"Merchantman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for truth and the shaping of character the principle remains the same as in science and literature. Trivial causes are followed by wonderful results, but it is only the merchantman who is on the watch for goodly pearls who is represented as finding the pearl ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... became greatly attached to his young lieutenant, and very liberal of scientific and professional instruction. The youth had been powerfully recommended; and, as usual, he recommended himself still more powerfully. On his voyage to Jamaica, therefore, where he had before sailed, in a merchantman, with his early friend Mr. Rathbone, he was now a second time receiving nautical instruction; nor did he at present feel inclined to cherish, whatever he might formerly have done, the smallest dread of any professional disappointments in the naval service of his country. He had ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... Myra) Paul and his party had to tranship, for their vessel was probably of small tonnage, and only fit to run along the coast. In either port they would have no difficulty in finding some merchantman to take them across to Syria. Accordingly they shifted into one bound for Tyre, and apparently ready to sail. The second part of their voyage took them right out to sea, and their course lay to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... some sort," Ralph said; "but her masts have gone. It may be that she is a merchantman that has been captured and ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... evening, September 26th; but my heart leaped within me to see her English colors. I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English merchantman, returning from Japan by the north and south seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddel of Deptford, a very civil man, and an excellent sailor. We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south; there were about fifty men in the ship; and here I met an old comrade of mine, one Peter Williams, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... piles of goods must be examined and long inventories made. At last the captain decided things had gone too far. He himself apparently remained to watch over the linen; but at five o'clock on the Sunday morning, Aunt Anna, Fleeming, and his mother were rowed in a pour of rain on board an English merchantman, to suffer 'nine mortal hours of agonising suspense.' With the end of that time, peace was restored. On Tuesday morning officers with white flags appeared on the bastions; then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched in, two hundred ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... word here; this is not a trading-vessel, but a ship-of-war, and I intend to be implicitly obeyed," he continued sternly, looking even more fiercely at them. "Nevertheless," he added, somewhat relaxing his set features, "although we be not a peaceful merchantman, yet I expect and intend to do a little trading with the ships of the enemy, and in any prizes which we may capture, you know you will all have a just, nay, a liberal, share. It must not be lost sight of, however, that the first business ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... for refreshment or advices; and against this the article provides. But the armed vessels of France have been also admitted to land and sell their prize-goods here for a consumption, in which case, it is as reasonable they should pay duties, as the goods of a merchantman landed and sold for consumption. They have however demanded, and as a matter of right, to sell them free of duty, a right, they say, given by this article of the treaty, though the article does not give the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... among the rustling leaves. Terrace after terrace, the green aisles mount to the summit of the great ridge, and the ruined forts on each wooded promontory recall the long-past days when the "fruit of gold" demanded the increasing vigilance of military power to defeat the onslaught of merchantman or privateer, willing to run every risk in order to capture a cargo of spices, and secure fabulous gains by appeasing the frantic thirst of Europe for the novel luxury of the aromatic spoils. The mediaeval ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... tremendous amount of canvas; and leaping through the sea with the pace of a dolphin, came up with the doomed merchantman hand over hand. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... sea, and had cruised for several months with fair success, when in March, 1813, she gave chase to a sail off the Surinam River on the coast of South America. The stranger seemed to evince no great desire to escape; and the privateer soon gained sufficiently to discover that the supposed merchantman was a British sloop-of-war, whose long row of open ports showed that she carried twenty-seven guns. Champlin and his men found this a more ugly customer than they had expected; but it was too late to retreat, and to surrender was out of the question: so, calling ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... America and the West Indies flock to these regions, but sailors from England were fired by reports of the rich spoils obtained to imitate their example. One of the most remarkable instances was that of Captain Henry Avery, alias Bridgman. In May 1694 Avery was on an English merchantman, the "Charles II.," lying near Corunna. He persuaded the crew to mutiny, set the captain on shore, re-christened the ship the "Fancy," and sailed to the East Indies. Among other prizes he captured, in September 1695, a large vessel called the "Gunsway," belonging to the ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... went down to the quay, to get a boat to take her out to the merchantman, she looked in at the post-office, where she found Marie Forstberg already up, and busy in the sitting-room in her morning dress. She was greatly astonished when Elizabeth told her of her ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... been in that part of the Bay. The vessel's head was now laid to the southward and westward, in waiting for the zephyr, which might soon be expected. The gallant frigate, seen from the impending rocks, looked like a light merchantman, in all but her symmetry and warlike guise; nature being moulded on so grand a scale all along that coast, as to render objects of human art unusually diminutive to the eye. On the other hand, the country-houses, churches, hermitages, convents, and villages, clustered all along ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was a merchantman, and many were the trials that beset passengers and crew. Narrowly escaping capture by a corsair of Tunis, menaced by a violent tempest that threatened to annihilate them, they finally encountered a calm that proved more appalling ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... off no legs," the bluff old man had blurted out when he heard of it. "He wants to git ready to take a ship 'round Cape Horn. If I had my way I'd send him some'er's where he could learn navigation, and that's in the fo'c's'le of a merchantman. Give him a year or two before the mast. I made that mistake with Bart—he loafed round here too long and when he did git a chance he was ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Black Star and the Queen Flavia—whose captain had contemptuously ignored an order from Gram to re-christen her Queen Evita—had remained. They were his ships, not King Angus'. The captain of the merchantman from Wardshaven now on orbit refused to take a cargo to Newhaven; he had been chartered by King Angus, and would take ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... people on the sea, timid and prone to sea-sickness, think they will suffer from it less on board a merchantman than on a boat, and for the same reason shift their quarters to a trireme, but do not attain anything by these changes, for they take with them their timidity and qualmishness, so changes of life do not remove the sorrows ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... ships. Torpedo boat No. 96 collided with another vessel near Gibraltar on November 2, 1915, and sank before all of her crew could escape, eleven men being drowned. The fifth of the month witnessed a successful attack by an enemy submarine upon the armed merchantman Tara of the British navy. She was a vessel of 6,322 tons and carried from four to five hundred men, of whom thirty-four lost their lives. The sinking of the Tara, coupled with numerous attacks on merchant ships, proved that the undersea fleet of Germany in the Mediterranean ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... vessel hove to, which