"Roadstead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the big vessels sailing the northern and southern oceans, talks about capstans and icebergs and beautiful black women from the West Indies. He sets the capstan turning, so that the great three-master makes sail out of the Havana roadstead, and all his hearers feel their ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... they were besieged by the armaments of practically the whole world. A few of their experiences will be mentioned that seem almost marvelous. They captured, by making an opportune attack, some boats that sailed by and captured also some of the triremes that were in their opponents' roadstead. This they did by having divers cut their anchors under water, after which they drove nails into the ship's bottom and with cords attached thereto and running from friendly territory they would draw the vessel towards them. Hence one might see the ships approaching ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... huge crags, and made small darker spots Upon their wrinkled sides; the jaded horse Stumbled upon loose, rattling, fallen stones, Amidst the gathering dusk, and blindly fared Through the weird, perilous pass. As darkness waxed, And an oppressive mystery enwrapped The roadstead and the rocks, Sir Tannhauser Fancied he saw upon the mountain-side The fluttering of white raiment. With a sense Of wild joy and horror, he gave pause, For his sagacious horse that reeked of sweat, Trembling in every limb, confirmed his thought, That nothing human scaled ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Far off, Byculla way, the electric lamps at the dock gates shone on the end of lofty standards with a glow blinding and frigid like captive ghosts of some evil moons. Scattered all over the dark polish of the roadstead, the ships at anchor floated in perfect stillness under the feeble gleam of their riding-lights, looming up, opaque and bulky, like strange and monumental structures abandoned by ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... the horizon Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain, and meadow, Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge shadows together. Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village, Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that lay in the roadstead. Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr. Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... 1 the fleet entered the roadstead at Gibraltar, and anchored in the shadow of the famous rock. Here the Americans found two of the most rapacious of the Tripolitan corsairs lying at anchor; one a ship of twenty-six guns under the command of the Tripolitan ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... events related in the last chapter the bluff-bowed French coasting steamer, Admiral Dupont, dropped anchor in the shallow roadstead off the steamy harbor of Fort Assini on the far-famed Ivory Coast. A few days before, the boys had left Sierra Leone and engaged quarters on the cockroach-infested little craft for the voyage down the coast. It was blisteringly hot and from off the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... impossible to believe they would thus boldly venture into the bay if alone, we wish to know if there are others below. Furnish Lieutenant Foley with a mount, and, with an escort of a troop, guide him over the road you came to-day to some spot where a view of the roadstead at Old Point Comfort is to be commanded." Speaking to the naval officer, he enjoined, "You will carefully observe any shipping there may be, sir, and of what force, and report to me with ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the pirates, and they, faithful to their covenant, sent him in a boat to the land. He was put ashore on the coast of Asia Minor. He proceeded immediately to Miletus, the nearest port, equipped a small fleet there, and put to sea. He sailed at once to the roadstead where the pirates had been lying, and found them still at anchor there, in perfect security.[1] He attacked them, seized their ships, recovered his ransom money, and took the men all prisoners. He conveyed his captives to the land, and there fulfilled his threat that he would crucify them ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... aeronef reached the shore of the island the anchor dragged up the first few rocks and then got firmly fixed between two large blocks. The cable then stretched to full length under the influence of the suspensory screws, and the "Albatross" remained motionless, riding like a ship in a roadstead. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... which, according to information received by the British Government, was to carry proposals from Buonaparte to the West India Colonies, to declare in his favour. I had likewise orders to reconnoitre the Roadstead of Rochefort, and report to the Admiral the number and state of the ships of war lying there. Accordingly, on the 31st of May, I ran into Basque Roads, and found at anchor, under Isle d'Aix, two large frigates, a ship ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... of palankeen, though convenient for these roads, which are the worst I have seen; however, the view made up for the difficulty of getting to it. The sea with the Desertas bounded the prospect: below us lay the roadstead and shipping, the town and gardens, and the hill clothed with vineyards and trees of every climate, which deck the ashy tufa, or compact basalt of which the whole island seems to be composed. Purchas, who like Bowles, believes the story of the discovery of Madeira ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... with its keel out of water. Its stern had been staved in by an Iceland boat, and it had foundered on the shores of Newfoundland, I