'Sea-Fever', a poem published in 1900 by the former poet laureate John Masefield and taught to generations of schoolchildren, has been voted the nation's favourite sea poem. The online poll, conducted by Magma Poetry and SeaBritain 2005, placed Masefield's classic poem ahead of Martin Newell's 'The Song of the Waterlily' and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.

Masefield is considered to be one of the great storytellers of English poetry, a spinner of yarns and ballads of tall ships and exotic seas.The winning poem features in the book Sea-Fever: Selected Poems of John Masefield, published by Carcanet in February 2005.

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking...

from 'Sea-Fever' by John Masefield.