The Ancient and Honourable Fraternity of Royal Ark Mariners is administered by the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons, and its Grand Master is the Grand Master of the Mark. The degree is conferred only on Mark Master Masons. Each Royal Ark Mariner lodge is “moored” to a Mark lodge and carries the same number, usually with the same name.
The degree
The ceremony of elevation tells the story of the Great Flood and of Noah, who built the Ark by which mankind was preserved. The Worshipful Commander represents Noah, and his Wardens represent Noah’s sons, Japheth and Shem. Like the Craft and Mark degrees it draws on the Masonic allegory of building, but here it celebrates a builder who worked on God’s direct instructions, and the Ark as an “Ark of Safety”.
The ceremony is short, simple and beautiful, and it centres on the virtues Noah showed: the wisdom to build the Ark, the strength of character to persevere, and the beauty of his workmanship. Many Brethren count it among their favourite degrees, for its warmth and the closeness between members and candidate.
The regalia is simple. The jewel of the Order is a rainbow with a dove bearing an olive branch, hung from a rainbow-coloured ribbon, and the rainbow is the emblem of the degree.
A short history
The earliest confirmed record of the degree being worked comes from Bath in 1790. Noah had a place in Masonic tradition well before that: in his Constitutions of 1738, James Anderson described himself as “a true Noachida”. In 1793 Thomas Dunckerley described himself as Grand Commander of the Royal Ark Mariners, but over the following decades the degree almost disappeared.
In 1870 the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons, under its Grand Master Canon George Raymond Portal, announced that it would protect the degree, since it had long been worked in Mark lodges. It formed the Grand Master’s Royal Ark Council to regulate it, and the first working of the degree under the new constitution took place in the Mother Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners No. 1 in 1872. A rival “Grand Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners” persisted for some years until Grand Mark Lodge bought out its claims in 1884, for the princely sum of £25.
Since 1991 the November meeting of Grand Mark Lodge each year has been devoted to the Royal Ark Mariner degree.