The ship motif in Bleak House

Did anyone else notice the ship motif in Bleak House?

It appears on the famous first page of the novel. 

“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck.” (Ch.1)

(emphasis mine—same for the rest of the blog post) 

That’s a magnificent passage. Bleak House has some of the best prose in English fiction.

We see some ships: 

“The good ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing clippers are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where.” (Ch.19)

Mr Badger, a doctor who takes on Richard as an apprentice, has a wife who married twice before, and her first husband was a Captain in the Royal Navy. A more important doctor in the story, Allan Woodcourt, gets on a ship. 

The day Esther sees Allan again, after some separation and after her illness, she and her maid Charley are surrounded by boats and ships. Even their room looks like a ship’s cabin. 

“Our little room was like a ship's cabin, and that delighted Charley very much. Then the fog began to rise like a curtain, and numbers of ships that we had had no idea were near appeared. I don't know how many sail the waiter told us were then lying in the downs. Some of these vessels were of grand size—one was a large Indiaman just come home; and when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in the dark sea, the way in which these ships brightened, and shadowed, and changed, amid a bustle of boats pulling off from the shore to them and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in themselves and everything around them, was most beautiful.” (Ch.45) 

Dickens also adds some ship image to the night of the murder (see, I’m being respectful and not saying who gets murdered): 

“When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds, rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of London there is some rest.” (Ch.48) 

Images of ships are scattered throughout Bleak House. There are literal ships, there are also ships as metaphor. 

In the blog post about imagery in Dickens’s novel, I wrote that Mr Chadband (the minister) was compared several times to a vessel. 

“For Chadband is rather a consuming vessel—the persecutors say a gorging vessel—and can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork remarkably well.” (ibid.) 

And: 

“During the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband, being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground and waits to be floated off.” (ibid.)

Another character compares himself to a ship, though in a different way: 

“"For I am constantly being taken in these nets," said Mr. Skimpole, looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, "and am constantly being bailed out—like a boat. Or paid off—like a ship's company…"” (Ch.37) 

The whole country of England is also compared to a ship: 

“So there is hope for the old ship yet.” (Ch.40) 

And: 

“… That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock) because you can't provide for Noodle!

On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the country—about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it that is in question—is attributable to Cuffy.” (Ch.12) 

The shipwreck image appears a few times, such as when Dickens writes about Mr Jobling, living at Mr Krook’s house under the alias Mr Weevle: 

“On the following day Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow, borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a hammer of his landlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging up his two teacups, milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth of little hooks, like a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.” (Ch.20)

We see the metaphor again, when Mr Jarndyce is talking to Esther about Ada and Richard: 

“"… This rock we must leave to time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. We must not shipwreck Ada upon it. She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance of another separation from a friend..."” (Ch.60) 

And of course, there is a literal shipwreck.

Bleak House is such an intricate novel. Everything seems to fit together, everything is connected, nothing is wasted.