Tempest, the title alone gives away the reason for the shipwreck. From the text we can identify high winds driving the ship on a lee coast.

High winds and seas as well as dark skies had also been encountered by Margaret on her voyage to England, as she eloquently describes in Henry VI, Part 2.

The witnesses of the storm scene in Othello give similar accounts, and their reports are also nice examples of a sea which is inseparable from the sky.

The upcoming storm in The Winter’s Tale is foretold clearly enough by ‘grim’ and ‘frowning’ skies.

Shakespeare uses typically one or several of the following images to describe a storm:

• high seas and howling winds (Oth 2.1.68)
• dark skies and ‘threat’ning’ clouds (JC 1.3.8)
• sea and sky become inseparable, the horizon is no longer visible and the sea touches the sky – however not along the horizon as usual, but much more in the ‘vault of the sky’
  (WT 3.3.79–84)
• thunder and lightning (Per 3.1.1–6)

(The prominent storm scenes in King Lear and in Julius Caesar employ similar imagery but are, however, experienced on land.)

Coming back to shipwreck, only in King John and The Merchant of Venice, rocks and shallow waters are reported or assumed to be the cause of demise.

The possible locations mentioned in The Merchant of Venice are the ‘narrow seas that part / The French and English’, which is the English Channel, and the Goodwins, ‘a very dangerous flat’. Both are real, and really dangerous to navigation. The Goodwin Sands consist of sandbanks off the easternmost part of Kent and had to be passed by almost every ship approaching London. The theatregoers in London were probably well acquainted with these navigational hazards. With a tiny, but well-placed allusion, Shakespeare is able to evoke a complete mental picture in the minds of his audience.

Figure: ‘A Draught of the Goodwin Sands’; printed chart from 1750.  Public domain.

Figure: ‘A Chart of the English Channel with the Adjacent Coasts of England and France’; printed chart from 1758. New York Public Library Digital Collections.

In similar way as I did with sea language, I also created a list of all the shipwrecks in the plays. Similar to the use of “sea quotes” in general, the employment of shipwrecks—along with storms and pirates—appears more frequently in the latter half of Shakespeare’s writing career.

In this table, I also attempted to visualise the progression in the theatrical depiction of shipwrecks.

One star (*) means, that the shipwreck is mentioned or conversationally referred to.
Two stars (**) denote a longer report or narration.
Three stars (***) mean, that the immediate consequences of the shipwreck are actually displayed on the stage, and
four stars (****) refer to an actual performance of the shipwreck—as far as theatrical means permit to do so.

The table further includes all appearances of pirates, as well as the storms without shipwrecks (in JC and KL; for abbreviations of the titles, see here).

What do you think of the table? Is this way to display the information helpful or interesting to you?

Gurr found, that ‘six of the plays have shipwrecks’.¹
Any result will depend on how one counts and what is included in the listing. In the following I present the results of my own count.

I find, that in five plays, shipwreck – real or presumed – is central to the plot:

• The Comedy of Errors (a storm separates a couple as well as two sets of identical twins)
• The Merchant of Venice (failed ventures at sea cause Antonio to be indebted to Shylock)
• Twelfth Night (a storm separates the twin siblings Sebastian and Viola, who are shipwrecked and washed ashore in Illyria)
• Pericles (in the first storm Pericles is shipwrecked and washed ashore at Pentapolis, where he can win the favour of princess Thaisa; in a second storm the newlywed couple is separated again; Thaisa is assumed to have died in childbirth and the sailors – ‘strong in custom’ – insist on casting her overboard: Per 3.1.52)
• The Tempest (the name-giving storm brings several groups of shipwrecked survivors separately to an island).

In four plays, I find shipwreck (or near shipwreck) prominently mentioned or important for one aspect of the plot:

• Henry VI, Part 2 (Margaret admonishes her weak husband Henry in a speech describing the hazards of her travel to England: ‘was I for this nigh wrecked upon the sea’, 2H6 3.2.82–113)
• King John (the Dauphin’s supply is reported to be wrecked on Goodwin Sands: KJ 5.3.9–11 and 5.5.12–13, while the Bastard’s troops are devoured by Lincoln Washes: ‘half my power this night, passing these flats, are taken by the tide’, KJ 5.6.39–41)
• Othello (the Turkish fleet is dispersed by a storm: Oth 2.1.10–24)
• The Winter’s Tale (in a storm, Antigonus’s ship is observed from land to be ‘swallowed with yeast and froth’: WT 3.3.79–88).

In three plays, shipwreck is mentioned at least passingly or used as a metaphor:

• Romeo and Juliet (Romeo addresses Cupid, his pilot, ‘that hath the steerage of my course’, 1.4.110 shortly before his death, 5.3.117–118)
• Measure for Measure (Mariana’s brother Frederick ‘was wrecked at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his sister’, MM 3.1.209–211)
• The Two Noble Kinsmen (the Jailer’s Daughter observes a ship sinking after running on a rock: ‘up with a course or two, and tack about, boys! Good night, good night; you’re gone’, TNK 3.4.10–11).

To make this discussion of nautical hazards a more complete one, we might include pirates. Then we can identify six plays, in which pirates are essential to propel the plot:

• Henry VI, Part 2 (Suffolk dies by pirates, 2H6 4.1.33–139)
• Hamlet (on his journey to England, where Claudius wants him to be killed, Hamlet is famously taken and rescued by pirates, and he reports his adventure in a letter to Horatio; Ham 4.3.12–27)
• Twelfth Night (Antonio ‘shakes off’ the name of pirate in TN 5.1.66–70, but admits that he had fought against Orsino on a ship others describe as ‘baubling vessel … For shallow draught and bulk unprizeable’, TN 5.1.49)
• Measure for Measure (‘One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate’ died conveniently on the same morning in the prison, so that his head can be exchanged for Claudio’s, MM 4.2.64)
• Antony and Cleopatra (‘Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates, / Makes the sea serve them, which they ear and wound / With keels of every kind’, AC 1.4.48–50; Pompey agrees with the triumvirate to ‘rid all the sea of pirates’ in AC 2.6.36)
• Pericles (Pirates ‘rescue’ Marina from being murdered in Per 4.1.90–100, but will sell her to a brothel later on).

Finally, I would like to mention that in at least two plays storms without shipwrecks are important for the plot: in Julius Caesar and King Lear.

1. Gurr, 2010, Baubles on the Water: Sea Travel in Shakespeare’s Time, in SEDERI – Sociedad Española de Estudios Renacentistas Ingleses, 20, p. 68. ↩︎