The poem is one of the last Tennyson wrote, three years before his death in 1892, while staying with his friend James Froude in Salcombe Regis in south Devon. On his deathbed Tennyson told his son that it was to be the final poem in every future anthology of his poetry, so it obviously had great personal importance.

Salcombe lies on a narrow rocky inlet, and adverse wind and low tide often combine to make the crossing of the bar at the entrance to the harbour extremely dangerous. Thirteen of the Salcombe lifeboat's crew were drowned while attempting to cross it in 1916. Tennyson himself experienced a very rough crossing of the bar on Froude's yacht and this experience probably inspired his poem.

I am told that in Tennyson's time a specially-designed buoy was anchored on the bar. It was fitted with a device which somehow made a droning or moaning noise in an on-shore wind, and if this is true it not only would have been a sound Tennyson himself had heard, but to me gives a slightly deeper meaning to the phrase "crossing the bar" in the poem. "May there be no moaning of the bar" seems to be plea for a gentle passing.

I have e-mailed the Salcombe Museum asking if they know anything of the moaning buoy, but have had no reply. Does anyone have any information?