issue 42|sailing (hi)stories

I have always loved the ocean; wide, wild, an endless dreamscape of possible escape. Filled with beauty, violence and mystery, the ocean has been carrying humanity’s fears and hopes for millennia. Yet, we know so little about it. Scientists still make discoveries about its habitat. Our Western societies have yet to truly face their own history of crossings in the name of God and Gold. There is always the greater narrative and the personal stories. Both are entwined. In Turkish, there is a - rather disturbing - saying that, et tırnaktan ayrılmaz. The expression is more about people, and is used to describe two individuals who are so close to one another (siblings, lovers, friends, parents and their children…) that they cannot be separated, just like you cannot detach the nail from the flesh. I do look at history and personal stories in a similar way. One cannot exist without the other, at least not without creating pain.

I have loved the sea since my earliest memory. My heritage and my chosen landscapes include a few: the Marmara Sea, the Aegean, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea. My fascination with the ocean, more specifically the Atlantic one, came through films and stories of transatlantic crossing from the early twentieth century on spectacular ocean liners, filled with migrants of all classes and backgrounds seeking a better life in the United States of America. Images of arrival to New York harbour and people coming from a wide variety of European cities all looking up eyes filled with hope at the Statue of Liberty is among the classics of visual language that my imagination has recorded and archived into my memory forever. It hasn’t grown old, with examples as recent as the opening scene of The Brutalist (2024) where the beacon of hope that is the statue of liberty is inverted, telling us from the very start not to expect one great succes story about an immigrant making it in America. Any story of immigration is, after all, a complex one. 

Maybe it is because stories of immigration are so tightly linked to ships that I love them so much. Or is it the possibility they carry, of hope, the new, the departure and arrival to shores unknown? Even when I see cruise ships docking at the Amsterdam Passenger Terminal, knowing very well their disastrous impact on the environment, I cycle in excitement to stand near them, tiny and filled with dreams. And probably, deep down, there lies a constant escape wish in me, which I don’t think I will ever completely leave behind. After all, it is one of my creative drives. 

Since 1975, Amsterdam hosts SAIL, a spectacular maritime public event welcoming hundreds of ships in the city for a few days. The first edition was created to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the city, under the name 'Sail Amsterdam 700'. This led to the establishment of the Stichting Sail Amsterdam (SSA, Foundation Sail Amsterdam), and except for 2020 because of the pandemic, it took place every five years. The first time I saw it in 2010, I only got a glimpse of tall ships arriving as I was leaving for the Edinburgh Literature Festival, the second time, in 2015, I experienced it with friends visiting from Brussels, looking at the ships, going on the ferris wheel. This year, in 2025, I didn’t want to miss a day. And since I live nearby, I cycled to see the ships at quieter times: at dawn, at night. Creating my own magical moments in what can easily become an overcrowded event. 

SAIL prides itself for being free for all, with ships accessible to the public to visit and meet the crew. There are also several event areas with different kinds of programming: live music, talks, and cultural events. The Scheepvaartmuseum was open for free to all visitors, and the marineterrein - a former navy yard and military area now open to the public, hosted events and talks on maritime history, including the history of slavery, like the Armazoen art project, which I will write more about further below. It is impossible to pinpoint SAIL to one specific audience, which makes it a key event when it comes to presenting not only spectacle of sailing, but also the history attached to it, which the organisation has taken insufficient steps into tackling this year. 

The spectacle are the tall ships coming from across the world to participate in SAIL. Some are replicas of sixteenth century colonial vessels, presented with zero critical reflection on the dark history they carry, leading to such website descriptions: “Without the adventurous efforts of these early explorers, the world would have looked very different today”. Other ships have noble missions like the Shabab Oman II, “carrying a message of peace, friendship and cultural exchange”. The Dutch military was also present, with their imposant HNLMS Karel Doorman – the largest ship in the Dutch navy, smaller navy vessels and a submarine, they were actively recruiting. 

One tall ship has stolen my heart: the B.A.P. Unión, a magnificent four-masted vessel with a steel hull. The very first training ship of the Peruvian Navy, it was built between 2012 and 2015. The Unión is the largest sail ship in Latin America, and believe me it is spectacular. Not only with its size but the energy it carried. Maybe because next to its primary role as a training ship for officers and cadets, the Unión also serves as a sailing ambassador, promoting Peru’s culture and heritage around the world. On its departure from Amsterdam, the crew all wearing orange climbed up the masts to wave goodbye, and they’ve put on Peruvian music that resonated throughout the port of Amsterdam, creating a feast as they were leaving, slowly opening their red sails as they moved further away towards their next destination. Something inside me left with that ship that day. Maybe that’s why I regularly check its location on an online vessel tracking app the existence I discovered as SAIL ended. As I type these words, the ship is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. 

