WE'RE ALL ON THE SAME BOAT

Description

Three children appear to be navigating a small and precarious boat. At the bow, one scans the horizon through a makeshift telescope while another looks anxiously behind. At the stern, a third child leans over the side with a bucket, desperately bailing out water. Above them Banksy has written: WE’RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT

But there was originally no painted boat. Banksy positioned the children immediately above a real sheet of rusted corrugated metal spanning the Landspring Drain, transforming this neglected piece of infrastructure into their fragile vessel. As with several works from A Great British Spraycation, the found object is not incidental: it completes the composition. A contemporary photograph dated 7 August 2021 documents the work in its original configuration.

We’re All in the Same Boat

The familiar expression normally suggests solidarity: whatever our differences, we share the same circumstances. Banksy makes the phrase considerably less reassuring. The boat is in trouble.

More importantly, its passengers are not doing the same thing. One looks forward, another looks backwards, while the third is occupied with the immediate task of keeping them afloat. The slogan therefore becomes both an assertion of collective destiny and a question about collective responsibility.

Created in the summer of 2021, the image inevitably resonated with the experience of the Covid pandemic, when variations of “we're all in this together” had become part of public language. Climate change provides another compelling context: three children inherit an unstable vessel while attempting to prevent it from sinking. Migration is also difficult to exclude from Banksy's wider imagery of boats and children. Yet Banksy offered no single explanation, and the work is stronger for remaining open.

A Boat That Blocked the Water

The work acquired an extraordinary additional chapter almost immediately.

The corrugated sheet Banksy had transformed into the children's boat was positioned across the Landspring Drain, a functioning watercourse running through the park. With heavy rain forecast, Oulton Broad Parish Council concluded that the metal could obstruct the flow and create a flood risk. Contractors therefore removed it—before Banksy had even publicly confirmed that the work was his.

Banksy's Great British Spraycation film, released on 13 August 2021, subsequently authenticated the intervention along with the other works he had created during his journey through Norfolk and Suffolk.

The irony is exceptional. A work depicting children desperately trying to keep a boat from filling with water was partially dismantled because authorities feared that the artwork itself might cause flooding.

What Remains

The stencilled children and inscription survive at Nicholas Everitt Park and have been covered with transparent protective sheeting. The original corrugated-metal element, however, remains absent according to current local visitor information.

That loss materially changes the composition. Today the children appear suspended above the drain; in Banksy's original intervention, the battered piece of metal transformed naturally into a vessel and made the slogan immediately intelligible.

It is also a particularly good example of why we are right to give the individual Spraycation works their own catalogue entries. The main article can explain Banksy's seaside journey, but the individual entry allows us to preserve something easily lost from the historical record: what the work actually looked like before its environment began to change it.

The children were all in the same boat. Then, within days, the boat was gone.