"Unseaworthy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Goward. He was well known at Liverpool as a very clever and a very dangerous man. Quite young at the time I am speaking of, and a first-rate sailor; famous for taking command of unseaworthy ships and vagabond crews. Report described him to me as having made considerable sums of money in that way, for a man in his position; serving firms, you know, with a bad name, and running all sorts of desperate risks. A sad ruffian, Richard! More than ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... Lady Nelson had preceded him in the February before. Arriving in Sydney in May, he sailed again a couple of months later to the northward, surveying the Great Barrier Reef, Torres Straits, the Gulf of Carpentaria, and the coast of Arnhem's Land. By this time the ship was too unseaworthy to prosecute further work, so Flinders sailed round the entire continent by way of the Leeuwin, and finally arrived in Sydney ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... The unseaworthy condition of the Reliance had an important bearing on the share Flinders took in Australian discovery, for it was unquestionably in consequence of his being engaged upon her repair that he was prevented from accompanying ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... smaller boat, and had been decoyed by Betty to the bows of the Starlight, and shown how to stow herself away so that she hindered neither jib nor boom, she began to enjoy herself highly. Aunt Barbara sat under her every-day parasol, looking quite elegant and unseaworthy, but very happy. Harry Foster was steering just beside her, and Mr. Leicester, with Seth's assistance, was shaking out the reef; for the wind was quieter just now, and they wished to get farther down river as soon ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... season was late, the weather was extraordinarily stormy. Sixty-one days the passage lasted, the tubby old fur ships lying water-logged, rolling to the angry sea. MacDonell was furious that colonists had been risked on such unseaworthy craft, but those old fur-ship captains, with fifty years ice battling to their credit, probably knew their business better than MacDonell. The fur ships had not been built for speed and comfort, but for cargoes and safety, and when storms came they ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the dog, thus marooned, struck pretty frantically for the high ground. Lost dogs—and lost children, for that matter— always make up hill, dark or daylight. I suppose it's the primitive instinct to search for a view. . . . But anyway, here's a boat. She's unseaworthy, as she lies: but her timbers look sound enough if we can staunch her, and the first thing is to get her down to the water and see how fast she fills. We've a baler, to cope with the leak . . . and when we have her more or less staunch, here's the way around to our camp. Hurry up ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sea as long as he, I would know that the most ungrateful rascals in the world were sailors; that every crew he had sailed with had always taken care to invent some grievance to growl over: either the provisions were bad, or the work too heavy, or the ship unseaworthy; and that long ago he had made up his mind never to pay attention to their complaints, since no sooner would one wrong be redressed than another would be coined ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... from Delfshaven, in Holland, in July, and after coming to Southampton, started their voyage in the Mayflower and Speedwell. The Speedwell, however, proved unseaworthy, and both ships were obliged to put into Dartmouth, where the Speedwell underwent repairs. When they started again, however, it became evident that the Speedwell would not be able to stand the long Atlantic voyage, so once more the Puritans ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... little with us; the schooner was taken in tow. In the afternoon we sank the Ayesha and were all very sad. The good old Ayesha had served us faithfully for six weeks. The log showed that we had made 1,709 sea miles under sail since leaving Keeling. She wasn't at all rotten and unseaworthy, as they had told me, but nice and white and dry inside. I had grown fond of the boat, on which I could practice my old sailing maneuvers. The only trouble was that the sails would go to pieces every now and then, because ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... upon his breath. He has tossed in his hand squadrons of war-scarred three-deckers, and shredded out in mere sport the bunting of flags hallowed in the traditions of honour and glory. He is a good friend and a dangerous enemy, without mercy to unseaworthy ships and faint- hearted seamen. In his kingly way he has taken but little account of lives sacrificed to his impulsive policy; he is a king with a double-edged sword bared in his right hand. The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... whose coat of arms was a Golden Hind. Not without interest do we follow the fortunes of this ship. When finally she was moored in her English port after her voyages, and was put out of commission as unseaworthy, and fell into decay, though guarded with care, John Davis, the English navigator, had a chair made out of her timbers, which he presented to the University of Oxford, still guarded sacredly in the ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... himself—because he has as yet no power of self-analysis and has no opportunities of comparing himself with others—he may have developed certain eccentricities. In most cases the plunge into school life will be taken well enough; in a few the little vessel will not right itself, and proves permanently unseaworthy. No doubt as a rule a private school will have preceded the public school, and this gradation should make the entrance to the public school a lesser ordeal. But it often happens that it is just in the case of the nervous child that this intermediate ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... peace, remembering how their ancestors in Holland had once fought successfully for freedom against the Spaniards and the French. But in front of the quiet farm at Wallabout, and anchored in the bay, were seen several vessels, decayed, unseaworthy, and repulsive. They were the prison-ships of New York. Here from the year 1776 a large number of American prisoners were confined until the close of the war, and the tragic tales of their sufferings and fate lend a melancholy interest to the ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... continued ever since. On reaching the island of Espanola[389-2] I despatched a packet of letters, by which I