My fascination for oceans and tall ships, and my thirst for escape through ocean routes do not make me blind to the realities maritime history has been carrying for centuries. My imagination has also been filled, through the years, with narratives and stories beyond mainstream popular culture and education. The history of the transatlantic slave trade came through reading, exhibitions, documentary films and some Hollywood films too. But most of this knowledge was acquired by my own and almost never through my formal education. This is thankfully changing in the education system of many Western European countries, especially those that have benefitted from the horrors created by the kidnapping and enslaving of millions of black people through centuries. A city like Amsterdam is filled with this heritage and we are everyday living in the legacy of the so-called “Golden Age” built on the suffering of enslaved people and colonisation. To quote Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of our Discontent, as played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Ava Duvernay’s film Origin:

“Slavery lasted 246 years. That’s 13 generations of people, plus another hundred years of Jim Crow, segregation, violence and murder.  […] There were so many millions of African Americans who were murdered, from the Middle Passage until the end of legal segregation, that it goes beyond the realm of an official number. There is no number.”

On the last day of SAIL, after I waved goodbye to my beloved B.A.P. Unión, and many other spectacular ships, I went to the marineterrein to see Armazoen, a short film shown inside a transport container. The film takes its starting point from a fragment in the logbook of the ship Hof van Zeeland—a vessel of the Middelburg Commercial Company, the Zeeland counterpart to the Dutch West India Company (WIC) and the Dutch East India Company (VOC). On its first slave voyage between 1732 and 1734, sailing the triangular route from Vlissingen to Angola to the Caribbean, a logbook fragment recounts, in almost casual language, how five enslaved women jumped overboard. These few, detached lines became the foundation of the Armazoen Art Project: an ode to these women and to the countless others they represent, embodied in the figure of a single woman who chose resistance over submission. This art project carried by Monique Duurvoort and Afra Jonker will from November 2025 until June 2026, go on its international route, following the original triangular journey to Luanda (Angola) and Willemstad (Curaçao). Armazoen will also travel to Paramaribo (Suriname) and New York (USA). 

As I walked through SAIL, day after day, enchanted by the sight of the ships, I never allowed my joy to be separate from history. Living in a city like Amsterdam means acknowledging that, regardless of my own background, I am part of a society built on—and still profiting from—the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. While I cherished every moment spent admiring the tall ships, I could not ignore how little effort was made to connect personal stories to the broader maritime history. This year felt like a missed opportunity to advance the collective narrative we so urgently need—one that can guide us toward recognition, responsibility, and healing. I sincerely hope SAIL will do better in five years, there sure is enough time and more than enough urgency and stories to do so. 

A FEW THINGS THAT MAKE ME THINK AND FEEL…

• Arundhati Roy has a new book out, a memoir nonetheless! that is in itself news enough. But I haven’t read the book yet, however, I did listen to this excellent conversation between Roy, Sarah Howe and Lea Ypi on maternal inheritance. I need to add that I have had the immense honour to work with Sarah on translating Karin Karakașlı’s poetry both in 2017 and in 2023. She’s a wonderful poet.

• Listening to this episode of Women Who Travel, Tara Roberts on Diving for Shipwercks, I learned about Tara’s journey from casual swimmer to deep-sea explorer. Her work with Diving With a Purpose is not only about uncovering shipwrecks but also about resurfacing the silenced stories of the transatlantic slave trade. As she takes us from Mexico to Mozambique, Tara reminds us that the ocean holds both trauma and resilience, and that by listening to these submerged histories, we begin to understand more fully the legacies that shape our present.

• I’ve been in the mood for TV shows again lately. I had been missing the golden age of television we’ve experienced with MadMen, The Wire, Sopranos and co…, so it’s been difficult to get hooked by something truly great on any of the streaming channels we have. There is a lot of interesting shows, but nothing had grabbed me with its writing so far, until two shows:

  • I watched The Pitt on HBO Max, and I really loved it. It is so different from any medical TV show I have ever seen. The whole season happens during one day shift and so you follow one medical team throughout the day as they see many emergency patients. It gets very bloody and intense, and there is no soapy drama around the lives of the doctors and their medical students. I found it highly original writing.

  • And the other one that surprised me was The Studio on Apple TV. This is an exquisite parody of Hollywood and such excellent writing. I must admit I’m no fan of Seth Rogen, but here, the pace and the critique of the film industry worked for me. 

ABOUT + SUPPORT

Canan Marasligil (she/they) is a writer, literary translator and artist based in Amsterdam. She established the attention span website and its newsletter to publish their work independently: making the time to reflect, analyse and imagine.

thank you so much for reading! you can support the attention span by contributing as much as you’d like between 2,50 € and 25 € via this pay pal link.

Sharing is loving 🖤 Here’s the link to subscribe: theattentionspan.com/subscribe

When quoting or sharing content, please credit the author. Unless otherwise stated, all content (writing, photography, design) created and published in this newsletter is authored by Canan Marasligil.