Man's spiritual and aesthetic interaction with his environment, particularly with the sea, often transcends his materialistic needs. The sea has been the primordial mother in the cosmogonies of many ancient people and she has continued to serve as a fertile source for poetic imagination. A brief survey of religious beliefs and literary works indicates that many ancient and modern cultures have viewed the sea as both eternal and infinite. The splendidly romantic view of life at sea, as perpetrated by many writers, had very little resemblance to the actual conditions which, in most cases, were precarious, full of uncertainty, discomfort and danger. Faced with the harsh realities of nautical life but motivated by a strong desire to sail its waters resulted in an intense conflict in the psyche of real-life explorers and their fictional counterparts. By examining the details of this conflict, it is here maintained that man's early voyages of discovery, and his present preoccupation with the sea, cannot be explained by a simple materialistic determinism.
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