Depictions in Popular Culture
The Sargasso Sea is often portrayed in literature and the media as an area of mystery.
The Sargasso Sea features in classic fantasy stories by William Hope Hodgson, such as his novel The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" (1907), Victor Appleton's Don Sturdy novel, Don Sturdy in the Port of Lost Ships: Or, Adrift in the Sargasso Sea, and several related short stories. Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea describes the Sargasso Sea and gives an account of its formation.
The 1912 poem "Portrait D'une Femme" by Ezra Pound alludes to the Sargasso Sea in the line "Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, London has swept about you this score years".
The 1923 silent film The Isle of Lost Ships, an atmospheric adventure from director Maurice Tourneur, takes place in the Sargasso Sea. The film was based on Crittenden Marriott's 1909 novel The Isle of Dead Ships. The Isle of Lost Ships is now a lost film.
The Sargasso Sea was the venue for the Doc Savage adventure "The Sargasso Ogre" written by Lester Dent under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson and published in the October 1933 issue of the Doc Savage pulp magazine.
The 1934 poem, When Once the Twilight Locks No Longer, written by Dylan Thomas, refers to the Sargasso Sea.
The 1960-62 live action/marionette children's syndicated television show, Diver Dan contained at least two episodes set in the Sargasso Sea, Ep. 21 "Sargasso Sea" and Ep. 22 "Lost in the Sargasso Sea". For many children of the baby boomer generation, that was their first introduction to the existence and novelty of the Sargasso Sea.
The first episode of Jonny Quest: Season 1, Episode 1 (18 Sep. 1964), The Mystery of the Lizard Men. A foreign power uses the Sargasso Sea to conduct laser experiments and employs "lizard men" to scare away potential interlopers.
Edwin Corley's novel, Sargasso, revolves around a fictional account of Apollo 19 splashing down in the Sargasso sea empty. In Marvel 1602, it is where the Fantastick Four gained their powers. Jean Rhys's 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea plays with the idea that a woman can become lost in her own society and thus driven out of her mind, à la Charlotte Brontë's mad woman in the attic. Fred Andrew's mystery novel Plato's Pond features the fictitious land of Gaia, which is a continent in the middle of the Sargassum Sea.
The 1968 movie The Lost Continent was set in a highly fictionalized Sargasso Sea where Spanish galleons, trapped for centuries in seaweed, are found in modern times, along with a society of descendants of Conquistadores and sea monsters.
In the 1973 episode "The Time Trap" of Star Trek: The Animated Series, the USS Enterprise becomes trapped in "a pocket in the garment of time". Capt. Kirk makes the comment, "It's like a vast Saragasso Sea . A graveyard of ships from every civilization imaginable."
In the 1978 Anime television series, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Captain Harlock went to the Sargasso Sea where crew would encounter false lost ships.
The 1994 album ST3 by Salt Tank contained a track entitled Sargasso Sea.
The 1999 video game Alpha Centauri features a special map tile called New Sargasso which contains a lot of native life, dangerous to the player if he is not prepared.
The 2007 music video for the song Dashboard by indie group Modest Mouse features a sea captain telling the story of how he lost his hand to a giant fish while sailing in Sargasso Sea.
The instrumental jam band Lotus released a double live album in May, 2007, titled "Escaping Sargasso Sea" (SCI Fidelity Records). It was nominated for a Jammy award by Guitar Player magazine for "Best Live Album of 2007". The album was described by Relix magazine as "sexy and sophisticated dance music, mature enough to be played in the club or the living room".
The 2009 album, Carving Desert Canyons by Scale the Summit features a song called Sargasso Sea.
The final track on the album 'Anastasis' (2012) from the group 'Dead Can Dance' opens with an allusion to the Sargasso Sea:
'All your ships / Have left their moorings / Cast adrift / On the Sargasso Sea / Waiting for the wind / To set your sails free'
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