Analysis of the Poem The Wreck of Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The SS Deutschland, an iron passenger steamship of the Norddeutscher Lloyd line, was on a maiden voyage to New York from Bremen. On December 4, 1875, the Deutschland was on its way to New York from Bremerhaven, with 123 emigrants. The weather conditions for the steamship was horrible; a blizzard hit the steamship on the Kentish Knock, an area off the coast of Kent and Essex in England. The crew of the Deutschland tried an attempt to go astern but it failed when the stress fractured the Deutschland’s propeller. The vessel began to sink, and the sea began to break over the steamship and the wind rose to gale force; consequently, an order to abandon ship. On December 7, 1875, 135 out of 213 people were saved from the wreck. Among the victims of the wreck were five Franciscan nuns from Salzkotten, Westphalia. The Franciscan nuns had been emigrating to escape the anti-Catholic Falk Laws, legislative bills enacted in the German Kingdom of Prussia during the Kulturkampf conflict with the Catholic Church. The Franciscan nuns’ death inspired Gerard Manley Hopkins to compose his longest Christian theme poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” dedicated to their memory.

In this lyrical poem, dedicated to the Franciscan nuns’ lives, Hopkins expresses his reactions to the wreck of the Deutschland , which sparked powerful emotions in him. Although Hopkins is a devoted Catholic, he encounters critical difficulties in understanding God’s ways and seeks in his poem to resolve them. “The Wreck of the Deutschland” is, therefore, a theodicy (an attempt to reconcile the existence of tragedy and suffering with belief in a God who is both loving and powerful), set out to justify the ways of God to man. In Part the First, Hopkins confesses his innermost t...

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...g rhythm” allowed him to add “hangers,” or outriders, which are not counted in the scansion. Because of sprung rhythm, Hopkins doesn’t keep rigidly to the line lengths in “The Wreck of Deutschland.” The main variation in the stanza’s lines, however, is from the number of unstressed syllables Hopkins uses. From the counting of compounds as one stress, each half of the compound is seen as sharing the stress. In the third line of the last stanza, the stresses are counted on “-mem-,” “roads,” “heaven-haven” (275), a compound, sharing the stress. In between the lines of a stanza are no fewer than 9 unstressed syllables. The final syllable count is 14 syllables, which would be considered a long line, in most poetic forms, however, Hopkins made it a short one. “The Wreck of the Deutschland” is read as an iambic ode, although Hopkins wanted the metre to be seen as trochaic.