believe, and been set afloat again. Another time fire had broken out on it right in the Havre roadstead, but no great damage was done. The poor boat had had a celebrated adventure which had ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... is suitable, and neither too deep, shallow, or exposed for ships to ride in safety upon; also the set of anchors belonging to a ship; also a royal duty levied from vessels coming to a port or roadstead for the use of its advantages. It is generally marked on the charts by an anchor, and described according to its attributes of good, snug, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... me a more bustling town than Copenhagen itself; and I suppose that arises from the number of sailors connected with the vessels in the roadstead, who are to be met in the narrow lanes and alleys of the town; and here all the pilots in Denmark mostly wait for ships bound up ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... two or three leagues; and on both sides there are tolerably level lands of great extent. Two leagues from Cape Cornelius, where you enter on the west side, lies a certain creek, which might be taken for an ordinary river or stream, being navigable far up, and affording a beautiful roadstead for ships of all burdens. There is no other like it in the whole bay for safety and convenience. The main channel for navigation runs close by it; this place we call the Hoere-kil. From whence this name is derived we do not ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... sailed round the Mull of Deerness into the roadstead of Ragnvaldsvoe, in the north of South Ronaldsay, which is now known either as St. Margaret's Hope or possibly as Widewall Bay in Scapa Flow, and it was while it was there that the annular eclipse of the sun, ascertained by astronomical calculation[14] to have taken place ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... distress on her sister's account, rendered the more acute by reflecting that the means of saving her were in her power, but were such as her conscience prohibited her from using,—tossed, in short, like a vessel in an open roadstead during a storm, and, like that vessel, resting on one only sure cable and anchor,—faith in Providence, and a resolution to ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a high head-land of the coast of Devonshire, stood a little station-house, which had been erected with a view to communicate by signals, with the shipping, that sometimes lay at anchor in an adjacent roadstead. A little inland, was a village, or hamlet, that it suits our purposes to call Wychecombe; and at no great distance from the hamlet itself, surrounded by a small park, stood a house of the age of Henry VII., which was the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and what his companions call merit, he has risen to be the second man aboard; and has now brought home with him gold enough, from the Spaniards, to make his old mother comfortable. He saw your light yesterevening, and steered by it to the roadstead, blessing you all the way. Tell me, for he anxiously wished me to inquire of you, whether Helen Henry is ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... float at any state of the tide. The jetty describes a large curve, and the bend is such that its extremity is parallel to the coast, and 930 yards distant from the low-water mark. The sheltered roadstead is about 272 acres in extent, and communication is made with the canal by a lock 66 feet wide and 282 yards in length. From this point the canal, which has a depth of 26-1/2 feet and is fed by sea-water, runs in a straight line to Bruges, and ends at ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... named by Lieutenant Oxley, who anchored in it on a second expedition to examine Port Macquarie previous to its being settled, is a convenient roadstead during southerly winds: it is situated on the north side of Smoky Cape, and affords an anchorage in three fathoms, protected from the sea as far as North-East by East. Fresh water may be procured from a stream that runs over ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... afternoon, the children were taken up on the hurricane deck to see the islands of Charleston Harbor ahead. Many warships, and of all sizes, lay in the roadstead, but they did not see much of these vessels save their ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... ships and reorganized crews, Paul Jones was ready to sail from the roadstead of Isle de Groaix, in the early part of August, 1779, bound upon his cruise around the British Islands. There were four ships in this squadron: the Good Richard; the Alliance, under Pierre Landais (a depraved and dishonest Frenchman); the Pallas, under Cottineau (an ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... were British, with destination direct to the ports of the United Kingdom, whilst only forty-one foreign or Russian vessels were loaded and left during that year for British ports. Of 525 British vessels, of the aggregate burden of nearly 118,000 tons, which anchored in the roadstead of Cronstadt in that year, 472 were direct from the United Kingdom, and fifty-three from various other countries, such as the two Sicilies, Spain, Cuba, South America, &c. The number of British vessels which entered the port of St Petersburg, as Cronstadt in fact is, was more considerable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... one could possibly take the Almirante Recalde for anything but a Spanish ship. There was no reason for suspecting the presence of an enemy, for Spain had none in these seas. If there were other ships in the roadstead, for the harbor of La Guayra was really nothing more than an open road, the buccaneer could easily dispose of them in their unprepared