The communities so identified were the neolithic lake societies, 'Atlantis' islands, the ahu pua'aha, the mid 19th century coastal cities and the predicted development of the sea based ecopolis. Each of these had their time and season whose beginning was heralded by new technologies of scale and whose demise was predestined by the evolution of the next scale of technology. 1850 marked the full development of the coastal city that relied on transportation of its
bulk commodities by sail and its land based transport by horse drawn conveyance. It marked the initiation of a new scale of society based on steam, on the steamship and the locomotive, and on the transmission of communication by cable and wire. No single piece of literature demonstrates the full societal effect of this technological change than Kipling's Poem the Mary Gloster. It is the saga of an Anthony Gloster who was born in the 1820's. Precise dates are not given in the poem but they can easily be inferred. It is clear that he was a child of the ocean from the start, perhaps the son of a ship captain, perhaps a "son of the gun". All ocean going ships at that time were sail. The first commercial steamships appeared in the 1810's and were employed on river traffic in the United States, Britain and Europe. The first oceanic sailing vessel to be equipped with steam as an alternative was the Savannah that made the journey from Savannah to Liverpool in 1819. Initially the craft were propelled by paddle when with the propeller being introduced in about 1840. In 1843 the first propeller steamship crossed the Atlantic. Somehow or other Anthony Gloster found service aboard one or more of these rare steamships and advanced through the ratings such that he was a master qualified for steam at age twenty two. He was probably born in Liverpool or more likely Cardiff Wales where is upbringing would have involved him with the farm village community as well as the maritime community for he marries at twenty three and his bride is not a "bum boat girl" but a woman of brains and ambition and courage but lacking the training required to survive at sea. For insight in this regard one should read the poems of Dylan Thomas and in particular the Ballad of the Long Legged Bait and Fern Hill.
At this time he decides to enter the SouthEast Asia trade in competition with "the clipper freights" . His only advantage is speed but he faces the perils of the inability to find coaling stations (the coal had to be delivered by sail) and the difficulty in keeping the steam plant operational. The efficiency of these depends in large measure on the temperature of the steam and this in turn depends upon the pressure that can be withstood in the boiler. Initially the boiler is made of wrought iron and the seams are held in place by rivets. By modern standards steam in the boilers was extremely low pressure (10 psi?). But Anthony Gloster has already learned the need to adapt to technological change. He "took his first job and he stuck". All sorts of alternatives were tried include the invention of ocean thermal energy. In the late 1860's An engineer named D'Arsonval (not related to the designer of the galvanometer) recognized that steam could be generated at low pressure by creating a vacuum over surface water and that it could be condensed by using deep ocean water. The pressure difference was so small that it could easily be contained. He proved the concept in laboratory experiments but before he could launch a larger scale trial there came "steel and the first expansions". Steel permitted higher pressure in the boilers and the expansions permitted the cascading of turbine wheels to match the pressure difference associated with lower and lower steam entry temperatures.

Thus the initial voyages were uncomfortable, unhealthy, perilous, but financially rewarding
"Grub that 'ud bind you crazy, and crews that 'ud turn you grey,
And a big fat lump of insurance to cover the risk on the way.
The others they dursn't do it; they said they valued their life
(They've served me since as skippers). I went, and I took my wife. In those days pregnancy and the birth process were perilous even on land with high mortality in infant birth and less frequent but more emotionally tragic mortality on the part of the mother. On the high seas in a pitching heaving and rolling ship these mortality figures rise to a socially unacceptable level. This tragedy is well demonstrated in Shakespeare's Pericles and perhaps even more poignantly in the Mary Gloster. The author has been able to date to make a public reading of this poem with betraying emotion. It is not the loss of Anthony Gloster's mate that triggers the emotion, for the author has been married for forty six years to a "daughter of the middle border" and excepts to celebrate a glorious golden wedding anniversary. It seems to the author, after a lifetime of losing friends and associates to the perils of the sea and experienced, some lost at sea we know not where, some lost at sea in water depths beyond recovery, some buried at sea, some whose ashes are scattered at sea, that there is built into the genetic code an emotionally trigger that associates the sea with permanent parting and denial of the ceremony of farewell. Tennyson puts it very clearly in his poem.

Indeed nearly every significant literary threnody, likens death to sailing out to sea. Most quintessential of these poems is Lycidas by John Milton, and elegy for a young man lost sea. The author never fails to recall this elegy at the ceremonies for the souls who have been lost at sea.

But Anthony Gloster, having lost that one true beacon "the sailors wife" (a sailors wife a sailors star shall be) now reverts to the surrogate experiences of the lonely tar - drink and prostitutes - until the memory of his wife, her admonitions and vision, and the desire to raise his son in his own image sends him back to sea and to the development of the technology and machinery for the evolution of the sea as the worlds avenue of commerce and the venue for deployment of the worlds most formidable weapon system the battleship. Until the advent of the nuclear powered nuclear armed missile submarine the battleship was to be the worlds most powerful deterrent and avenger.

Success in these ventures buys Anthony Gloster, fame and fortune and in the British tradition a royal Title. His son is not raised as a "son of the gun" but as the son of a baronet. Whatever the wishes of Anthony Gloster are for his son to follow in his footsteps, he will be recruited for Harrow and Cambridge and never set foot on the sea. He may be recruited as an officer in some future land war of Britain ending his life in Flanders field. Kipling recognizes this development in the world society in his poem recessional.