Historical Context
The Breton Fisherman’s Prayer
O God, thy sea is so great,
and my boat is so small.
That is the whole of it, and that is why it has lasted. A fisherman putting out from the Breton coast did not need a theology of providence. He needed to say, in the only way that was honest, that the thing in front of him was bigger than he was, and that he was putting himself in God’s hands anyway.
Kennedy and the Submarine Captains
Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, gave a plaque carrying the prayer to the captain of every new submarine he commissioned. He gave one to President Kennedy, who kept it on his desk in the Oval Office.
On 23 May 1963, dedicating the East Coast Memorial in New York to the 4,500 Americans lost at sea in the Atlantic during the Second World War, Kennedy began his speech with it:
“Admiral Rickover wrote me a few days ago describing the ceremony of the commissioning of a new Polaris submarine, the Andrew Jackson. He said to each captain of a new submarine he gives a plaque which contains an old Breton prayer which was said by fishermen from there for hundreds of years, and the prayer says: ‘O God, the sea is so great and my boat is so small.'”
The plaque is still in the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
Garrison’s Poem
The fuller version most often printed on plaques and cards is a three-verse poem, “Breton Fisherman’s Prayer”, by the American church historian Winfred Ernest Garrison. It opens with the famous line and builds on it:
Thy sea, O God, so great,
My boat so small.
— W. E. Garrison
The verses that follow move from the sea to the wind and then to the world itself, each time setting God’s greatness against the speaker’s frailty, and each ending not in fear but in trust. Whether the one-line “old Breton prayer” came first and Garrison built his poem around it, or whether the line entered circulation through his poem, no one has settled. Rickover and Kennedy both called it Breton, and that is the name it has kept.
A Sonnet on the Same Prayer
This longer version has also circulated under the prayer’s name. Its author is unknown:
This boat of mine, O Lord, is how so small;
This sail, O Master, scarce your winds can hold.
Weak are my arms to trim, to tack, to haul
Before grim waves that bludgeon, then to enfold.
These eyes of mine, O Lord, cannot discern
Cliff, dune or harbour over high-flung seas;
The angered skies deny my sure return
To cottage waiting by the sea-girt leas.
Your mercy, Lord, is kind and how so great,
To my inconsequence made manifest;
So for your servant may your winds abate;
Send home his boat to safe and certain rest.
As small my soul before the raging tide,
Your mercy, as your ocean, Lord, is wide.
Amen.
A Prayer for Those Who Work at Sea
Lord, you slept in the stern of a fishing boat
while the men who knew the lake were sure they would drown,
and when they woke you, you stood up and told the wind to stop.
Be in the boat with [name] and with all the crew.
Keep the engine running and the weather kind.
Give them skill when it is rough and patience when it is slow,
a good catch, a fair price,
and the sight of the harbour at the end of every trip.
Mary, Star of the Sea, watch over them.
Amen.
Brittany’s fishermen, like seafarers across the Catholic world, have long entrusted themselves to Mary under the title Stella Maris, Star of the Sea — the fixed light a sailor steers by when everything else is moving.
A Prayer When the Boat Is Your Life
Most people who search for this prayer have never been to sea. What they mean is that the diagnosis, the debt, the job or the grief is very large and they are very small. This is for them.
O God, your sea is so great and my boat is so small,
and this week the sea is winning.
I cannot see the harbour.
I do not know how to trim the sail for what is coming.
My arms are tired.
I am not asking you to make the sea smaller.
I am asking you to be in the boat.
Hold the tiller when I cannot,
and bring me home to safe and certain rest.
Amen.
Best Times for This Prayer
- Before putting to sea, or when someone you love is at sea.
- For a new captain, skipper or commanding officer — as Rickover used it.
- For fishermen, sailors, the Coast Guard, and navy families.
- At memorials for those lost at sea.
- When a situation is simply bigger than you are.
- As a one-line prayer to carry through the day — it is short enough to memorise in a single reading.
Scripture Connection
“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. … They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. … Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.” — Psalm 107:23–30
The Breton prayer is this psalm in one line: the greatness of the sea, the smallness of the sailor, and the cry that is heard. In the Gospels, the same scene happens with Jesus in the boat — “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” — and ends the same way: “And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:38–39).
Related prayers
The Fisherman’s Prayer is the companion to this page, for those who fish for a living or for sport. For someone who has gone missing, at sea or anywhere else, see the Missing Person Prayer; for anyone serving in uniform, the Marine Corps Prayer.
