Boat Ship
This probably depicts our journey through the seas of life and how we meet the rough and smooth experiences, as with example below. In many dreams boats and ships appear to depict a situation, environment or relationship the dreamer is in – as in the saying, ‘in the same boat’.
Because of the fact that once in the water it is difficult to leave the boat, the situation is often one that has certain bonds or commitments which may not be easy to leave or break away from – such as occurs in a close relationship or a work situation. The condition the boat depicts may relate to a physical one, such as a work opportunity, a place we live in, a relationship that, like any relationship, offers certain opportunities and restrictions – or it might be an attitude a feeling or a belief, such as pride or love, which places you in a certain connection with the world – i.e. ‘at sea’ or lost; in a stormy situation; in dry dock, etc. The boat can also be a place of safety amidst the storms of life. Thus attitudes or strengths enabling the dreamer to meet difficulties.
A boat is the thing that keeps you afloat in a different element than you are used to. As such it depicts the attitudes that enable you to have a clear boundary and certainty of who you are. It is your confidence and the threshold that separates your waking self from the massive and deep unconscious – the ocean of collective awareness. This is clear in the following example.
Example: Opened a paper at the comic strip. Began to read and become involved in the story. A small speed boat was at sea. But the sea dissolved anybody who fell in. One man fell in but held himself together as a blob of water and jumped back to the speedboat. I remember the words “The sea is a great solvent.” Anthony.
This dream pictures Anthony’s identity or ability to be an individual amidst the great ocean of life or consciousness. So the boat probably represents how he sees his body, as a thing separate from the rest of the world.
The various environments boats may be in show the condition or feelings surrounding the basic life situation the boat depicts. For instance being ‘at sea’ – depending upon calmness or rough seas – shows the dreamer being away from a familiar base or in difficult or uncertain times.
Example: I am in a large glass boat with my wife. The sea is very rough and I am afraid the boat will sink.’ Ron D.
The dream occurred a few weeks before a breakdown occurred in which the dreamer’s wife left him.
Example: I was inside a large boat, probably a tanker. There were a lot of passengers, but it appeared as if we were imprisoned in a huge room. It was very dingy and dismal. I am not sure though whether people realised they were prisoners. Maybe one only realised one was imprisoned if one tried to escape. Bob. A.
This boat obviously represents a situation Bob finds it difficult to get out of, and is only just realising he is trapped in. It also shows him involved with other people.
Example: I’m a young woman standing on a sea shore. I am waiting for my man. I hear the oars in the row locks of a boat, then it comes into view. A man comes to me, and puts his arms around me like he’s known me all my life. My man pauses, turns his head to a man still in the boat and says – Tell them this is it. Phillipa.
Here the boat holds the suggestion of being an event bringing Phillipa a love she has been waiting for.
Anchored boat: Security; stable relationship or situation; opposite of drifting.
Beached boat: Possibly suggests a situation in which you are ‘on dry land’ not subject to many changes or uncertainties. But it could also relate to a project, relationship or endeavour that cannot be got underway, or has got stuck in some way. However if you beach the boat and get out, then it shows the end of a journey, project or relationship.
Boat without oars: Ill equipped to deal with the situation you are in. A loss of motivation and being subject to external events to direct your life. So this might point to indecisiveness or lack of initiative.
Bows: One’s strength to meet life’s changes.
Canoe: Much like a small boat, but with overtones of nature, of being in the wild, of surviving. It is sometimes in testing surroundings or ones in which you feel the presence of nature, which can be wonderful or scary.
Disembarking: Leaving a phase of life, such as motherhood, marriage or a job. Ending a relationship or arriving at a new phase of life, a new possibility or great change.
Dock: A feeling of security when you have left an inner journey. Also because a dock is a permanent feature boats or ships can be moored to, it might indicate a safe ending to a relationship. A secure though public place to be. The end or beginning of a journey or a life change and the beginning of another phase of life.
If you are leaving the dock in a boat/ship, it suggests facing going out into the world and putting out something of oneself into the world through your relationships and life with people.
