"Heavy swell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say for Mr. Mallory that he stood it well, a heavy swell like him givin' the glad hand in public to a quaint old freak like that. But Aunt Elvira don't waste ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Opposite the north pier, on the south side of the river, Smeaton constructed a breast-wall about half the length of the Pier. Owing, however, to a departure from that engineer's plans, by which the pier was placed too far to the north, it was found that a heavy swell entered the harbour, and, to obviate this formidable inconvenience, a bulwark was projected from it, so as to occupy about one ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... themselves lying off a wide-mouthed sound, that bent and narrowed among low, lonely- looking islands. Only on the more distant land to the right were heather hills of any height to be seen, and those, so far as they could judge, were uninhabited. A heavy swell was running in from the open sea, and a canopy of grey ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... desirable it might be to have Panama as the Pacific station, it will already have been noticed, that the great distance from the shore at which vessels are obliged to anchor, is a serious impediment to loading and unloading—operations which are rendered more tedious by the heavy swell at certain seasons setting into the gulf. The distance from Chorrera to Panama, over a level part of the coast, is only ten miles. Should it therefore be deemed expedient, these two places may afterwards be connected by means ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... pleasant as the night had been boisterous; and, except that the distant hills were covered with snow, and that a heavy swell still continued to roll in from the sea, there remained scarce any trace of the recent tempest. Every hollow of the neighbouring hill had its little runnel, formed by the rains of the previous night, that now splashed and glistened to the sun. The bushes round ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... fast at that end. Harriet had forgotten that there was no rudder at the other end. But the boatman persisted in getting up close to the houseboat. All at once what Harriet had feared did happen. The launch was picked up on a heavy swell and hurled against the houseboat. There followed the sound of crunching woodwork. The launch began to fill ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... to be nothing more serious than the racing of the screw, which often occurs when a ship plunges her bow deep into a heavy swell, raising the stern out of water. We dressed hurriedly and ran to the upper deck. There was little noise or tumult ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... perfectly clean sand, upon which the waves rolled like those of the sea, throwing up weeds precisely as seaweed may be seen upon the English shore. It was a grand sight to look upon this vast reservoir of the mighty Nile and to watch the heavy swell tumbling upon the beach, while far to the south-west the eye searched as vainly for a bound as though upon the Atlantic. It was with extreme emotion that I enjoyed this glorious scene. My wife, who had followed me so devotedly, stood by my side pale and ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... excepted, than the ordinary ship, except in very heavy weather. With an ordinary gale, they can contend with sufficient power; but, it is an unfortunate consequence of their construction, that exactly as the danger increases, their power of meeting it diminishes. In a very heavy swell, one cannot venture to resort to a strong head of steam, since one wheel may be nearly out of water, while the other is submerged, and thus endanger the machinery. Now, the great length of these vessels renders it difficult ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... a column of water over sixty feet in height from a very small orifice, and the effect of the compressed air rushing through a crevice near it, sometimes with groans and shrieks, and at others with a hollow roar like the warning fog-horn on a coast, is magnificent, when, as to-day, there is a heavy swell on the coast. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the bright waters of the Delaware till its breast seemed a mimic ocean, heaving and swelling with tiny waves. As the sky and sea grew darker and darker in the gathering shades of twilight, the little bark rose upon the heavy swell of the ocean, and meeting Cape May on its lee-beam, shot out upon the broad waste of waters, alone in its daring course, seeming like the fearless bird which spreads its long wings amid the fury of the storm and the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... was recorded in our last for the admiration and instruction of remote ages. When the nineteenth century shall be long out of date, and centuries in general out of their teens, posterity will revert to our delineation of the heavy swell with pleasure undiminished, through the long succession of ages yet to come; the macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be forgotten, or remembered only in our graphic portraiture of the heavy swell. But the heavy swell is, after all, a harmless nobody. His ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... A heavy swell was running, but the Nautilus weathered the waves in true ocean style, only a slight rocking ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... powerful motor boat that would take them out to the ship, and, indeed, a staunch craft was needed, since there was still a heavy swell on, from the ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... Some tufts of rough grass grew there in sufficient density to conceal his head while he peered between the stalks. They could see him quite plainly, but no one wanted to speak. Though the unceasing wash of a heavy swell against the rocks would have drowned the noise had they shouted in unison, there was no need to tell anyone present that a very real and dangerous crisis had arrived. The slow change in the direction of Domingo's ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... happened during our passage across the Atlantic; but, after entering Davis's Straits, we had for several days variable and unsettled weather, the wind blowing principally from the southward, with a heavy swell from the same quarter. On the 14th we met with the first iceberg, being in lat. 60 deg. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... her unusual tact, she had applied balm to body and spirit at the same time. The sharp, cutting agony in his head had been charmed away. The paroxysm had passed, and the dull ache that remained seemed nothing in comparison—merely the heavy swell ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... moved at the rate of five miles in the hour, or faster than a man walks, even when in quick motion. Its rising and falling denoted the long heavy swell of the ocean, and the wash of water began to be more and more audible, as she settled into ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... peculiar to these parts, and are mentioned as poisonous in the sailing directions. We ventured to predict that we should see land next morning, and at midday the high coast hove in sight, wonderfully like Africa before the rains begin. Then a haze covered all the land, and a heavy swell beat towards it. A rock was seen, and a latitude showed it to be the Choule rock. Making that a fresh starting- point, we soon found the light-ship, and then the forest of masts loomed through the haze in Bombay harbour. We had ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... but by degrees, as the sun declined towards the horizon, the wind died away into a gentle breeze and the sea became free from breakers. But these gave place to a heavy swell; I felt sick and hardly able to hold the rudder, when suddenly I saw a line of ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... monsoon there is sometimes a heavy swell on the water of the Laguna, and occasionally boats are swamped or upset, so that frequently when we used to go out in our Pasig banca it was against the will of our boatmen; but like true and stubborn Britons, we always insisted upon having our own way, ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... comprehending the signal, pulled as directed; and then, after hoisting in what appeared to be the life-buoy, which had been let go on the first alarm, headed for the ship. To lessen the distance, in such a heavy swell, the ship also approached the boat; and as she bent her head gracefully towards that which she had so long sustained at her side, I could hardly divest my mind of the idea that she was possessed of instinct, and sought with maternal ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... great Indian ocean, and had a voyage of a thousand miles to undertake in our open boats. As soon as we cleared the land, we found a very heavy swell running, which threatened destruction to our little fleet; for should we have separated, we must inevitably perish for want of water, as we had not utensils to divide our slender stock. For our mutual preservation, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... and a heavy swell from the SW drove the vessel fast to the southward and westward; and on the 11th, the gale having moderated, they stretched in for the land, a large extent of which was indistinctly visible through a light haze that hung about the horizon. At noon the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... necessary to reef main-sail and jib, the wind blew so hard and in gusts, and the adverse tide met me as it rushed out of Spithead with a heavy swell. Rain poured down slanting with the wind, and the rocks, uncovered at low water, looked very ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... length, cooped up with twenty-four other persons in a packet designed only for twelve, and after having experienced every variety that could he afforded by a dead calm, a contrary wind, a brisk gale in our favor, and, finally, by being obliged to lie three hours in a heavy swell off this port, we at last received on board our French pilot, and saw hoisted on the pier the white flag, the signal of ten feet water in the harbor. The general appearance of the coast, near Dieppe, is similar to that which we left at Brighton; but the height ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... peninsula joined by a sandy isthmus to the mainland, with a port well sheltered by a natural breakwater. Further on were Buj[e]ya (Bougie), its harbour well protected from the worst winds; Algiers, not then a port, but soon to become one; Shersh[e]l, with a harbour to be shunned in a heavy swell from the north, but otherwise a valuable nook for sea rovers; Tinnis, not always accessible, but safe when you were inside; and Oran, with the important harbour of Mars El-Keb[i]r the "Portus Divinus" ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... is, that he is both a heavy drinker and a heavy swell. How he rattled on with little Rose-Pompon in the dance and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... as he watched the two vessels. The topsails of the Frenchman soon disappeared beneath the horizon, and the shades of evening at length closing down, we were left alone on the world of waters, into which the heavy swell made us roll our sides till we almost dipped our bulwarks under—each time showers of spray being sent dripping off them. The enemy had made several shot-holes in our sides, and those were now, we found, taking in the water faster than was altogether agreeable. The ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... before Lucullus should come up to him, was caught in a storm, which dispersed his fleet and sunk several ships. The wreck floated on all the neighboring shore for many days after. The merchant ship, in which he himself was, could not well in that heavy swell be brought ashore by the masters for its bigness, and it being heavy with water and ready to sink, he left it and went aboard a