Storm Petrel - Cultural Representation of The Storm Petrel

Cultural Representation of The Storm Petrel

The name "petrel" is a diminutive form of "Peter", a reference to Saint Peter; it was given to these birds because they sometimes appear to walk across the water's surface. The more specific 'storm petrel' or 'stormy petrel' is a reference to their habit of hiding in the lee of ships during storms. Early sailors named these birds "Mother Carey's Chickens" because they were thought to warn of oncoming storms; this name is based on a corrupted form of Mater Cara, a name for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Breton folklore holds that storm petrels are the spirits of sea-captains who mistreated their crew, doomed to spend eternity flying over the sea, and they are also held to be the souls of drowned sailors. A sailing superstition holds that the appearance of a storm petrel foretells bad weather. Sinister names from Britain and France include Waterwitch, satanite, satanique and oiseau du diable.

The "stormy petrel" appears as the standard English translation of the name of the lead character in Song of the Stormy Petrel - a 1901 poem by the Russian revolutionary writer Maxim Gorky in which he turned to the imagery of Subantarctic avifauna to describe Russian society's attitudes to the coming revolution. This poem was called "the battle anthem of the revolution", and earned Gorky himself the title of "The Storm Petrel of the Revolution". While this English translation of the bird's name may be ornithologically incorrect (the Russian burevestnik refers to many Procellariiformes species, but not to any Hydrobatidae), it is poetically appropriate, as burevestnik literally means "the announcer of the storm".

The motif of the Stormy Petrel has a long association with revolutionary anarchism. Stormy Petrel was the title of a German anarchist paper of the late 19th century, it was also the name of a Russian exile anarchist communist group operating in Switzerland in the early 20th century. The Stormy Petrel was the title of the magazine of the Anarchist Communist Federation in Russia around the time of the revolution. Writing in 1936, Emma Goldman referred to Buenaventura Durruti as "…this stormy petrel of the anarchist and revolutionary movement…". The London group of the Anarchist Federation (Britain and Ireland) also produce a set of pamphlets under the imprint of Stormy Petrel.

The "stormy petrel" is also the mascot of Oglethorpe University, a small liberal arts college located in Atlanta, Georgia.