"Bay of Biscay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... induced to risk their money upon such representations?* Oh, the dreariness, the loneliness, of that first night at anchor in the Bay of Biscay! The misgivings that filled my heart! Who was right? What should I find over there? Surely these statesmen, capitalists, journalists, legislators, should know what ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... billow, Our opening timbers creak, Each fears a watery pillow. ... To cling to slippery shrouds Each breathless seaman crowds, As she lay Till the day In the Bay of Biscay ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... thence to the Azores, and so on to Ireland; off the south of which, between Waterford and Cape Clear, she remained for four days. After this she passed round the west coast, and to the northward as far as Shetland and the Faroe Islands. She then retraced her course, crossed the Bay of Biscay, and ran along the Portuguese coast; pursuing in general outline the same path as that in which the "Wasp" very soon afterwards followed. Fourteen prizes were taken; of which twelve were destroyed, and two utilized as cartels ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... in the afternoon passed the Needles. From this day to the fourteenth being in the Bay of Biscay, the sea was very rough. Mr. Delamotte and others were more sick than ever; Mr. Ingham a little; I not at all. But the fourteenth being a calm day, most of the sick were ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... on the Bay of Biscay in the Basses-Pyrenees, known for the manufacture of a liqueur of the same name. French Custom-house; station on the line between Bordeaux and Madrid. Good beach and bathing. Boats can be hired to cross the Bidassoa to Fuenterabia, at about 2 frs. for 3 persons; for information ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... Nelson was making her way rapidly along the French coast, and had already crossed the Bay of Biscay. The Nelson behaved herself admirably, and took to her new gear with excellent grace. All was going merrily as a marriage bell. They did not now run very much risk of cruisers, as Fritz had French papers perfectly en regle, and Captain Littlestone would have had little ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... crystals fallen from above, and wondered how the cove had got its name. Had some old Biscayan whaler, from Biarritz or St. Jean de Luz, wandered into these seas in search of fish, when, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, he and his fellows had killed out all the Right Whales of the Bay of Biscay? And had he, missing the Bocas, been wrecked and perished, as he may well have done, against those awful walls? At last we turned to re-ascend—for the tide was rising—after our leader had congratulated us on being, perhaps, the only white men ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... later. Kate argued (I dare say) rightly, as she always did. Her prudence whispered eternally, that safety there was none for her, until she had laid the Atlantic between herself and St. Sebastian's. Life was to be for her a Bay of Biscay; and it was odds but she had first embarked upon this billowy life from the literal Bay of Biscay. Chance ordered otherwise. Or, as a Frenchman says with eloquent ingenuity, in connection with this ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of the destroyer fleet chasing German submarines in the Bay of Biscay. They were ordered to meet the destroyer at a certain English port and would rejoin their old comrades and continue their training under Lieutenant ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... was now heard but confusion; the pilot having just left the ship, the hoarse voice of the captain resounded through a speaking trumpet, while the seamen were busy in making sail. We had a fine steady breeze till we made the Bay of Biscay, when we had a strong gale for ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... north latitude, when it begins to spread itself over the colder water of the ocean, washing the shores of Ireland; some going up towards Spitzbergen, surrounding the Shetland Isles, and other isles in the north; more rushing up the British Channel; and another quantity flowing into the Bay of Biscay, and away again towards the south—adding warmth to the whole of the indented shores of Europe, and at the same time supplying the deficiency of salt to the waters flowing out of the Baltic ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... seventh, we again started, and made for the Bay of Biscay. The sea was high and the wind strong and contrary; nevertheless, on the morning of the fourth day, we were in sight of the rocky coast to the north of Cape Finisterre. I must here observe, that this was the first voyage that the captain who commanded the vessel had ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... their destination, a dreary island beaten by the raging waves of the Bay of Biscay. The prisoners were confined in the castle; each had a single chamber, at the door of which a guard was placed; and each was allowed the ration of a single soldier. They were not allowed to communicate either with the garrison or with the population of the island; and soon after their arrival ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it began to blow a gale (favourable, indeed, but more furious than the captain had ever known in these seas),—about lat. 34 degrees S. and long. 25 degrees. For three days we ran under close-reefed (four reefs) topsails, before a sea. The gale in the Bay of Biscay was a little shaking up in a puddle (a dirty one) compared to that glorious South Atlantic in all its majestic fury. The intense blue waves, crowned with fantastic crests of bright emeralds and with the spray blowing about like wild dishevelled hair, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... and there is no animal of its size which conveys a higher idea of intelligence and dignity, than the so-called Newfoundland dog. All are semi-palmate, and dive, swim, and keep longer in the water than any others of their tribe. One was picked up in the Bay of Biscay, out of sight of any other vessel, fatigued and hungry, and which, judging from the circumstances, must have been there for many hours. Their fidelity, their courage, their generosity, are