pirate vessel, delivering himself into the hands of pirates, and thus unexpectedly and wonderfully came safe to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the Southern Ocean were much increased by the almost constant, heavy swell. The breaking strain of the wire being only two hundred and forty pounds and the load it had to carry to the bottom weighing nearly fifty-six pounds in air, it could easily be understood that the sudden strain imposed by the violent rolling of the vessel often resulted in ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... what I say. When we were in the Persian Gulf, near six years ago, I was in command of the ship. The captain, you see, was below, with a hurt in his leg. We had very rough weather—a gale for two days and a night almost—and a heavy swell after. In the night time we picked up three poor devils in an open boat—. One was a Persian merchant, with a grand beard. We called him the magician, he was so like ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... early Thlinkit Indians. There was no sign of any other village. The masts of a few small schooners were visible on the southern side of the bay. It was in this part of the waters that ships came to anchor. Here they were not exposed to the heavy swell from the Pacific, being sheltered by islands on the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... seas at the prodigious speed of four hundred miles in the twenty-four hours. Like a pulsating heart in some living thing, the mammoth engines throbbed and panted, and the great vessel groaned and creaked as she rose and fell to the heavy swell, and again lurched forward in obedience to each fresh propulsion from her fast spinning screws. Out on deck, volumes of dense black smoke were pouring from four gigantic smoke stacks and spread out in the sky like some ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... stood to the northward, with an intention of searching for a harbour on the S.E. side of Mowee, which we had heard frequently mentioned by the natives. The next morning we found ourselves driven to leeward by a heavy swell from the N.E., and a fresh gale springing up from the same quarter, carried us still farther to the westward. At midnight we tacked, and stood to the S. for four hours, in order to keep clear of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... from Liverpool at eleven this forenoon. There was a heavy swell in the Mersey breaking over the boat; the cold was nipping, and all the roads we saw as we came along were wretched. We find a very moderate let here; but I am myself rather surprised to know that a hundred and twenty stalls have made up their minds to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... run her as a yacht, and play the heavy swell," he would remark. "But, candidly, I like this kind of thing; it puts me on a level with the others, you know; and then it's handy for buying supplies, and keeping one in touch with the people." With this ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... Beach. What a scene! An ants' nest in revolution. Five hundred of our fighting men are running to and fro between cliffs and sea carrying stones wherewith to improve our pier. On to this pier, picket boats, launches, dinghies, barges, all converge through the heavy swell with shouts and curses, bumps and hair's-breadth escapes. Other swarms of half-naked soldiers are sweating, hauling, unloading, loading, road-making; dragging mules up the cliff, pushing mules down the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... press of sail in order to get off the coast, the vessels being very light, and a powerful swell then setting in upon the shore. The wind was at the same time strong from the south-east, and continued so for two days, with the same heavy swell, which made it very difficult to keep the ships ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... you will trip upon the slimy Fucus that fringes the seaward side of every rock. This is one of the few Algae that grow here in luxuriance. The slate has not the deep fissures necessary to afford shelter to the more delicate kinds; and the heavy swell of the sea drags them from their slight moorings. Therefore, though Ulva, Chondrus, Cladophora, Enteromorpha, and as many more, are within our reach, we will not stop to gather them; for Newport has other shores, where we can get them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... were shelter and smooth water, but the wind was rising, backing from north-west to west, and raising a sea outside Cephalonia that sent a heavy swell sweeping round its southern point and into the opening of the narrows. As the leading ships reached the mouth of the strait Don Juan did not like the look of the weather, and decided to anchor in the Bay ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... the whole of the first day of the voyage in their berths, for there was a heavy swell in the sea, and toward evening the wind blew pretty fresh, and the DUNCAN tossed and ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... point the submarine was close astern and the liner slowing down preparatory to lowering her life-boats. The shells were damaging her superstructure, but a heavy swell interfered with the German marksmanship. Then came the surprise. A life-boat on the liner's poop was hoisted clear of the deck and from under its cover there appeared the lean grey muzzle of a 4.7-inch gun. A few sharp blasts of cordite and the submarine ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... sea coming into the starboard air-ports. We of the larboard side laughed at the misfortune of our comrades, and closed our own ports, without taking the precaution to screw them in. Half an hour afterwards, a very heavy swell assailed us on the larboard, beat in all the loose ports, and deluged the rooms. I found myself suddenly awakened and cooled by a cataract of water pouring over me. Out jumped the larboard sleepers, in dripping night-gear, and shouted ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge |
