The storm. The rain begins, followed by lightning, thunder and crashing waves. The wind howls through the rigging and the animals panic. Above the tumult rises the hymn Eternal Father, sung by Noye and all the others in the Ark.
Stage direction from Britten’s Noye’s Fludde (1957)
Having attended the Winchester Training Institution, Whiting, the son of a London grocer, was appointed the first master of the Quiristers at Winchester College, where he continued to teach for the next thirty-six years. He allegedly wrote ‘Eternal Father, strong to save’, which has become the sailors’ hymn throughout the world, when one of the Quiristers was about to sail for America. In 1860 he submitted a version of the poem for entry in the new Hymns Ancient and Modern, which the compilers revised before including it in the first edition. Whiting revised the poem in 1869, and it is this version that we print here. When Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt met secretly in the North Atlantic at the height of the Second World War, Churchill chose the hymn to be sung at Divisions on board the HMS Prince of Wales; and it was frequently heard during the Falklands War of 1982. It is performed to memorable effect by Noye, Mrs Noye, the Children and Animals in Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde; and it was sung at the funerals of at least two American presidents: Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm doth bind the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limit keep:
Oh hear us, when we cry to thee,
For those in peril on the sea.
O Saviour, whose almighty word
The winds and waves submissive heard,
Who walkedst on the foaming deep
And calm amidst its rage didst sleep;
Oh hear us, when we cry to thee,
For those in peril on the sea.
O sacred Spirit, who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
Who bad’st its angry tumult cease
And gavest light and life and peace:
Oh hear us, when we cry to thee,
For those in peril on the sea.
O Trinity of love and power,
Our brethren shield in danger’s hour,
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe’er they go:
And ever let there rise to thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.