John Milton's description in Lycidas of the shipwreck that caused the death of Edward King has generally been interpreted along historical and naturalistic lines. In this essay I want to show that the image of the ship as Ecclesia or the Church, coming as it does in almost the exact center of Lycidas, sheds new light on Milton's use of the Christian and humanistic traditions, its single image identifying and being used to unify his twin aims of satire and elegy.
Merritt Y. Hughes, in his edition of Milton's poetry and major prose, refers to the example of ‘disastrous twilight’ in Paradise Lost (1.597) to explain the reference to ‘th’ eclipse’ (1. 101) as the time of the ship's construction.