Dry dock: Necessary changes being made; circumstances not conducive to being actively involved in a project or relationship; delays. There might be a link with ill health here also.
Embarking alone: Independence or loneliness. Entering a new situation and perhaps unknown events or possibilities. Opportunity for new relationships.
Ferry boat: If across a river, end of a relationship; transition from one phase of life to another or one life situation to another; the emotional connections in a relationship. Sometimes links with death or the loss of someone.
Going on a cruise: Desiring relationship with others; or to be a part of other peoples life. Leaving ones everyday life behind.
Boat journey by night: Classic archetype of searching for one’s roots in life; the journey into ones unconscious experience. See: night sea journey under archetypes.
Keel: Basic personal strengths. The foundation of your personality or identity.
Leaving boat but leaving bag on it: Losing confidence or self value, such as might happen when children have gone or job ended.
Lots of small boats: Other peoples relationships.
Missing a boat: Missing opportunity; not grasping significance of events; not ‘making it’ in a relationship.
Motor boat: Similar to car but more sense of isolation or aloneness. The motor boat also shows the powerful feelings and drives which impel us into action, or give us a direction in life, as in the following example. For instance a strong anxiety can be a power, an engine, which motivates us to do or avoid certain things, such a taking risks, entering a relationship. So too can love, dependence, desire for wealth, loneliness, and the struggle to survive.
Person leaving the boat: A boat often represents a relationship, so leaving the boat or ship suggests someone leaving what was a group or personal relationship,
Example: My wife, H and I were on a large and beautiful motor boat, about thirty feet long. We were speeding along a river about hundred yards wide. I didn’t seem to be steering with a wheel, but there was no problem. Instead of water the river appeared to be a thick slurry of some kind. We were passing through countryside and suddenly H dropped what I felt might be an important envelope overboard. It lay on the top of the river. I wanted to stop and retrieve it. Other boats were coming along some way behind and I wondered if one of them would go over it. There was a lever which was the accelerator. I pushed it right back and the boat slowly reduced speed, but we were a long way from the envelope/package. The further away we got the less important it seemed, although I had wondered if it contained documents important to where we were going – which I felt was to do with some sort of work or teaching an official or business group.
Suddenly H was on the right bank of the river. I am not sure why, but she had left the boat. I wasn’t sure how she could get back on board again as the river was now full of debris and weeds – tree stumps, metal poles, cans, really full – and the banks were shallow and difficult to approach. I found a place where I could pull in, and there were steps in the earthy or limestone type bank that had been worn in with use. I managed to stop the boat – I still couldn’t find controls to guide or stop the craft – by holding on to the bank, and H got on. I was very pleased and felt love and pleasure that she had got on again. I kissed her warmly. We pulled away from the bank, avoiding a big metal post and chain low in the water. I felt if we went slowly we could get through all the debris okay. Roy.
This dream occurred during a period of separation in the marriage and shows how Roy is not really guiding the boat. He is being impelled by drives he doesn’t have full control over. Parting and coming together again are clearly depicted in the dream.
Rowing a boat: Personal skill or effort to achieve a goal. Whether you are succeeding well or not shows how you are assessing your own efforts to reach goals or take a direction in life.
Rudder: Sureness about direction in life; ability to take a direction in life and maintain it against other influences.
Shared journey on boat or ship: A situation we are involved in with other people or person, such as marriage, business partnership, armed forces; this is the relation-ship, a shared journey in which you ‘are all in the same boat’.
Sinking ship/boat: Fear of relationship ending; difficult events or circumstances are occurring; could be children leaving mother, so the collective ‘boat journey’ has finished; also occasionally threat of illness or death.
Small Boat with one other person: One’s relationship with that person.
Idioms: Burn one’s boats; in the same boat; miss the boat; rock the boat; ships that pass; ship comes in; a tight ship; in a boat without a paddle. See: anchor; submarine.
Useful questions:
If I am not alone on this boat, what is the dream saying about my shared journey with the person or people I am with?
