The ancestors knew the sea had two faces.  To Agier or Njord could you pray for the luck of the waves and they would hear you.  There was another that sailors knew, a lover they all shared, the first woman in most sailors heart, Black Ran of the Depths, the ever changing and unknowable, the jealous, the fierce.  The sea is a lady they would say, and the lady is a b*tch.

While my grandfather and great uncle fought on land, three of my great uncles spend the war on Corvettes and Destroyers running the North Atlantic convoys.  They lost more men to the sea than to the Germans, and most of those that survived the death of their ship were drawn in by Ran's nets anyway.

When they spoke of the sea, they talked lightly of the bright surface and the bright face of the sea.  When they spoke of the storm, the dark face of Ran, the killing passion, the merciless fury, they spoke with a husky passion, their eyes haunted but hungry.  There is that part within those who go down to the sea in ships that loves not just the bright face of the calm surface, but loves the black heart of the storm and the depths as well.

Ran keeps what is hers.  She is a jealous lover of the men who come down to the sea in ships, but as much as they love her, so does she love them.  The men who go down into the dark will never be alone, the men who have payed the price of the catch, the cost of admiralty, the price of the sea will be loved as fiercely as they were tested.