we took it for granted was a merchantman, which the pirate had been plundering, the captain ordered one of the cutters to be lowered down with a midshipman and boat's crew to take possession of her. The men were all in the boat, but the midshipman had gone down for his spy-glass, or something else, and as it was merely with a view ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... was an established fact, however, that he never went out of that house. I cannot vouch so confidently for the cobwebby legend which wove itself about him. It was to this effect: He had formerly been the master of a large merchantman running between New York and Calcutta; while still in his prime he had abruptly retired from the quarter-deck, and seated himself at that window—where the outlook must have been the reverse of exhilarating, for not ten persons passed in the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Gally again, nor have the Boat, or Small-Armes, for he had no Commission to take any but the King's Enemies, and Pirates, and that he would attack them with the Gally and drive them into Bombay; the other being a Merchantman and having no Guns, might easily have done it with a few hands, and with all the arguments and menaces he could use could scarce restraine them from their unlawful Designe, but at last prevailed, and with much ado got him cleare, and ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... broken, and her honour betrayed, is not regarded by the best authorities as an objection or even as a relevant fact. In the more sacred name of uniformity Ireland is swamped in the Westminster Parliament like a fishing-smack in the wash of a great merchantman. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... breakin' your heart for trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked toward Roosevelt Street. It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the children, and what did it matter? She ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... a-pervertin' Scriptur' nor nuthin', but I can't help thinkin' of one passage, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and when he hath found one pearl of great price, for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that pearl.' Well, Mary, I've been and sold my brig last week," he said, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... off and on about Plymouth all my life and close to the sea, and if I don't know a king's ship by this time I ought to. That's only a lubberly old merchantman. Why, her yards were all anyhow, with not half men ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... so Frank's letter has made you very happy, but you are afraid he would not have patience to stay for the Haarlem which you wish him to have done as being safer than the merchantman. Poor fellow! to wait from the middle of November to the end of December, and perhaps even longer, it must be sad work; especially in a place where the ink is so abominably pale. What a surprise to him it must have been on October 20, to be visited, collared, and thrust out of the ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... (school);(1) the Dirghagama and Samyuktagama(2) (Sutras); and also the Samyukta-sanchaya-pitaka;(3)—all being works unknown in the land of Han. Having obtained these Sanskrit works, he took passage in a large merchantman, on board of which there were more than 200 men, and to which was attached by a rope a smaller vessel, as a provision against damage or injury to the large one from the perils of the navigation. With a favourable wind, they ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... papers may serve for to-day's, and Sunday's for all the week. There is, as it were, a syncope in all things; nothing is doing; art, science, and business, are alike at a stand-still. The stage, the press, the easel, the loom, the rudder of the merchantman, and the helm of the state, all are alike in a most extraordinary negative condition. The world is in a catalepsy. It hears and sees, but it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... of Monteith's Geography, I remember a picture of a half-dozen pirate prahus attacking a merchantman off a jungle-bordered shore. A blazing sun hung high in the heavens above the fated ship, and, to my youthful imagination, seemed to beat down on the tropical scene with a fierce, remorseless intensity. The wedge-shaped tops of some palm-thatched and palm-shaded ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... an English merchantman," said Paradise. "Look at her colors. A Company ship, probably, bound for Virginia, with a cargo of servants, gentlemen out at elbows, felons, children for apprentices, traders, French vignerons, glasswork ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... he has led us to both poles, from the uttermost recesses of the Pacific to Behring's Strait, and the infinite wastes of the Antarctic waters. There is even an enormous region that no vessel, whether war-ship or merchantman, ever traverses, at a few degrees beyond the southern points of America and Africa. No one visits that region but ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... is quite finished; but a miniature fleet would be beautiful to launch on the lake at Horbury next summer. If I rig this vessel properly, may I have some others of different sizes, with port-holes to put cannon in? The 'Stanley,' you know, is a merchantman; but now I want ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... small frigate for watching the Egyptian coast, and, indeed, had he been able to send a larger craft, it would not have been so well suited for the purpose, for the pirates would hardly have ventured to attack her. We shall, after we have put out to sea, disguise the brig and rig her as a merchantman in order to tempt them out. We shall not do it until we are well away, for the pirates may have friends here who might send them information. We shall head for the south, and shall give out that we are to rejoin our commander off Alexandria, ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... vessel, sail; craft, bottom. navy, marine, fleet, flotilla; shipping. man of war &c (combatant) 726; transport, tender, storeship^; merchant ship, merchantman; packet, liner; whaler, slaver, collier, coaster, lighter; fishing boat, pilot boat; trawler, hulk; yacht; baggala^; floating hotel, floating palace; ocean greyhound. ship, bark, barque, brig, snow, hermaphrodite brig; brigantine, barkantine^; schooner; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was delighted with his new employer's liberality, and the name Despair was changed to Hope. The vessel soon became famous as a merchantman all over the world. Her honest master, Captain Small, became wealthy, at the same time increasing the ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... freebooter, who had more than thirty such vessels under his command. The smallness of our vessel encouraged the attack, and her strength being so much more than in proportion to her size, supposing her a merchantman, rendered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... summer of the year 18—, I was the only passenger on board the merchantman, Alceste, which was bound to the Brazils. One fine moonlight night, I stood on the deck, and gazed on the quiet ocean, on which the moon-beams danced. The wind was so still, that it scarcely agitated the sails, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... was one of great tumult and expectation in Bristol. The partisans of Monmouth knew that he was almost within sight of their city, and imagined that he would be among them before daybreak. About an hour after sunset a merchantman lying at the quay took fire. Such an occurrence, in a port crowded with shipping, could not but excite great alarm. The whole river was in commotion. The streets were crowded. Seditious cries were heard amidst the darkness ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is the Sub-Almoner of History; Queen Mab's Register; one whom, by the same figure that a North-country pedler is a merchantman, you may style an author. The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of the hopes of his house, did not slander his compliment with worse application than he that names this shred an historian. To call ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Bosphorus and the Dardanelles closed to every kind of shipping, at the same time barring the entrances of these channels with rows of mines. The first boat to suffer from this measure was a British merchantman, which was sunk outside the Bosphorus, while another had a narrow escape in the Dardanelles. A large number of steamers of every nationality are waiting outside the straits for the special pilot boats of the Turkish