What is the situation depicted – storm, calm, etc – and how does that relate to my life?
Am I directing the boat or am I a passenger – and in what way am I alone or going along with somebody in life?
Comments
I just woke up…My dream put me and my dogs on a aircraft carrier alone on a large water way. We took a small boat from it to fish. I caught a baracuda, then we had to race back to the ship becausethe water got crazy rough…am I doomed?
i saw a boat standing near a bridge and I was sit at the top of the board and talking wih my father. what does it’s ,means
How do I get a dream interpretation? I dreamt about a large sailing ship..it was the Bounty, the one that just sunk. The Bounty was traveling over a choppy sea but in nice weather. None of the sails were attached. they wer flapping as were all the ropes …there was no one on board. I was not on board I was observing …I just saw it and my eyes flew open. I could hear the sound of it bounding over the choppy waves….
I have had a consistent dream about being on a ship. I have not seen the water, but have spent time with others on the ship.What do these dreams mean?
Keryn – I think the dream is saying that your life is very much bound up with being with others, and you haven’t looked beyond that to the wonders of the great ocean of consciousness that in fact we are all involved in.
Tony
This morning after my alarm went off, I fell back to sleep and had a very vivid dream… I remember somehow being in Tenerife on my own, but as I was leaving to come home I found myself in a harbour full of small boats with lots of luggage, of precious things I wouldnt have taken on holiday with me :/ but someow I had this stuff with me, suddenly my 2 brothers and their wives were stood with me on the wooden platform beside the boats, and there was a man who was to drive us home on the boat, he took my luggage and placed it in the boat, it was a small boat and it was a pale blue colour, i remember us all laughing and commenting that it was the same boat as the one in the program ‘only fools and horses’ the to hull and back episode (I dont know if it actually was but we all seemed to think so in my dream.) Suddenly everything started vibrating and juddering, I wondered what the heck it was as we was all vibrating I glanced up and saw that a huge ship had come crashing into the harbour, breaking through the barriers and sinking all small boats in its path, I began to run in the opposite direction into what looked like a huge college or institute of some kind overlooking the harbour, when I was inside I looked out the big glass window and saw that yet another ship had come crashing into the harbour along with the first, I remember feeling gutted as all my precious luggage was on the little blue boat lost forever, everything was shaking and vibrating and water was overflowing into the institute so I found my self running through all the rooms warning everyone what was happening then everyone started running around, next thing I knew I was in a house with a kind looking woman who was baking cookies and I was telling her what had happened and she was telling me not to worry, I don’t know where my brothers and their wives went, I thought to myself I need to go back and see where my brothers have gone, and when I went back everything was back to normal again like nothing had happened, I remember thinkin, NO WAY! but at least I could get my luggage back! what the heck was this dream because it felt so real?
My dream last night consisted of seeing dirty rough lake water within a channel from a storm. In the channel was many (I believe 5) sail boats overturned on their sides and there was 1 small (about 20-22ft) motorboat on its side. I was standing (walking) on the edge of the channel with I believe 1 other person but do not know/remember who I was with. Just watching and wondering what was going on. Anyone care to explain?
I had a dream last night that I was on a small motor boat at some type of event. I didn’t interact with the people, I just took pictures from my view, they were hanging out..the lake was frozen over..a group of people came over to my boat..all of a sudden the ice began to break..in their panic, they grabbed the side of the boat, it began to tip over…i started to think of the camera that would soon be destroyed in the water, and the fact that i can’t swim.
I had a dream that I was on a boat in the middle of the sea at night… it was stuck in a position of mid sink/ tilted with the lower half underwater but the rest above. It wasnt moving anywhere and was fairly safe even though in this position and a lot of disrepair. People were still partying on it with me. After everyone left though I somehow returned it to shore, next to a land very close to someones shelter which my now returned boat seemed to tower over and invade the space of. Even myself in the dream was shocked I returned the boat to land, like a nice surprise. But not entirely sure how I managed it.
Can you help me with what this means.
Joseph – The boat at sea usually indicates a journey into the unknown aspects of yourself, and is called the Night Journey. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-night-journey-the-search-for-self/
But it seems you journey with others was about partying with others. And the bad repair and situation of the boat suggests that you are not either looking after yourself or you inner life – your psychological self.
There is perhaps a lack of self confidence that is changed by the experience, shown by the boat towering over the other boat. But I find the dream difficult to be clear about so forgive me if I have missed the mark.
Tony
I had a dream about being on an immense cruise ship. There are many games, rides and activities on the ship, all in large rooms connected by escalators, halls, even slides. I am looking for people I know but I never can find them, the ship is so large. I never see the outside of the ship, the ocean, etc, just the rooms and I am always going from room to room, not wanting to play the games onboard, never really stopping, always wandering, searching aimlessly. The people I do see are wrapped up in cruise like activities. Sometimes I am avoidant of the people who operate the games and activities, but again, there is no feeling of terror, just a little frustration or anxiety about my inability to find people, family that I know and not wanting to participate in these activities that feel somewhat artificial or contrived. I feel quite neutral about the people in the dream for the most part.
I used to have a dream about mazes that was similar but more fearful. No matter what path I took in the maze, there were dangers in each path. And at the end of the dream is a witch and a fire. For some reason these dreams are in my mind, of similar subject but I don’t know what their true meaning is….
Molly Chu – This is very much like the maze dreams, except you are now not meeting the feeling of danger. Instead you are lost in a world where people only see the games, and have no vision of the great ocean/ the spirit that has so much satisfaction in it.
The ship is the image of living in the world many people exist in. It is a world created by our beliefs, opinions and the beliefs of thousands around us. The ship is the confusion of ideas and feelings, conflicting urges and opinions and the difficulty in finding your way through the mass of apparently irrational emotions and images arising from within, or the variety of opinions and authoritative sources of information outside.
This area of self is sometimes an area of seeming chaos. It needs some other level of yourself, the intuitive faculty, in relationship with the rational mind, to guide you through. Sometimes you need to admit you are lost and need help.
We need to realise that we all live in a very real inner world that we mistake as us – you – me – I. This world is created b your thoughts, beliefs and opinions and it seems impossible to find ones way out of it. But the secret is to realise that it is really a creation of your own mind and so we can dissolve it by seeing the opinions as opinions, the thoughts as simply thoughts, your beliefs as simply beliefs.
This dream of someone is an example or this – “Before waking this morning I had an extraordinary lucid experience that involved me in what felt like a real place. The clearest part of this was of myself in a maze. The walls of the maze were made of hedges, as the whole thing was outdoors. But I realised, because I was lucid, that I had purposely created the maze as an experiment. The point of the experiment was that the maze was complicated enough to make it difficult for me to find my way out. So, confronted by the difficulty of emerging from this dream maze, because of the lucidity, I could understand that this was a dream image, a reflection of the actual world I live in, and in doing so I simply realised that I was not actually in a maze, but only lost in feelings of being trapped in my own mind, and was thereby free of the maze.
I then experimented again and again with this, moving to exist beyond the images I had been, or could be, lost in. This was such an extraordinary experience and realisation it is difficult to put into words with enough impact to make it real. What it led me to see was that all dreams involve us in an environment or situation of one sort or another. Usually we feel the dream to be so real, and the feelings we experience because we are immersed in them, to also be real, that in a very real way we are trapped. But we are trapped in the feelings, ideas and beliefs, not the dream. So if we were in a prison cell in a dream, then there would be no way out of that cell without a key. But realising oneself as being the awareness behind the feelings and images means there is no prison; there is no entrapment; there are no walls to hold you. The apparent reality of the dream is then seen as simply pictures and feelings – stuff of the mind that we have conjured and become identified with and lost or trapped in. Even imagery with positive feelings are a form of trap if we identify with them. The more I look at the experience the more I realise that virtually everybody on our planet is trapped in a prison of their own emotions, thoughts and ideas. To recognise this in any reasonable degree leads to an extraordinary sense of freedom. To see that we live our life trapped in the world of thoughts, of emotions, of sexual drives, of fears or beliefs, is astonishing.”
