"The sea jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul" is a quote from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. In a contest of natural and mechanical energies, a steamboat battles a blizzard in JMW Turner's painting, Steam-Boat of a Harbour's Mouth making Signals in Shallow Water and going by the Lead. It is taking soundings ‘by the lead line’ to determine the depth of water. The title specifies what is happening in precise nautical terms but Turner added some autobiographical narrative, claiming he experienced the storm.