proverbial, and yet it is whispered that they are occasionally capricious ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Bordeaux and Nantes, who have hitherto transacted business with America, and by the request of the Commissioners, with regard to the protection of that commerce. For nearly a month, the French coast along the Bay of Biscay, and a part of that on the channel, have been guarded by twenty frigates and corvettes distributed in the open sea, as well as along the entrances of harbors and rivers. Those stationed at the latter places, take under their protection the French and American ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... clear, and sea very smooth for the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay, where we now are. The equinoctial gales usually begin on March 20 (to-morrow), so the captain says. We have averaged 12-1/2 knots since we left Avonmouth. A small bucketfull of water is taken from ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Bay of Biscay and English Channel, between Belgium and Spain, southeast of the UK; bordering the Mediterranean Sea, between Italy and Spain French Guiana: Northern South America, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, between Brazil and Suriname Guadeloupe: Caribbean, islands between ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... province (1,919) of Spain, formerly a kingdom in the NW. corner of it, fronting the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic; now divided into the four minor provinces, Coruna, Lugo, Orense, Pontevedra; the county is hilly, well watered, fertile, and favoured with a fine climate, but cultivated only very partially; some mining is carried ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... vegetables was nonsense, and I should have been green to have believed it, which I didn't. Away we went rolling along with a westerly swell and a northerly wind, while many of the fellows in the berth were singing: "There we lay, all the day, in the Bay of Biscay, O;" and others "Rule Britannia," old Gregson not forgetting his standing joke of "Bless the old girl; I wish, while she was about it, that she had ruled them straighter." The very next morning the gale, of ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... any risk about the matter. Master Hobbs, to whom Philip rode down ecstatically to request him to come and speak to my Lord, was a stout, honest, experienced seaman, who was perfectly at home in the Bay of Biscay, and had so strong a feudal feeling for the house of Walwyn, that he placed himself and his best ship, the THROSTLE, entirely at his disposal. The THROSTLE was a capital sailer, and carried arms quite sufficient in English hands ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fish those of the Bay of Biscay are perhaps the best nourished. An isthmus is a piece of land which saves another piece of land from being an island. The principal exports of Germany are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... with as little delay as possible, and again put to sea, we found ourselves off the north coast of Spain, far into the Bay of Biscay. For some time we were employed in looking along the coast of France, and picking up all the small coasters we could lay eyes on. We did a great deal of damage to a number of poor people, and taught them that war was a very disagreeable ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the western limits of the world, and in two ways they helped to fix this belief, derived from the timid coasting-traders of the Roman Empire on Greek and Latin Christendom. First, the Spanish Caliphate cut off all access to the Western Sea beyond the Bay of Biscay, from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. Not till the capture of Lisbon in 1147, could Christian enterprise on this side gain any basis, or starting-point. Not till the conquest of the Algarve in the extreme ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... in the department of Hautes- Pyrenees. 6. ADOUR, a river of France rising in the Pyrenees and flowing into the Bay of Biscay. 15. SAINT Denis is the patron saint of France. 24. Oberon, king of the fairies in mediaeval ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... too ill of Mr. Drake. I call him the milk of human kindness, and his friend Lord Robert the oil thereof—I mean the oil of vitriol. But his temper is like the Caspian Sea, having neither ebb nor flow, while yours is like the Bay of Biscay—oh, so I can't expect you to agree. As for poor me, I may be guilty of all the seven deadly sins, but I can't see why I should be boycotted on that account. There is something I didn't know when you were here, and I want ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the sky, the freshness of the air puffing up off the blue twinkling Bay of Biscay, the hum or song of the wind as it made rich music among the pines which stood like a green uplifted wave on the East, the beauty of the sand-hills speckled with golden cistus, or patched with gentian-blue, by the low growing Gremille couche, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... started carried us handsomely down channel and half-way across the Bay of Biscay, and the ship proving to be a regular flyer, everybody, from the skipper downwards, was in the very best of spirits. Then came a change, the wind backing out from south-west with squally weather which placed us at once ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... our navy during the world war have covered the widest scope in its history. Our naval forces have operated in European waters from the Mediterranean to the White Sea. At Corfu, Gibraltar, along the French Bay of Biscay ports, at the English Channel ports, on the Irish Coast, in the North Sea, at Murmansk and Archangel our naval forces have been stationed and have done creditable work. Their performance will probably form the most interesting and exciting portion of the naval history of this war, and it ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... by the gale into the Bay of Biscay, and had reached the port of Bayonne. Fancying that Columbus had perished, he had written to the sovereigns claiming credit to himself for the accomplishment of the undertaking. On hearing that Columbus had arrived before him, his ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... with some