Ship of fools

Normally, the images show a ship crowded with men mostly wearing traditional jester or fool's costume with cloth ears ending in bells, many quarreling, drinking, and fighting.

[citation needed] A "complex political satire", whose composition was repeated in at least seven different 15th-century prints, indicating great popularity, shows Pope Paul II and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III wrestling at the top of a ship's mast, wearing only briefs and their respective Papal tiara and crown.

A woodcut illustration to an edition of 1584 of Brant's book shows the Anti-Christ sitting on top of the overturned Narrenschiff, while in the foreground Saint Peter guides a small boat of respectably-dressed men safely to shore.

Benjamin Jowett's 1871 translation recounts the story as follows: Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better.

Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain's hands into their own whether by force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people like or not, the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer's art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling.