Sailing To Philadelphia

Mark Knopfler has said this song was inspired and informed by Thomas Pynchon's book on the subject. Short of actually reading it, here's what I've come up with so far about its meaning :

The song can be taken as a prologue to what Mason and Dixon would do once they reached America. Its title and content suggest the setting is the ship carrying them towards Philadelphia to start their work, a voyage which took place in Autumn, 1763. The use of present tense give the lyrics an involving immediacy.

The song begins with Jeremiah Dixon introducing himself. As a Geordie boy like Mr Dixon, and indeed Mr Knopfler, I'll start by defining what this means. A Geordie is a person from the North-East of England, and Geordie is the accent and dialect they speak. Definitive enough? Not really, because the area involved depends on who's defining it. It's always centred on the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the industrial communities along the river's lower reaches, but its size can range from this discrete area right up to the whole of the traditional counties of Northumberland and Durham, all the way from the Scottish Border to the River Tees. And though the Geordie accent is distinctive, it does very significantly within that area. Born along the region's lower edge, Dixon bears a Border surname (like Armstrong, Nixon, Elliot, Johnstone, etc.), so its likely his male-line ancestors at least had always lived within the Geordie catchment. In keeping with the stereotype of Geordie males even to this day, Dixon is partial to drink and women (and probably in that order). He's a surveyor and astronomer, and to have charted an area the size of the counties of Durham and Northumberland would have been no small feat. In 'To make my mark upon the earth' he's presumably thinking forward to marking out the Mason-Dixon line (they were transporting marker stones with them from England for that purpose).

Next comes Charles Mason's introduction. The senior of the two, this son of a baker has become an astronomer, and an expert in measuring longitude - latitude was easy enough using the sun and stars, but longitude was a far more intractable problem in the days before accurate chronometers. The West Country is England's south-west peninsula, stretching from Gloucestershire, where Mason was raised, down to the tip of Cornwall. In the only part of the song which leaps into the future, Mason's subsequent membership of the Royal Society is mentioned. The Royal Society is an august old English institution comprising the leading scientists of the day, and is only ever joined by invitation. For the son of a baker to achieve fellowship in those class-conscious days must have been a rare achievement.

The chorus describes the Tyne as 'coaly' (reprising an old Tyneside folk song, though I'm unconvinced the word exists in the real world) because of the river's association with coal exports. As son of a coal mine owner, this association would have been well-known to Dixon. Northumberland and Durham was one of the earliest mining areas, and a lot of the coal produced was carried down the Tyne on its way to London and other east coast ports. ('To carry coals to Newcastle' is an expression still used for a pointless activity, even though the coal trade in the area is now effectively finished.) The coal industry in Dixon's day was still some way short of its peak, and he'd have no idea how 'coaly' the river would be a hundred years hence. It's only recently that the first salmon in centuries has managed to cough its way up past Newcastle into the purer waters upstream, and even then it was presumably utilising some sort of aqualung. Although the line starts with 'we', this phrase really seems to belong to Dixon. An interesting geographical parallel here is that the lower Tyne's position in England (England rather than Britain) is equivalent to the Mason-Dixon Line's location in the continental US (and even moreso within its colonial-era boundaries).

Following the first chorus, we're given a sense of the two men's different characters - Mason's measured, even downbeat wariness against Dixon's ebullient optimism (Geordies do tend to be optimistic in the face of all reason, perhaps an attitude born of necessity). Yet they must both have been brave, determined men, facing as they were several years' arduous work on what was for them the edge of the known world. Dixon seems full of the idea of American independence (Geordies have a long tradition of radicalism in politics), while the more conservative Mason calls him 'gullible'. Since Philadelphia was the place where the Declaration of Independence was signed just 13 years later, 'talk of liberty' was presumably already in the air, perhaps even among their fellow passengers. It would be interesting to know what the Iroquois people made of Mason and Dixon and their team marking out a straight line across 'the forests of the Iroquois', land which any normal person would already know well. Even moreso when it was all just to settle a territorial dispute between two English families.

And early one morning comes their first sighting of America. An eager Dixon calls Mason up from below decks to 'feel the sun' - as an astronomer, Mason is more used to the night sky. The Capes of Delaware are on the horizon, marking the entrance from the Atlantic into the Delaware river estuary. The unpredictable ocean crossing is behind them, and Philadelphia, where they will receive their instructions, is only 'another day' upriver. 'A new morning' conveys not only the time of day, but also the promise of this opportunity for them both to achieve something of consequence, and perhaps also the optimistic feel of America moving towards Independence. 'Your stars should guide us here' suggests Mason's astronomy bus also an almost astrological guidance towards their destiny.

The two men's endeavours would result in a line of astonishing accuracy. You can't help but wonder what they would have made of the division it came to signify, with all its consequences for human beings of colour.