Odysseus' raft

Odysseus' raft is the most consequential piece of makeshift craftsmanship in the Odyssey, a vessel that bridges the hero's long captivity on Ogygia and his arrival among the Phaeacians. Built in four days from twenty felled trees, it carries him across the sea for seventeen days before Poseidon shatters it in a hurricane, leaving Odysseus to swim for his life. The raft is at once a testament to his practical ingenuity, a symbol of his desperate longing for Ithaca, and the final arena in which the sea-god's wrath is spent before the hero reaches human help.

Construction and Craftsmanship

Calypso, compelled by Zeus' command transmitted through Hermes, releases Odysseus after seven years of detention. She provides the tools and materials: a great bronze axe sharpened on both sides with a well-fitted olive-wood handle, a sharp adze, and augers. She leads him to the far end of the island where the largest trees grow—alder, poplar, and pine, very dry and well seasoned so as to sail light in the water. Odysseus cuts down twenty trees in all, adzes them smooth, and squares them by rule in good workmanlike fashion. He bores holes with the augers and fits the timbers together with bolts and rivets. He makes the raft as broad as a skilled shipwright makes the beam of a large vessel, fixes a deck on top of the ribs, and runs a gunwale all round it. He also makes a mast with a yardarm, and a rudder to steer with. He fences the raft all round with wicker hurdles as a protection against the waves, and then throws on a quantity of wood. Calypso brings him linen to make the sails, which he fashions excellently, making them fast with braces and sheets. Last of all, with the help of levers, he draws the raft down into the water. In four days he completes the whole work, and on the fifth Calypso sends him from the island after washing him and giving him clean clothes. She provisions the raft with a goatskin full of black wine, another larger one of water, a wallet full of provisions, and much good meat. Moreover, she makes the wind fair and warm for him.

The Voyage and Poseidon's Attack

Odysseus spreads his sail before the fair wind and sits guiding the raft skilfully by means of the rudder. He never closes his eyes, but keeps them fixed on the Pleiads, on late-setting Bootes, and on the Bear—which men also call the Wain, and which turns round and round where it is, facing Orion, and alone never dipping into the stream of Oceanus—for Calypso had told him to keep this to his left. For seventeen days he sails, and on the eighteenth the dim outlines of the mountains on the nearest part of the Phaeacian coast appear, rising like a shield on the horizon. But King Poseidon, returning from the Ethiopians, catches sight of Odysseus from the mountains of the Solymi. Enraged, he gathers his clouds, grasps his trident, stirs it round in the sea, and rouses the rage of every wind. Winds from East, South, North, and West fall upon him all at once, and a tremendous sea gets up. A wave breaks over the raft with such terrific fury that it reels again, and Odysseus is carried overboard a long way off. He lets go the helm, and the force of the hurricane breaks the mast half way up, sending both sail and yard into the sea. For a long time Odysseus is under water, weighed down by the clothes Calypso had given him, but he manages to rise, swim to the raft, and climb on board again. The sea tosses the raft about as autumn winds whirl thistledown round and round upon a road, as though the South, North, East, and West winds were all playing battledore and shuttlecock with it at once.

Destruction and Abandonment

The goddess Ino, also called Leucothea, takes pity on Odysseus. Rising like a sea-gull from the waves, she takes her seat upon the raft and advises him to strip, leave the raft to drive before the wind, and swim to the Phaeacian coast, giving him her enchanted veil for protection. Odysseus hesitates, suspecting a trick, and resolves to stick to the raft as long as her timbers hold together. But Poseidon sends a terrible great wave that rears itself above his head and breaks right over the raft, which goes to pieces as though it were a heap of dry chaff tossed about by a whirlwind. Odysseus gets astride of one plank and rides upon it as if he were on horseback; he then takes off the clothes Calypso had given him, binds Ino's veil under his arms, and plunges into the sea to swim for shore. Poseidon watches him, mutters that he will give him plenty of hardship yet, and drives to Aegae where his palace is. Athena then helps Odysseus by binding the ways of all the winds except one, rousing a good stiff breeze from the North that lays the waters until he reaches the land of the Phaeacians.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The raft episode is the hinge of Odysseus' return journey, the point at which divine compulsion (Zeus' decree to Calypso) meets divine opposition (Poseidon's wrath). It is the only sea voyage Odysseus undertakes entirely alone, without a crew, and the only one in which he builds his own vessel. The detailed description of its construction—the twenty trees, the tools, the four-day schedule—grounds the fantastic journey in concrete, practical craft, a hallmark of the Odyssey's interest in the hero's metis or cunning intelligence. The raft's destruction forces Odysseus to rely on his own body and on the aid of a minor goddess (Ino) rather than on his own handiwork, stripping him of all artificial support before he reaches the Phaeacians. The episode also fulfills the prophecy of Teiresias in the underworld, who foretold that Odysseus would return home after much suffering and the loss of all his men; the raft is the instrument of that final, solitary ordeal. When Odysseus later recounts his adventures to the Phaeacians, the raft voyage is the last of his narrated trials, the bridge between the world of monsters and goddesses and the human world of Scheria and Ithaca.