caution. He evidently thought me too young to be trusted with a sermon; the Church of England prayers I might read, and he put into my hands a book with a sermon for any Sunday and holy-day in the year. I took the book and said I would look through it. The Bay of Biscay was calm when we crossed it, but on Sunday morning we were tumbling about off the Rock of Lisbon. As I could hardly keep my legs, I did not think we should have had service; but we crowded into the smoking-saloon (we were afraid ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... hope of regaining his strength he had gone to the baths of Santa Aguada, at Guesalibar, on the Bay of Biscay, not far from San Sebastian, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 42, August 26, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... bothered their heads very little about taxation without representation but whetted their anger with grudges more robust. They had been beggared and bullied and shot at from the Bay of Biscay to Barbados, and no sooner was the Continental Congress ready to issue privateering commissions and letters of marque than for them it was up anchor and away to bag a Britisher. Scarcely had a shipmaster ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... rather stale eggs to be in no fluster at all about anything. And yet, dear little reader, once you consider it quietly, it's so much nicer not to be in a fluster. It's so much nicer not to feel one's deeper innards storming like the Bay of Biscay. It is so much better to get up and say to the waters of one's own troubled spirit: Peace, be still ...! And they will ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... and getting into Spanish sea, or mouth of the bay of Biscay, the weather proved so bad that the Advice-ship lost her rudder, which obliged her to go through the Channel in order to purchase a new one on the coast of England. The French, Danish, and other ships, generally go that way; but the Dutch ships generally go round Ireland and north ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... chorus he had rolled on another scene, which depicted a dreadful storm at sea, with a large ship evidently on the point of foundering. The waves were running mountains high and the inky clouds were riven by forked lightning. To increase the terrifying effect, Bert rattled the tea tray and played 'The Bay of Biscay', and the children sung the chorus whilst he rolled the next picture into view. This scene showed the streets of a large city; mounted police with drawn swords were dispersing a crowd: several men had ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Jan. 1655-56:[1]—His Highness has been informed of very extraordinary conduct on the part of the French Governor of Belleisle in the Bay of Biscay. On the 10th of December last, or thereabouts, he not only admitted into his port one Dillon, a piratic enemy of the English Commonwealth, and assisted him with supplies, but also prevented the recapture of a merchant ship from the said Dillon by Captain Robert ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the captain, smiling, "No; the Bay of Biscay. We passed Mount's Bay three days ago, while you were lying so poorly in your berth. Oh, that's nothing to mind," he added quickly. "I was horribly bad for a week in smoother water than you've had; you've done wonders to get over it ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... above two contain the NORTH HALF of France; or France from the Loire to the North Sea and from the Bay of Biscay to the Rhine. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... did not return home before it had made its presence felt. For, having landed Franklin, Wickes cruised about the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel, capturing many British merchantmen, and taking them to France, ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... sea, of which the entrance is the widest part, as contradistinguished from the strait-gulf. The Bay of Biscay is a well-known example of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the American flag was seen for the first time in European waters, when a little squadron of three ships set sail from Nantes in France, and after cruising on the Bay of Biscay went twice around Ireland and came back to France with fifteen prizes. As France had not then acknowledged our independence, they were ordered to depart. Two did so; but one of them, the Lexington, was captured ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... in the Bay of Biscay, and those who were well were fighting off the atmosphere of disease. It was toward evening and four men were playing cards for money. I stood watching them with my hands behind my back. I must have been there half an hour when the man directly in front of ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the captain took an observation, by which it appeared that Ushant bore some leagues northward of us, and that we were just entering the bay of Biscay. We had advanced a very few miles in this bay before we were entirely becalmed: we furled our sails, as being of no use to us while we lay in this most disagreeable situation, more detested by the sailors than the most violent tempest: we were alarmed with the loss of a fine piece of salt ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... whom he answered with a qualm. But when they left him to himself again, Twist, like a fiend's breath from a distant room Diffusing through the passage, crept; the smell Deepening had power upon him, and he mixt His fancies with the billow-lifted bay Of Biscay, and the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various
... command of Conflans, had put out to sea. It was overtaken by an English squadron under Hawke. Conflans attempted to take shelter close under the French coast. The shore was rocky; the night was black: the wind was furious: the waves of the Bay of Biscay ran high. But Pitt had infused into each branch of the service a spirit which had long been unknown. No British seaman was disposed to err on the same side with Byng. The pilot told Hawke that the attack could not be made without the greatest danger. "You have done your duty in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... captured the Spanish ship in the Bay of Biscay, after all resistance was over and the heat of the battle had cooled, he ordered his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew and every Spaniard aboard—whether in arms or not—to sew them up in the mainsail and to fling them overboard. There were some twenty dead bodies in the sail ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... for the night under our main-sail. In the morning we made sail again, but we had a great sea; and although, it was now almost Midsummer in these parts, the weather was, in every respect, much worse than it is in the Bay of Biscay at the depth of winter. About six in the evening, having carried all the sail I could, we made land, bearing about S.S.W. which, as we had a good observation of the sun, we knew to be Cape Blanco; but it now began ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... father loves to sail the seas, and when I first went to school at Arles, he took me a long and beautiful voyage. We went from Christiansund to Holland, and saw all those pretty Dutch cities with their canals and quaint bridges. Then we went through the English Channel to Brest,—then by the Bay of Biscay to Bayonne. Bayonne seemed to me very lovely, but we left it soon, and travelled a long way by land, seeing all sorts of wonderful things, till we came to Arles. And though it is such a long route, and not one for many persons to take, I have travelled to Arles and back twice that way, so ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... to their destination. They were ships belonging to the maritime nations of Italy—the Venetians, Genoese, Pisans, etc.; for England at that time had but few of her own, and these scarcely fitted for the stormy navigation of the Bay of Biscay. ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... my thoughts, my old pilot, to whom I communicated every thing, pressed me earnestly not to go to sea; but either to go by land to the Groyne, and cross over the Bay of Biscay to Rochelle, from whence it was but an easy and safe journey by land to Paris, and so to Calais and Dover; or to go up to Madrid, and so all the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... good contemporary authority on how vessels of the Royal Navy were managed in the late nineteenth century, therefore every page rings true. Some of the best parts are quite early in the book, when our hero and his ship go to investigate a sinking wreck in the Bay of Biscay, which had been reported to them by a ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... latter year was made captain. Unemployed for the next four years, he commanded in 1805 a frigate in the English and Irish Channels. In 1806 he was appointed to the command of the "Shannon", 38-gun frigate, remaining afloat, principally in the Bay of Biscay, till 1811. The "Shannon" was then ordered to Halifax, Nova Scotia. For a year after the declaration of war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, the frigate saw no important service, though she captured several ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... centre of the northern Atlantic, and gave us ample time to get our ship in good condition before we drew in with the land. Shortly after the affair, the wind came out light at northeast, forcing us down nearer to the Bay of Biscay than was at all convenient, when bound to London. The weather grew foggy, too, which is not usual on the coast of Europe, with the wind at east, and the nights dark. Just a fortnight after the action, I was awakened early one morning by a rough shake of the shoulder ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... storm. The gentleman from the meteorological office who writes for the newspapers talked about cyclonic disturbances, and reported gales in the channel and on the west coasts of France. The same was likely to continue. The wind blew hard enough in Berkshire, what must it have done in the Bay of Biscay? As a matter of fact, as we learned from a picture postcard from Jaffery and a short letter from Liosha posted at Bordeaux, and from their lips considerably later—for impossible as it may seem, they ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... life in Hatton had broken apart, and Harry was speeding down the Bay of Biscay and singing the fine old sea song called after it, to the rhythm and music of its billowy surge. The motion of the boat, the wind in the sails, the "chanties" of the sailors as they went about their work, and the evident content and happiness around him made Harry laugh and sing and toss ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... South and across the Bay of Biscay the weather gave us a halcyon passage; the wind falling lighter and lighter until, within ten leagues of Gibraltar, we ran into a flat calm, and Captain Pomery's face began to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... so, he will probably have passed through the district of the Landes, and will have had an opportunity of observing the formation of "dunes" on a grand scale. What are these "dunes?" The winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay have not much consciousness, and yet they have with great care "selected," from among an infinity of masses of silex of all shapes and sizes, which have been submitted to their action, all the grains of sand below a certain size, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... was, however, one circumstance from which we experienced a considerable diminution of comfort. As soon as we entered the gulf, a short disagreeable swell was perceptible; differing in some respects from that in the Bay of Biscay, but to my mind infinitely more unpleasant. So great was the motion, indeed, that all walking was prevented; but as we felt ourselves drawing every hour nearer and nearer to the conclusion of our miseries, this additional one was borne without ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... have said, rare, these long and narrow seas with their lofty shores are exposed to rough currents, atmospheric and marine, which render a voyage on the surface no more agreeable than a passage in average weather across the Bay of Biscay. After descending I was occupied for some time in studying, with Ergimo's assistance, the arrangement of the machinery, and the simple process by which electric force is generated in quantities adequate to any effort at a marvellously small expenditure of material. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg |
