Yeah, but what actually happens in the song, and how do the two verses hang together?
I'd say the man "upon the bridge" in verse 2 is not Sir Francis Chichester at all, but a nameless guy who is a shadow of his former self. He's lost his way, he's vaguely decided to quit by hopping into the river, why else should he visit the boat at two in the morning? We don't get to know the reason, there's just a veiled reference to "the things he's done" and which he cannot live with. So he cries out, presumably drunk, "Hey man, what you call this thing?", jumps or falls in, the current takes him, and the Thames becomes, in a sense, the river of Lethe for this single-handed sailor.
Sure, this is a bit speculative, but Mark Knopfler (remember, he's a literate man) is really using the same "iceberg method" as Ernest Hemingway here, and many of the songs on "Communique" are stories about men who try and fail ("News") or veer into the psychopathic ("Where Do You Think You're Going?"). Two years later, Mark would return to this vein in "Private Investigation", also a song about a disturbed man.
Beautiful guitar work. I love the calypso/blues feel of the solo at the end.
Yeah, but what actually happens in the song, and how do the two verses hang together? I'd say the man "upon the bridge" in verse 2 is not Sir Francis Chichester at all, but a nameless guy who is a shadow of his former self. He's lost his way, he's vaguely decided to quit by hopping into the river, why else should he visit the boat at two in the morning? We don't get to know the reason, there's just a veiled reference to "the things he's done" and which he cannot live with. So he cries out, presumably drunk, "Hey man, what you call this thing?", jumps or falls in, the current takes him, and the Thames becomes, in a sense, the river of Lethe for this single-handed sailor.
Sure, this is a bit speculative, but Mark Knopfler (remember, he's a literate man) is really using the same "iceberg method" as Ernest Hemingway here, and many of the songs on "Communique" are stories about men who try and fail ("News") or veer into the psychopathic ("Where Do You Think You're Going?"). Two years later, Mark would return to this vein in "Private Investigation", also a song about a disturbed man. Beautiful guitar work. I love the calypso/blues feel of the solo at the end.