Government, in ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... for Venice," Browning wrote to a friend on Good Friday, 1838. He voyaged as sole passenger on a merchantman, and soon was on friendliest terms with the rough kindly captain. For the first fortnight the sea was stormy and Browning suffered much; as they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, Captain Davidson aided him to ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... d'ye see, in a Revenue sloop, And, off Cape Finisteere, A merchantman we see, A Frenchman, going free, So we made for the bold Mounseer, D'ye see? We made for the bold Mounseer! But she proved to be a Frigate - and she up with her ports, And fires with a thirty-two! It come uncommon near, But we answered with a cheer, Which paralysed ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... defend themselves, and one of Moses Brown's ships, the Anne and Hope, sailed into Providence from a voyage to the West Indies, bearing in her rigging the marks of conflict with a French privateer, whom the merchantman had bravely repulsed. During the two years and a half of naval war with France eighty-four armed French vessels, nearly all of them privateers, were captured, and no vessel of our navy was taken by the enemy, except the Retaliation. This was not ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... Commodore Perry, few efforts to intrude upon the Japanese had proceeded from the United States. An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1837, by an American merchantman, to return a party of Japanese who had been shipwrecked on our Western coast. In 1846, Commodore Biddle was deputed to open negotiations, and entered the Bay of Yedo with two ships of war. Receiving an unfavorable answer to his demands, he immediately ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... The bishop was merchantman, freighting ships. His wharves are wide, his fleet is great, his cargoes are many. Only he is freighting ships for heaven. No bales of merchandise nor ingots of iron, but souls for whom Christ died,—these are his cargoes; and had you asked him, "What work to-day?" a smile had flooded sunlight ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the sinking of the steamer Falaba, by which an American citizen lost his life, the Government of the United States is surprised to find the Imperial German Government contending that an effort on the part of a merchantman to escape capture and secure assistance alters the obligation of the officer seeking to make the capture in respect of the safety of the lives of those on board the merchantman, although the vessel had ceased her attempt to escape when torpedoed. These are not new circumstances. They ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of the port of New York, manned by George Harbo, thirty-one years of age, captain of a merchantman, and Frank Samuelson, twenty-six years of age, left New York for Havre on the 6th of June. Ten days later the boat was met by the German trans-atlantic steamer Frst Bismarck proceeding from Cherbourg to New York. On the 8th, 9th and 10th of July, the Fox was cast by a tempest upon the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... sent them there? They didn't think their pay half good enough. No; it was something in them, something inborn and subtle and everlasting. I don't say positively that the crew of a French or German merchantman wouldn't have done it, but I doubt whether it would have been done in the same way. There was a completeness in it, something solid like a principle, and masterful like an instinct—a disclosure of something secret—of that hidden something, that gift, of ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... the twenty-nine vessels were British trawlers. There were four British and one French merchantman in the list. The others were ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... driven off the sea, the privateers continued the naval war. At that time a merchantman could be turned into a capable fighting ship by adding strengthening timbers and providing the necessary guns. Such a ship, when commissioned as a privateer by the United States government, could capture ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart
... February the President informed Congress of certain captures and outrages committed by a French privateer within the limits of the United States, including the burning of an English merchantman in the harbor of Charleston. On March 19, in a further special message, he communicated dispatches from the American envoys in France, and also informed Congress that he should withdraw his order forbidding merchant vessels to sail in an armed condition. A collision might, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... where Ishmael sat there was no one present except the old retired merchantman, Captain Mountz, who sat on the opposite side, directly under the port lights. And with the rolling of the ship these two diners, holding desperately onto the edge of the table, were tossed up and down like boys ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... fine March morning, we steered our course to the English coast, to take an active part in the commercial war. Gently the waves splashed around the prow and glided over the lower deck. Our duty was to examine every merchantman we met with the object of destroying those of the enemy. The essential thing was to ascertain the nationality of the ships we stopped. On the following morning, we were given several opportunities to fulfill ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... absurdum. Without insisting, for example, upon the impossibility of having a speech delivered by one who is actually blind, and deaf, and dumb, we need only imagine here its utterance, by some wall-eyed stammerer, who has a visage about as wooden and inexpressive as the figure-head of a merchantman. Occasionally, it is true, physical defects have been actually conquered, individual peculiarities have been in a great measure counteracted, by rhetorical artifice, or by the arts of oratorical delivery: instance the lisp of ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... thrilling moment for the boys from Brighton. Out there in the blackness of the night an American fighting craft was separating itself from the rest of the fleet to run full speed to the assistance of a helpless merchantman, and, if possible, to do battle with the ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... 'cept fer us. (He points to the window to the right, where the lighthouse shows.) There 's ol' Petey, starin' at the ocean. Yer ain 't never seen a light at that t' other winder, has yer Joe? We waits fer a merchantman which he knows has gold aboard. Then we jest tips a hint ter Petey, and he douses his light. Then we sets up our lantern—ol' Flint's lantern—outside on the rocks, jest where she shows at t' other winder. The ship sticks her nose agin the ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... his vessel sighted a large merchantman, off the coast of Spain, and engaged it in a terrible conflict. The merchantman carried twice as many people and heavier guns than the Sea Rover; but by the skilful management of his ship Captain Lane continued to rake her fore and aft until she was forced to strike her colors. When the ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... abundance of scarlet, bright blue, and gilding upon her prow, stern, and upper works. The slim hull itself is about 140 feet long, 14 feet wide, and rides the harbor so lightly as to show it draws very little water; for the warship, even more perhaps than the merchantman, is built on the theory that her crew must drag her up upon the beach ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... approached Gibraltar, running beneath a crimson sunset and between misty purple shores. On one hand lay Africa, on the other the Moorish country, both shrouded in a soft haze and edged with snowy foam. Down below the soldiers of Italy were singing. A merchantman of belligerent nationality, our ship proudly flew its flag again. Indeed, had it failed to do so, the British patrol-boats would long since have ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... is a merchantman, which arrived last night from St. Pierre," said the sailor, respectfully ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... school and a little more in a minister's study at Albany. At thirteen he entered Yale; but he was a self-willed lad and was presently dismissed from college. A little later, after receiving some scant nautical training on a merchantman, he entered the navy as midshipman; but after a brief experience in the service he married and resigned his commission. That was in 1811, and the date is significant. It was just before the second war with Great ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... and an immense quantity of arms. Much vexation was caused to the officers of the Spanish navy in those quarters by the stories of the daring feats she had achieved, absolutely discharging a cargo once on the very wharf of Lequeieto, as if she were a peaceful merchantman, and on another occasion sending off rifles and ammunition by small boats in the dead of night, a man-of-war lying sleepily oblivious of what was going on just outside her. It was felt that her continued impunity was ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... experienced surgeon, aided by a staff of assistant-surgeons, a proportional number of assistants, cook, baker, and nurses.—Merchant ship.—A vessel employed in commerce to carry commodities of various sorts from one port to another. (See MERCHANTMAN.)—Private ship of war. (See PRIVATEERS, and LETTERS OF MARQUE.)—Slaver, or slave-ship. A vessel employed in carrying negro slaves.—To ship. To embark men or merchandise. It also implies to fix anything in its ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... beyond his expectations. In Venice there were constantly bargains to be purchased from ships returning laden with the spoils of some captured Genoese merchantman, or taken in the sack of some Eastern seaport. The prices, too, asked by the traders with the towns of Syria or the Black Sea, were but a fraction of those charged when these goods arrived in London. It was true that occasionally some of his cargoes were lost on the homeward voyage, ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... Operations. On September 4, 1914, an attempt was made by the Germans to wreck the British gunboat Dwarf, which with the cruiser Cumberland was watching German ships in the Cameroon estuary. The German merchantman Nachtigal tried later to ram the same gunboat and wrecked herself with a loss of 36 men. Further attempts to destroy the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... since this little story was set afloat on the sea of books. It is not a man-of-war, nor even a high-sided merchantman; only a small, peaceful sailing-vessel. Yet it has had rather an adventurous voyage. Twice it has fallen into the hands of pirates. The tides have carried it to far countries. It has been passed through the translator's port of entry into German, French, Armenian, Turkish, and perhaps ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... the home.[21] The most numerous and the most beautiful are those where, towards the end of life, dedications are made with thanksgiving for the past and prayer for what remains. The Mediterranean merchantman retires to his native town and offers prayer to the protector of the city to grant him a quiet age there, or dedicates his ship, to dance no more "like a feather on the sea," now that its master has set his weary feet on land.[22] The fisherman, ceasing ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly clapped the door in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened, Excellency; no, not I. Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without a ducat in my pocket, or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board of a Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected: but luckily we were attacked by a pirate; half the crew were butchered, the rest captured. I was one of the last,—always in luck, you see, signor, monks' sons have a knack that way! The captain of the pirate took a fancy to me. 'Serve with us,' said ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of errand. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutral ownership bound from neutral port to neutral port, have been destroyed along with vessels of belligerent ownership in constantly increasing numbers. Sometimes the merchantman attacked has been warned and summoned to surrender before being fired on or torpedoed; sometimes passengers or crews have been vouchsafed the poor security of being allowed to take to the ship's boats before she was sent to the bottom. But again and again ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... ships, the great ships, the fisherman's sloop, the king's corvette, and the merchantman, all lay anchored in the basin and harbor, their prows boring into the gale, their crude hulls rising and falling, tossing and plunging, tugging like living things at their hempen cables. The snow fell upon them, changing ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... hundred different emotions, it is like a beam of light passed through some broken surface where it is all refracted and shivered into fragments; there is no clear vision, there is no perfect light. If a man is to be blessed, he must have one source to which he can go. The merchantman that seeks for many goodly pearls, may find the many; but until he has bartered them all for the one, there is something lacking. Not only does the understanding require to pass through the manifold, up ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... nightfall by a trading vessel, were taken on board, and landed at Cartagena in Spain. Alfred never held up his head, and never once spoke to me of his own accord the whole time we were at sea in the merchantman. I observed, however, with alarm, that he talked often and incoherently to himself—constantly muttering the lines of the old prophecy—constantly referring to the fatal place that was empty in Wincot vault—constantly repeating in broken accents, which it affected ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... precise combinations which purge the brain of dogmatic phrases, which force revolutionary jargon into the background and keep a man sensible and practical; and all the more because three of them, Jean Bon, former captain of a merchantman, Prieur and Carnot, engineering officers, are professional men and go to the front to put their shoulders to the wheel on the spot. Jean Bon, always visiting the coasts, goes on board a vessel of the fleet leaving Brest ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and crossed to many foreign lands and islands, filling the whole sea and the whole earth with our name and power, nothing good has been our lot. In the first place we disputed in cliques at home and within our walls, and later we exported this plague to the camps. Therefore our city, like a great merchantman full of a crowd of every race borne without a pilot these many years through rough water, rolls and shoots hither and thither because it is without ballast. Do not, then, allow her to be longer exposed to the tempest; for you see that she is waterlogged. And do not let her ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... owing to the perils and hazards of the mine-strewn waters of both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Just when submarine activities ended we do not know but the last vessel of this type sighted by a Pan-American merchantman was the huge Q 138, which discharged twenty-nine torpedoes at a Brazilian tank steamer off the Bermudas in the fall of 1972. A heavy sea and the excellent seamanship of the master of the Brazilian permitted ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... long inventories made. At last the Captain decided things had gone too far. He himself apparently remained to watch over the linen; but at five o'clock on the Sunday morning, Aunt Anna, Fleeming, and his mother were rowed in a pour of rain on board an English merchantman, to suffer "nine mortal hours of agonising suspense." With the end of that time peace was restored. On Tuesday morning officers with white flags appeared on the bastions; then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched in, two hundred men sleeping ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they were seen there was a general rush for telescopes on the part of all the officers on deck; and after a protracted scrutiny of them the general consensus of opinion was that they were a French privateer and a British merchantman which she had captured. Coming down toward us, end-on as they were, it was not easy at first to determine their rig, but both were large ships, one of them being of about six hundred tons, while the other appeared to be fully as big as ourselves. That their eyes were ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... them Culliford and Chivers. The fact is that piracy was looked upon then more leniently than we should now regard it. Plundering and ill-treating Asiatics was a venial offence, and many a seaman after a cruise with the pirates returned to his calling on board an honest merchantman, without being thought much the ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... terrific. Every window in the hotel was shattered, and some scores of labourers working near the Gatun Locks were killed instantly. Six hundred tons of dynamite, secreted in the hold of a German merchantman, had been exploded as the vessel passed through the locks, and ten thousand tons of Portland cement had sunk in the tangled iron wreck, to form a huge blockading mass of solid rock on the floor of ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... no Royal Navy in the modern sense of the term. When the King went to war his fleet was recruited from three different sources. The warship was a merchantman, on board of which a number of fighting-men, knights, men-at-arms, archers and billmen were embarked. These were more numerous than the crew of sailors which navigated the ship, for the largest vessels of the time were not of more ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... a ship belonging to the islands, one which had been prepared for this purpose; and left the port, accompanied by another Chinese merchantman, which was at Manila. In this ship Sinsay embarked with all the ship supplies, in order to take them to the port of Buliano, where Omoncon's large ship was stationed, and in which the voyage was to be made. This vessel, as we have said above, had put into port because ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... St. Lawrence, far beneath their feet, was still partially veiled in a thin blue mist, pierced here and there by the tall mast of a King's ship or merchantman lying unseen at anchor; or, as the fog rolled slowly off, a swift canoe might be seen shooting out into a streak of sunshine, with the first news of the morning from ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the grate, containing a few half-consumed embers; there was the compass, swinging between the stern-windows. A nice Brussels carpet was under my feet; and there were three doors on either side of the cabin, opening into the staterooms. The vessel appeared to have been a first-class merchantman, fitted to carry half a dozen passengers; and how such a vessel as this ever found its way into these northern seas was a mystery. I just glanced for a moment into these rooms, and saw there trunks and valises, ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... The career of the raider Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, a fast converted liner, was ended by the British ship Highflyer, a cruiser, near the Cape Verde Islands, on August 27, 1914, after the former had sunk the merchantman Hyades and had stopped the mail steamer Galician. The greater speed of the German vessel was of no advantage to her, for she had been caught in the act of coaling. What then transpired was not a fight, for in armament the two were quite unequal. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the glasses to Robert's eyes. The other ship, suddenly came near to them, and grew fourfold in size. Every detail of her stood out sharp and vivid in the moonlight, a stout craft with all sails set to catch the good wind, a fine merchantman by every token, nearing the end of a profitable voyage. Discipline was not to say somewhat relaxed, but at least kindly, the visible evidence of it an old sailor sitting with his back against the mast playing vigorously upon a violin, while ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... seems to have been more adventuresome than the other boys in Priscilla's family. He was master of a merchantman in Boston and commander of armed vessels which supplied marine posts with provisions. Like his sister, Elizabeth, he had thirteen children. He was once accused of witchcraft, when he was present at a trial, and was imprisoned fifteen weeks without being allowed ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... was accorded British vessels, whether Americans were on board them or not. About the same time the merchantman Eavestone was sunk by a submarine, which also shelled the crew as they took to the boats. The captain and three seamen—one an American—were killed by the gunfire. This action was debated as an "overt act," but apparently the Administration did not regard isolated fatalities ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... too, the pilot of the biggest merchantman, grasping the steering oar by its handle, which the Greeks call [Greek: oiax], and with one hand bringing it to the turning point, according to the rules of his art, by pressure about a centre, can turn the ship, although she ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... last into the English ports, having accomplished nothing, and having expended superfluously a considerable amount of money and trouble. Essex, with a few of the vessels, subsequently made a cruise towards the Azores, but, beyond the capture of a Spanish merchantman or two, gained no glory and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Cowling's harsh and dictatorial manner cut them to the quick. A clash between guardian and wards had resulted in the running away of the three youths, and the guardian had tried in vain to bring them back. Larry had drifted to San Francisco and shipped on a merchantman bound for China. He had become a castaway and been picked up by the Asiatic Squadron of the United States Navy. This was just at the time of the outbreak of the war with Spain, and how gallantly ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... thought that they must all be foreigners—French, or Italians, he could scarcely tell which. It did not seem to him that these belonged to the class of seamen which a careful captain of a British merchantman would wish to ship when carrying a cargo of treasure to a distant land, but then all sorts of crews were picked up in English ports. Her Captain, in fact, surprised Shirley more than did the seamen he had noticed. This Captain must, of course, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... evening, September twenty-sixth; but my heart leaped within me to see her English colors. I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English merchantman returning from Japan by the North and South Seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddle, of Deptford, a very civil man and an excellent sailor. We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south. There were about fifty men in the ship; ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... poor to own a name! But he was cook's boy on board a merchantman, and they called him 'Galley Vick.' I never knew him by any other name. Did you ever ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... long "spell" of fine weather, without any incident to break the monotony of our lives, there can be no better place to describe the duties, regulations, and customs of an American merchantman, of which ours was a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... possesses; even what he bought and paid for but yesterday; even what everybody else would call absolutely the poor man's own, he throws it all back again upon God every day, and thus holds all he has as his instant purchase of the great Merchantman. The poor man's market is as far as possible from being a Vanity Fair, but the catalogues and the sale-lists of that fair may be taken as a specimen of the things that change hands continually in the poor man's market also. For here also are sold such merchandise as houses, lands, trades, ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... my accent. I am not a Frenchman, although I write 'monsieur' before my name. Still less am I either a German or an Italian. Neither am I a genuine Russian, although I look to Russia as my native country. In brief, my father was a Russian, my mother was a Frenchwoman, and I was born on board a merchantman during a gale of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... of the year the Chamber of Commerce examines the boys, and an exhibition drill is given. The graduates are usually fitted to ship in a merchantman as "ordinary," and are aided in their efforts to find a good ship and a good captain by many of New York's most prominent merchants and ship-owners, who take a deep interest in the school. The instruction on board the St. Mary's is so thorough that graduates ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... camouflage section of the naval service, with an eminent artist as its director, was formed, and all kinds of grotesque designs were painted on the broadsides and superstructures of almost every British merchantman operating in the submarine ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... about sunset. The merchantman, having passed the protecting promontory, and swept around the tall ship of war, had gained an offing, about a half mile beyond, under the lee of a thickly-wooded, long, narrow island; and was now lying ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... indeed, departed without taking leave; and, having broke open his mother's escritore, and carried off with him all the valuable effects he there found, to the amount of about fifty pounds, he marched off to sea, and went on board a merchantman, whence he was afterwards pressed into a man ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... circumscribed its activity. In the face of apparent danger, it has continued to flourish, and there has been hardly more risk to a pirate with a living cargo from Gaboon, than would be encountered by an ordinary merchantman from pirates in the Gulf. Indeed, there were many who believed and feared, prior to the breaking out of the present rebellion, that the next compromise between the North and South would be the repeal of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... surprised at a lad of spirit like you thinking of such a thing. If you have learned a lot you will, if you are steady, be sure to get on in time, and may very well become a petty officer. No lad of spirit would take to the life of a merchantman who could enter the navy. I don't say that some of the Indiamen are not fine ships, but you would find it very hard to get a berth on one of them. Our lieutenant will be over here in a day or two, and I have ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... Peruvian captain held to his flight as his only hope of salvation, until at last a shot, better directed than the random firing so long kept up, struck the doomed merchantman fairly amidship. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... an hour, holding his sinking head and moistening his mouth with wine, the dews of death on his forehead, and his poor emaciated frame heaving like one great pulse at each breath. For four days that he has been there (brought in a dying state from the Merchantman) I have been with him, and yesterday I administered to him the Holy Communion. He had spoken earnestly of his real desire to testify the sincerity of his repentance and faith and love. I have been there daily for nine days, but I ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sainte Spirite had not come whole out of her struggle with the powers of the abyss. Timbers were sadly strained, a mast was gone, every man on board was weary and muscle-sore. And then a Levantine gale drove the crippled merchantman down on the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... with, it may be objected that men trained in Royal Navy discipline and habits never mix well with men trained in the other service; their customs and habits of life and work are quite different to those of the merchant seaman. It used to be a recognised belief that the sailor of the merchantman could adapt himself with striking facility to the work of the Royal Navy and its discipline, but the Navy trained man was never successful aboard a cargo vessel. The former impression originated, no doubt, during the good old ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... and his two children, he went first from Rye to Boulogne, and there, on the 15th of August, 1818, embarked in the Rose, a merchantman which had formerly been a warsloop. The long voyage was uninteresting until Cape Horn was reached. There, and in passing along the rugged coast-line of Tierra del Fuego, Lord Cochrane was struck by its wild scenery. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... conflict between affection and duty was at length decided in favour of my father, and the rejected lover set out in despair for Bristol. From thence, in a few days after his arrival, he took his passage in a merchantman for a distant part of the globe; and from that hour no intelligence ever arrived of his fate or fortune. I have often heard my mother speak of this gentleman with ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... fight between submarines and merchant vessels. There the submarine unquestionably has gained and maintained supremacy. Two factors are primarily responsible for this: lack of speed and lack of armament on the part of the merchantman. Of course, recently the latter condition has been changed and apparently with good success. But even at best, an armed merchantman has a rather slim chance at escape. Neither space nor available equipment permits a general arming of merchantmen ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... repressed—in the history of the past and the Utopian speculation on the future; in noble theology, capable statesmanship, and science at once brilliant and profound; in the voyage of discovery, and the change of the swan-like merchantman into a very fire-drake of war for the defence of the threatened shores; in the first brave speech of the Puritan in Elizabeth's Parliament, the first murmurs of the voice of liberty, soon to thunder throughout the land; in the naturalizing ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... bark ran alongside, and grappling-irons were tossed aboard the ill-fated merchantman. The Pirate Captain, standing in the stern of his vessel, surveyed them with ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... during the last war between England and America, he had, with several others, been "impressed" upon the high seas, out of a New England merchantman. The ship that impressed him was an English frigate, the Macedonian, afterward taken by the Neversink, the ship in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the Royal Navy. But this is a merchantman; you don't think he will presume to break into the monopoly of the superior branch. He will only swear by the wind and weather. Thunder and squalls! Donner and blitzen! Handspikes and halyards! these are the innocent execrations of the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... on board, transfer the officers and crew to a drogher bound into the harbor, and then scuttle the vessel. On the day following, a ship would be seen on fire off Montserrat or St. Kitts, which would prove to have been an English merchantman captured and destroyed by the Superior; and perhaps, a few days afterwards, this privateer would be pursuing a similar career on the shores of Barbadoes, far to windward, or levying contributions from the planters on the coasts of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Mistress Windham's memory the more sad. A good reliable rose red was always wanting. Madder could be purchased, for it was raised in the Southern colonies, but the madder was a brown red. Finally some enterprising merchantman introduced cochineal, and the vacuum was filled. With a judicious addition of logwood, rose red, wine red ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... character of a triumphal progress. Meanwhile, L'Ambuscade, the French frigate which had brought Genet to Charleston, was proceeding to Philadelphia, taking prizes on her way and sending them to American ports. In Delaware Bay she captured the Grange, an English merchantman lying there at anchor, and took this vessel with her to Philadelphia as a prize. As Genet neared Philadelphia on May 16, L'Ambuscade gave notice by firing three guns, at which signal a procession was formed to meet Genet at Gray's ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... that time was a very exciting one. The Spanish merchantman was dashing in shore at the top of his speed. And a mile or two beyond it was the Uncas tearing up the water, plunging along at her fastest pace and banging away half a dozen times a minute with her ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... smoothly on until the pirate craft was well in range, when ports flew open along the stranger's sides, guns were run out, and a heavy broadside splintered through the planks of the robber galley. It was a man-of-war, not a merchantman, that had run Blackbeard down. The war-ship closed and grappled with the corsair, but while the sailors were standing at the chains ready to leap aboard and complete the subjugation of the outlaws a mass of flame burst from the pirate ship, both vessels ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... as to the writer's own knowledge of the career of the subject of his present work. In the year 1806, the editor, then a lad, fresh from Yale, and destined for the navy, made his first voyage in a merchantman, with a view to get some practical knowledge of his profession. This was the fashion of the day, though its utility, on the whole, may very well be questioned. The voyage was a long one, including some six or eight passages, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... now, in the security of their hiding places, the Germans were meditating a bold stroke. Submarines were being coaled and victualed in preparation for a dash across the Atlantic. Already, one enemy submarine—a merchantman—had passed the allied ships blocking the English channel and had crossed to America and returned. Some months later, a U-Boat of the war type had followed suit. A cordon of ally ships had been thrown around ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... could they, in any way, detract from her own native grace and loveliness? Were her eyes less bright, or was her conversation less cheery, or were her attitudes less picturesque and pleasing, because old Captain Barkstead, instead of still sailing a fleet merchantman, now mopingly cleaned his reflectors, and, when strangers came, hid himself in the lantern? Moreover, had she not brought with her from her former home, wherever that might be, a wit, and intellect, and intelligence which ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... protection of their commerce. In this year an eighteen-gun ship from Cambridge, Mass., fell in with a Barbary pirate of twenty guns, and was hard put to it to escape. And, as the seventeenth century drew near its close, these pests of the sea so increased, that evil was sure to befall the peaceful merchantman that put to sea without due preparation for a fight or two ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... clothes to which he might have a better right than to the uniform of the senior midshipman of H.M.S. Calypso—a garb in which he did not like to appear before the French Consul. Mr. Thompson consulted his Greek clerk, and a chest belonging to a captured merchantman, which had been claimed as British property, but had not found an owner, was opened, and proved to contain a wardrobe sufficient to equip Arthur like other gentlemen of the day, in a dark crimson coat, with a little ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pull down the black flag and turn myself into an honest merchantman, with children in the hold and a wife at the helm. You would remind me that grey hairs begin to show, that health falls into rags, that high spirits split like canvas, and that in the end the bright buccaneer drifts, an old ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... me as he recovered from his wounds, That he had come aboard a merchantman, Had reached the island on the very day The castle was destroyed,—took refuge there And fought the robber band with all his might Until he fell, faint with the loss of blood, Into the rocky cleft wherein I found him. And ever since we two have lived together; He built ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... colours, she made all sail in an attempt to escape. Various opinions were offered as to her character. Some thought she was a Spanish galleon, though how she should have come thus far north was a question not easily answered. Others believed she was a large French merchantman, and some pronounced her to be a privateer. She was a fast craft, at all events, for as soon as she felt the breeze she slipped through the water at a rate which made it doubtful whether the "Venus" would come up with her. This made the English still more ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... left the shop, he felt all that he had to do to follow his destiny was to go to sea. Now the star has led him up to a blank wall. The only promotion he can obtain on these merchantmen is to a captainship; and the captaincy on a small merchantman will mean pretty much a monotonous flying back and forward like a shuttle between the ports of Europe ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... dun-colored merchantman came slowly to its berth and the anchor fell with a rattle and a splash, the motley crowd cheered shrilly. When the ruddy gold-bearded trader appeared at the side, ready to clamber into the boat his men were lowering, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge. At ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... and soldiers aboard, and was ready to sail at the time appointed. She embarked, and when the squadron was at sea, told the commander her intention. "Make all the sail you can," said she, "and chase the merchantman that sailed last night out of this port. If you capture it, I assign it to you as your property; but if you fail, your life ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... never have it out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if it had been a child—as indeed it was the nearest thing to a child she was to know. Yves de Cornault was much pleased with his purchase. The dog had been brought to him by a sailor from an East India merchantman, and the sailor had bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at Jaffa, who had stolen it from a nobleman's wife in China: a perfectly permissible thing to do, since the pilgrim was a Christian and the nobleman ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... good luck suddenly deserted him; for no sooner was he berthed, with sails stowed and anchors out, than he discovered that the French merchantman next him was none other than a vessel which on his last voyage out he had attempted to board in mid-channel, and, but for a sudden squall, would have captured and plundered. The captain of the merchantman had already reported his wrongs ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... went to Blackwall, and viewed the Dock and the new west Dock which is newly made there, and a brave new merchantman which is to launched shortly, and they say to be called the Royal Oake. Hence we walked to Dick Shoare, and thence to the Towre, and so home."—Vol. i. p. 178. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... Between the savage and the gentleman is but a good night's lodging. Give the savage a peaceful hearth to sit by, a roof to his head, and a copious well-cooked supper, and his savagery will surrender itself to the sleek content of a Dutch merchantman. We sat at a table whose load would have rationed a company of twice our number, and I could see the hard look of hunting relax in the aspect of us all: the peering, restless, sunken eyes came out of their ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... estimated by thousands if not tens of thousands. Their usual average of children has been half a score, and from their numerous progeny and great longevity, we may judge what vigor was in the race. One of them, William, son of Nathaniel, son of James, cruised over many seas, as commander of a merchantman, and becoming interested in a Boston maiden, Ann Holmes, settled about 1720 in the provincial capital, where among other offices he filled with credit to himself and his name was that for many ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice, and humanity, which all modern opinion regards as imperative. It is practically impossible for the officers of a submarine to visit a merchantman at sea and examine her papers and cargo. It is practically impossible for them to make a prize of her; and, if they cannot put a prize crew on board of her, they cannot sink her without leaving her crew and all on board of her to the mercy of the sea ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... "Three masts! A merchantman? No, I'm blest if I don't think she's a man-of-war. So she is, a frigate and a firm 'un—forty or fifty guns, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... and towing their cousin like two fussy little tugs with a fine merchantman, the children returned to the parlour, where Emil kissed all the women and shook hands with all the men except his uncle; him he embraced in the good old German style, to the great delight ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Already some of those who especially feared intervention had been suffering from an attack of panic as a result of Wilson's recent decision to support the preparedness movement. They were further terrified by the possibility that some American citizen traveling on an armed merchantman might lose his life and that the demand for entrance into the war might thus become irresistible. Bryanites, pro-German propagandists, and Irish combined against the President, and were reinforced by all the discontented elements who hoped ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... God provides for us is personal. There is always the personal touch and presence. Do you remember that during the earlier days of the recent war with Spain this occurrence frequently took place? In the Caribbean waters a Spanish merchantman would be overtaken by an American warship. A few shots were sent over the bows of the merchantman with a demand for surrender. And then the Spanish flag was seen to drop from the merchantman's masthead in ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... thought the sailor. "She is following him as a pirate follows a merchantman. Then, when she has lost sight of him, she will be in despair at not knowing who it is she is in love with, and whether he is a marquis or a shopkeeper. Really these young heads need an old fogy like ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... a ramshackle building reminiscent of the days when the street bristled with bowsprits of ships from all over the world, an age when the American merchantman flew our flag on the uttermost of the seven-seas. On the ground floor was an apparently innocent junk dealer's shop, in reality the meeting-place of the junta. By an outside stairway the lofts above ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... brand of wine, iced beyond recognition for any normal palate, was always served to Aholibah. She loved "needles on her tongue," she asseverated if any one offered her weaker stuff. That July night she looked like a piratical craft that had captured a sleek merchantman for prize. She was all smoothness; Ambroise alone detected the retracted claws of the leopardess. She blazed in the electric illumination, and her large hat, with its swelling plumes, threw her dusky features into shadow—her eyes ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... for any meddlesome custom-house officers to come aboard and ask questions. Accordingly, he decided to stop at Valparaiso. He thought it likely that if he did not meet a vessel going into port which would lay to and take his letter, he might find some merchantman, anchored in the roadstead, to which he could send a boat, and on which he was sure to find some one who ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and having closed the door, and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... tantalized us by anchoring outside, but so close in and under their batteries that it was impossible to get at them in that position. We, one morning at daybreak, captured a row-boat with twenty-two men, armed with swivels and muskets. We had disguised the ship so much that she took us for a merchantman, and before she discovered her mistake was within pistol-shot. Three months had now expired, which had been passed much in the same manner as the last cruise, when a cutter came out to order us ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... four eagles and four greyhounds standing up at the top to bear up a dish; which indeed is one of the neatest pieces of plate that ever I saw, and the case is very pretty also. [A salt-sellar answering this description is preserved at the Tower.] This evening come a merchantman in the harbour, which we hired at London to carry horses to Portugall; but Lord! what running, here was to the seaside to hear what news, thinking it had come from ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... even to this day accounts reach us, through the Press, of piratical enterprises; but never again will the black, rakish-looking craft of the pirate, with the Jolly Roger flying, be liable to pounce down upon the unsuspecting and harmless merchantman. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... had Franklin been caught in this little rebel craft, which had actually been captured from English owners and condemned as prize by rebel tribunals, and which now added the aggravating circumstance that she carried an armament sufficient to destroy a merchantman but not to encounter a frigate, he would have had before him at best a long imprisonment, at worst a trial for high treason and a halter. Horace Walpole gave the news that "Dr. Franklin, at the age of seventy-two or seventy-four, and at the risk of his head, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... rudder that had been unshipped. The storm abating, he made for the first port, to repair the ship's damages, intending to return to Jamaica, to deliver her up to her captain; but, from a vessel they spoke at sea, he learned that Jemmison was gone to England in a merchantman. To England ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Germans say that merchant-ships ought not to carry weapons for defense; it is too dangerous for the dainty U-boat; every merchantman thus armed must be treated as a vessel of war. But the law of nations for more than two centuries has sanctioned the carrying of defensive armament by merchant-ships, and precisely because they might need it to ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... boyhood up he had been passionately fond of the sea; small wonder, then, that he now determined to take a long sea voyage. Refusing a berth offered him on a vessel bound for the East Indies, he chose to go as common sailor before the mast, on a merchantman starting on a two-years' trading voyage around Cape Horn to California. At that time boys of good family from the New England coast towns often took such trips. Dana indeed found a companion in a former merchant's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... in haste to say that I am safe—and well advanced on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchantman now on its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not see my native land, perhaps, for many years. I am, however, in good spirits: my men are bold and apparently firm of purpose, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... for'ard. Now came the advantage of our strong crew; for although we were working with the port watch only, we had the whole of those studding sails set in less than half an hour; whereas, had we been manned after the rate of an ordinary merchantman of our tonnage, the job would have kept us busy during the entire watch. As soon as we were through with this work Mr Kennedy instructed me to ship and set the patent log, which I did, taking the exact time when it started, and noting what it registered fifteen minutes ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... our eyes gladdened by the sight of a boat which was put off from the ship. In this we soon embarked, and, with a sensation of wild delight, found ourselves once more treading the deck of a good vessel. She was an English merchantman, bound for Canton. We made a quick passage to that port, where we found a vessel just ready to sail for Liverpool. In this I embarked, with my father, who still remained in the same sad state of mental derangement. No incident, worthy of ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... take to tell, the Vulture, black sails spread, moved forward to head off the merchantman ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... or more properly (I believe) adopted son, of Captain Donneraile who commanded a large Dutch vessel of suspicious character, which had long resorted to these seas. She gave herself out for a regular merchantman, but was pretty well understood to be a smuggler as opportunities offered. Edward Nicholas, as I have said, passed for the Captain's son: and in that character, as well as for his personal qualities, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... business. So, what between hard-hearted people, thoughtless people, busy people, humble people, and cheerfully minded people,—giddiness of youth, and preoccupations of age,—philosophies of faith, and cruelties of folly,—priest and Levite, masquer and merchantman, all agreeing to keep their own side of the way,—the evil that God sends to warn us gets to be forgotten, and the evil that He sends to be mended by us gets left unmended. And then, because people shut their eyes to the dark indisputableness ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Pedro the First was taken sick. There was a fight, early one morning when the air was very damp, between the 'Angel' and a rich merchantman. The pirate captain got rather over-heated, during his usual duel with the captain of the merchantman, and then he foolishly sat down in a draft while he ate his breakfast. He had a bad attack of ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... the schooner had by this time found out his mistake and immediately came on board, where, instead of being lauded for his gallantry, I am sorry to say he was roundly rated for his want of discernment in mistaking his Majesty's cruiser for a Yankee merchantman. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... mercilessly destroyed the native villages and swept the inhabitants into captivity. Or else, impelling with the force of fifty men their snaky craft, which were swift as race-boats and noiseless as beasts of prey, they would surprise at dead of night some defenceless merchantman, overwhelm their victims with showers of spears, and with morning light a plundered boat, a few dead bodies, were the silent witnesses of their ferocity. On the other hand, the Illanum and Balanini tribes, infesting the islands to the northeast of Borneo, undertook far grander ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various |