begged as a favor that a ship should be supplied me at my own cost in lieu of one of those that I had brought with me, which had become unseaworthy, and could no longer carry sail. The letters were taken, and your Highnesses will know if a reply has been given to them. For my part I was forbidden to go on shore;[390-1] the hearts of my people failed them lest I should ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... Napoleon's death, he was sent to escort the body of Queen Caroline to Cuxhaven. He was then told off for revenue duty in the Channel, and had some smart cruising for smugglers until the Rosario was pronounced unseaworthy and paid off on the 22nd of February 1822. As a result of this experience he wrote a long despatch to the Admiralty, in which he freely criticised the working of the preventive service, and made some ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... insurance. These are the so-called "coffin-ships," not unknown in Germany, either. The steamer "Braunschweig," for instance, that sank in 1881 near Helgoland, and belonged to the firm Rocholl & Co., of Bremen, proved to have been put to sea in a wholly unseaworthy condition. The same fate befell, in 1889, the steamer "Leda" of the same firm; hardly out at sea, she went to the bottom. The boat was insured with the Russian Lloyd for 55,000 rubles; the prospect of 8,500 rubles were held out to the captain, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... he departs in the gondola, and the scene changes to the Piazzetta, where a variety of exciting events—including the Trial, a Musical Ballet, and a Call to Arms—take place, culminating in the embarkation of Venetian soldiers to recapture Chioggia, in three highly ornamental but slightly unseaworthy barges, as the Curtain falls ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... into foam by the beautiful craft. But close in the harbor I saw the ship lying; What seemed like the wings of a sea gull when flying, Were weather stained sheets; there were no masts of gold, And the craft was uncleanly, unseaworthy, old. Well, the man whom I loved, and loved vainly, and whom I fancied had shadowed my whole life with gloom, Has been shown to my sight like that ship in the Bay, And all my illusions have vanished away. The man is by nature weak, selfish, unstable. I think if some woman more loving than ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Capt. Brereton, of the Falmouth, forcibly impressing the East India ship Revenge for the purpose of transporting to Fort St. George, in British India, the company, numbering some four hundred and twenty-one souls, of the Siam, then recently condemned at Manilla as unseaworthy.—Admiralty Records 1. 1498—Letters ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... ch. xxiii.): "Some unrecorded event, probably the sight of the unseaworthy craft, which had not an ounce of iron in their composition, made our travellers decide that the risks of the sea were too great, so that we have the pleasure of accompanying them back to Kerman and thence northwards to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and paddled slowly; and the lads had a strong suspicion that the Malays had purposely made it more clumsy and unseaworthy than need be, in order that they should have no temptation to attempt ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... successive supply had been lost, and now what we had bought with so much trouble yesterday, the sellers compelled us to sacrifice to-day. But our first care was to ballast the sloop, for without it she was so crank as to be unseaworthy. This was not an easy task; the shore of all the keys, as well as that of the mainland in sight, was low and swampy, and covered to the water's edge with a dense growth of mangroves. What made matters worse, we ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... on Oct. 15 in an unseaworthy condition. The commanding officer reported the necessity of extensive repairs which would require an indefinite period for completion. The vessel was allowed the generous period of three weeks, to Nov. 7, to make repairs and leave the port, or, failing to do so, to be interned. A longer period would ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... go there. Again we hoisted sail and in our ships, now all unseaworthy, crept again in a bad wind along the coast of gold,—Costa Rico. At last we saw many smokes from the land. That would be a large Indian village. We beat toward it, found a river mouth and entered. But Veragua must have heard of us from a swift ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... which we had luckily thought to send him. He gave the latitude and longitude of Deephaven at the beginning of his letter, and signed himself, "Respectfully yours with esteem, Jacob Lant (condemned as unseaworthy)." ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... was to know about a ship, and read all his books, he burned for change of any sort. The change, when it came, was near to making an end of him: the ship caught fire, and they were a day and a night conquering the flames and preparing their philosophy to meet death; for the boats were unseaworthy. Alexander had all the excitement he wanted, for he fought the fire as hard as he had fought the hurricane, and he was delighted when the Captain gave him permission to turn in. This was his ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... have been three such instances. The first was in 1827. Some men got an old ship—the Michigan—which had been used on lake Erie, and had been pronounced unseaworthy. For mere wantonness they put aboard a bear, a fox, a buffalo, a dog and some geese and sent it over the cataract. The bear jumped from the vessel before it reached the rapids, swam toward the shore, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Bernick's clerk, knocks at the door of his master's office and says, "It is blowing up to a stiff gale. Is the Indian Girl to sail in spite of it?" Whereupon Bernick, though he knows that the Indian Girl is hopelessly unseaworthy, replies, "The Indian Girl is to sail in spite of it." It had occurred to someone that the effect of this incident would be heightened if Krap, before knocking at the Consul's door, were to consult the barometer, and show by his ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Spanker, in 1794. This was a scow of very angular form with overhanging gun-deck, bomb-ketch-rigged, and about 120 feet overall 42-foot 4 inches moulded beam and 8-foot depth of hold. She is said to have been a failure due to her unseaworthy proportions and form; the overhanging gun deck and sides were objected to in particular. She is called a "Stationary Battery" in her plans, which are in the Admiralty Collection of Draughts, National ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... played them false, and sailed without them; whereupon they took passage on board a wretched boat called the Liverpool Hero, on which they endured extreme discomfort. One of Stanhope's greatest wishes had been to set foot on the coast of Africa, but owing to the unseaworthy nature of the vessel on which they found themselves, combined with the extreme roughness of the weather, they were driven from the coast, and only after a most dangerous passage did they eventually arrive at Gibraltar. As they entered ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... the entire group of islands, for the purpose of a preliminary survey of the coast country, to enable me to determine which portion should receive the greatest share of my attention. The canoe which I had used on the comparatively smooth waters of the inlet was old, badly shattered and unseaworthy. I, therefore decided to purchase a new one, and began to canvass through the village, examining those which appeared most suitable for the service required. Though I did this at first without seeing ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... all this care, I think I may say there is not a shaft without flaws or defects, more or less, and when these flaws are situated in line of the greatest strains, and though you may not have a hot bearing, they often extend until the shaft becomes unseaworthy. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... behind. A little boat tied to a stump, suggested to Flora a new whim. Instead of going round the pond, which I now began to like doing, I must weary myself with rowing her across. I was ready enough to do it, however, had not Miss Etty quietly observed that the pond was muddy, and the boat unseaworthy. Flora would not have yielded to twenty feet of water,—but mud! She sighed, and resumed my arm. I, offering the other to Miss Etty in so determined a way, that she could not waive accepting it, marched forward with spirits rising into high glee and loquacity. ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... was proposed by the government to take to pieces the unseaworthy hulk of the famous old man-of-war, Constitution. Holmes's indignant protest—which has been a favorite subject for school-boy declamation—had the effect of postponing the vessel's fate for a great many years. From 1830-35 the young ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... a century. They broke out in open mutiny, but were finally mastered by Phips, and compelled to obey his orders. It would have been dangerous to continue much longer at sea with such a crew of mutinous sailors; and the ship was unseaworthy. So Phips judged it best to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... also call me, and try to make the crown prince believe that I have outlived my period, and do not understand or esteem the modern time. In their eyes I am a dismantled ship of state, which the storms of life have rendered unseaworthy. They would refit the vessel, and give it a new flag, sending Old Fritz, the helmsman, to the devil! The day of my death they will hoist this flag, with 'Modern Time' inscribed upon it in large letters. I shall then be united in Elysium with Voltaire, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... towards Louisburg, before she got leave to go upon her own proper voyage. It is entertaining to hear that this same lord, during his stay in America, detained other packets for other letters, until their bottoms got so foul and worm-eaten that they were unseaworthy. He was irreverently likened by those who waited on his pleasure to "St. George on the signs, always on horseback, and never rides on." He was at last removed by Mr. Pitt, because that energetic minister said ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Ships and lives have been lost in threading what were supposed to be well-known main channels. We have not provided adequate vessels or adequate machinery for the survey and charting. We have used old vessels that were not big enough or strong enough and which were so nearly unseaworthy that our inspectors would not have allowed private owners to send them to sea. This is a matter which, as I have said, seems small, but is in reality very great. Its importance has only to be looked ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... reminiscences. Rats were a favourite topic with him, and he would never allow one to be killed if he could help it, for he claimed for them that they were the souls of drowned sailors, hence their love of ships and their habit of leaving them when they became unseaworthy. He was a firm believer in the transmigration of souls, some idea of which he had, no doubt, picked up in Eastern ports, and gave his shivering auditors to understand that his arrangements for his own ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... punishment, she was collecting her children and grandchildren, to the number of twenty-two, in a neighboring marsh, preparatory to another attempt that night. They found a flat-boat which had been rejected as unseaworthy, got on board,—still under the old woman's orders,—and drifted forty miles down the river to our lines. Trowbridge happened to be on board the gunboat which picked them up, and he said that when the "flat" touched the side of the vessel, the grandmother rose to her ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... hail the stranger, and, had he not cut away his own mast, she would have gone away, fearful that he was an enemy. Three cheers for the brave and thoughtful Captain Walker! He reached England, at last, but he and his men were in a sorry plight, for the vessel which had rescued them was almost as unseaworthy as their own, which sank in a great whirl of eddying foam, not half an hour after they had left her. Thus ended the career of the good ship which had chased all of the pirates away from the harbor of Charleston. A sad fate, indeed, for such a ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... said he, "you would have seen the boat swamped with office-seekers. Illinois alone would have brought you to a watery grave." He was in high spirits, bent upon enjoying his holiday, and as they passed the arsenal with its solitary sentry, and the navy-yard, with its one unseaworthy wooden war-steamer, he pointed out these evidences of national grandeur to Lord Skye, threatening, as the last terror of diplomacy, to send him home in an American frigate. They were thus indulging in senatorial humour on one side of the boat, while Sybil and Victoria, with the aid of Mr. Gore ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams |
