Sometimes during my summer holidays on Naxos I pause to consider that almost everything needed on the island - food and drink apart - has been brought there by boat. Perspicacious readers will realise that the same is true, on a grander scale, of Britain. In a letter to The Times on Tuesday, the Rev Canon Bill Christianson, the secretary general of the Mission to Seafarers, said that the UK relies on shipping for more than 90 per cent of its daily needs.

The good canon observed that while the media had made much of the people who helped in the rescue of those aboard the Horncliff (stricken off the coast of Scilly) and the Riverdance (near Blackpool), "no mention has been made of the crews that daily face heavy seas". He continued: "As news breaks of more foul weather to come, I urge all readers to remember the significant contribution seafarers make to the life of this country."

I found Canon Christianson's words oddly affecting. My mind went at once to the great poem A Song for all Seas, all Ships, by Walt Whitman. This, of course, enjoys life off the page in the setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams - a huge admirer of the poet - that opens his Sea Symphony, a work he was composing exactly a century ago.

Here are its closing lines: Flaunt out O Sea, your separate flags of nations!

Flaunt out, visible as ever, the various ship-signals!

But do you reserve especially for yourself, and for the soul of man, one flag above all the rest, A spiritual woven Signal, for all nations, emblem of man elate above death, Token of all brave captains, and all intrepid sailors and mates, And all that went down doing their duty; Reminiscent of them - twined from all intrepid captains, young or old; A pennant universal, subtly waving, all time, o'er all brave sailors, All seas, all ships.