The poem reads like a warning delivered in fragments. It opens with a conditional: if "hits" threaten, think about how dangerous the sea is. The word "hits" is vague, and it could mean blows, losses, or financial shocks, so the danger feels both physical and uncertain. The sea works as a image of anything large and unpredictable that can swamp a person.
The second stanza brings in money. Debts are "eating the full / head of a captain," a strange, almost comic picture of worry gnawing at the one in charge. The captain's head is "full," crowded with obligations. The last lines say this head "thinks hard anew / every hour," which suggests constant, exhausting rethinking with no rest.
The speaker doesn't state a feeling outright, but the tone seems wry and sympathetic at once. The odd, playful title sits against the serious worry inside the poem, and that contrast gives it an uneasy mood: light on the surface, anxious underneath.