To find our way out of this world we need to recognise that our thoughts are just thoughts and not reality; that are emotions are just emotions, that are beliefs are just beliefs.
Tony
I am struggling with two very unsettling dreams I’ve had the past two nights, consecutively.
The first, I’m on a speedboat, almost feeling a bit drunk. We’re having fun and speeding along when I suddenly realize I should be more careful. With that, the bow of the speedboat dips into the water so the boat is standing at 90 degrees almost like the Titanic was and it’s still rocketing forward toward a wall or damn or something. As we close in on it I look at a friend whose face i can’t remember, close my eyes and pray to survive the impact. I woke up screaming.
Last night, it was as if when i fell asleep i reminded myself of the dream and knew to stay away from boats. Yet still, at one point I was trying to get on the subway, missed my train and was all of a sudden on this big barge that was pulling away from shore and I couldn’t get off. I remember panicking and saying in my dream that I needed to get off the boat.. then I woke up.
What do you think I make of all of this?
I had a dream that I rented a boat to use as a commute to get home, and once I embarked by myself, I became nervous because I realize I don’t know how to drive a boat. Immediately, while on the boat I found myself trying to figure out what am I going to do. I started the boat, and found myself driving, and thinking maybe I can do this. I was partially away from the dock figuring out the direction to my home. I figured if I stayed near land I could find my way home until the thought of getting veered deeply into the ocean set in. And so I made a u-turn to find my way back from where I took off with the boat, and as I was going back I found that I was dealing with tides. I told myself, I made a mistake coming this way but I was somehow able to manage to get the boat back to an area where people “check their rentals boats in.” I told the staff there that I would need help to get the boat in a specific area they were instructing to do, and so I received help…and that was the end of the dream. Can you help me interpret it?
Thank you in advance!
Mr. Crisp–
I recently dreamed that I was kidnapped in a non-threatening way so that I could take part in a training. People were jumping off a rock into lake water. I asked God if this is what I was supposed to do and he said, “Save my ships.” I was worried about getting water up my nose, but I figured I should do it anyway. I said to the man who kidnapped me, “My vision isn’t very good.” He replied, “All you have to do is look.”
What do you think that means?
Hi Mr. Crisp. I had a dream that I was in the park with my mom, dad and brother. All of a sudden three officers with shot guns and bullet proof vests, came to us and told us that there was a shooting at marshalls. My mom grabbed my hand and we starting running along with everybody else in the park. As we were running, I noticed that we forgot my brother and dad. Then, some random girl was calling my name, grabbed my hand and started running along with my mom and I. All three of us got on the back of the boat and as I started to explore the boat, I noticed at the front of the boat there was this elderly woman with a hat and sun dress on steering the boat. I suddenly panicked and said that we can’t trust her because we were the only ones on the boat and urged my mom and the girl to get off the boat. Can you interpret the meaning of this dream? Thank you.
I had a dream last night or early this morning that I was a large ship with my husband and other people it wasnt a cruise or anything but a large ship it was a very sunny day and the waters were mid/dark blue, we were scared should I say I was scared on the ship, the waves were going sideways not the directions that waves come in, I sensed it was the end of the world I had that scaredness inside of me.
Ketty – This type of dream usually accompanies enormous changes that are occurring, or about to occur in your life.
We are all a bit anxious about major changes in us – such as the change from childhood to teenage, or from being single to marriage, or from being married to being independent. But those are just example, so ask yourself what you are facing. Of course sometimes we do not recognise it till it happens. Maybe try using http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/processing-dreams/.
The ship represents the life journey you are sharing with others.
Tony
my own small boat, in land, not on water, In my dream I wish to sell the boat. people looked at it to buy as I was looking at the boat it started to develop a crack in side the boat. Therefore the people decided not buy and as they were leaving they looked at me felt sorry for me. Some one I felt wanted to help me with the situation but did not quite see that person.clearly.