condition. Indeed, Morgan rather hoped that there might be others, for, after he captured them, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... three ports, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and East London. These varied greatly in the facilities they afforded. Table Bay, with its docks, wharves and store-houses, took rank among the great commercial harbours of the world. Port Elizabeth, 430 miles eastward, had no true harbour. Its open roadstead, although frequented by the mercantile marine, was exposed to the dangerous south-east gales prevalent on that coast. At East London, 140 miles yet further eastwards, there was a small although excellent ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... for sand. Lending him what little clothing they could spare among them as a slight protection against the rapidly cooling air, they agreed to land him in the morning; and without further delay, for it was growing late, they made again towards the roadstead where ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... fleet came up, and meanwhile called a council of war of his leading officers to deliberate on the best way of proceeding in the difficulty. It was decided to make for the open shore to the northwards (perhaps for Richborough,[78] the next secure roadstead of those days), and at three in the afternoon the trumpet sounded, the anchors were weighed, and the fleet coasted ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Surrey, Hants, and Sussex; and almost immediately afterwards the lights on the forts in progress of construction at Spithead came into view, together with the anchor-lights of two or three men-o'-war in the roadstead, and they knew that the first part of their ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... two good reasons for it," growled the senor, gloomily. "One is that there isn't any harbor here. Nothing but an open roadstead, exposed to all the storms that come, so that to anchor off Vera Cruz is to run a fair chance of being wrecked. The other is that my unfortunate country has no navy. There isn't a Mexican vessel afloat that would care to go out after a Yankee man-of-war. We are not yet a ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... sheet; and if he did not get it in so that the foot of the mainsail came tight up against the foremain shroud before the sail filled, he got into grievous trouble. If the vessel was at anchor in a roadstead, he had to keep his two-hour anchor watch the same as the rest of the crew. In beating up narrow channels such as the Swin, he was put in the main-chains to heave the lead and sing the soundings, and the sweet child-voiced refrain mingled ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Cumana is a roadstead capable of receiving the fleets of Europe. The whole of the Gulf of Cariaco, which is about 35 miles long and 48 broad, affords excellent anchorage. The Pacific is not more calm on the shores of Peru, than the Caribbean Sea from Porto-cabello, and especially from Cape Codera to the point ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... here, and pointed to some sunken creels at its mouth. This man's memory and imagination were fertile in fishermen's tales of floating isles in bottomless ponds, and of lakes mysteriously stocked with fishes, and would have kept us till nightfall to listen, but we could not afford to loiter in this roadstead, and so stood out to our sea again. Though we never trod in those meadows, but only touched their margin with our hands, we still retain a pleasant memory ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Africa, leaving up to the present day signs of their explorations in the names of islands, bays, and capes. Dirk Hartog, in the Endraaght, discovered that Land which is named after his ship, and the cape and roadstead named after himself, in 1616. Jan Edels left his name upon the western coast in 1619; while, three years later, a ship named the Lioness or Leeuwin reached the most western point of the continent, to which ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... Day after day Maruffo repeated his challenge, accompanied by such insolent taunts that the blood of the Venetian sailors was so stirred that Pisani could no longer restrain them. After obtaining leave from the doge to go out and give battle, he sailed into the roadstead on the 25th. The two fleets drew up in line of battle, facing each other. Just as the combat was about to commence a strange panic seized the Genoese, and, without exchanging a blow or firing a shot, they fled hastily. Pisani pursued them for some miles, and then returned ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... without any trace to guide him, he had almost despaired, when, the night before this last, coming in from sea, he saw the Penguin Light; and noticing how, while you were signalling to me, at times it stopped for a moment, he thought it was the Upper Roadstead Light, and so ran in and made this little harbor by mistake. Thereby it was that we have chanced ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead—I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... twenty-four hours, and as the falucha let go in the roadstead I tore up my memorandum of instructions (which I had carefully committed to memory) and threw the fragments into ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... negresses best of anything I have seen. In turbans and loose sea- green robes, with beautiful black-brown complexions and a stately carriage, they really are a satisfaction to my eye. The weather has been windy and rainy; the HOOPER has to lie about a mile from the town, in an open roadstead, with the whole swell of the Atlantic driving straight on shore. The little steam launch gives all who go in her a good ducking, as she bobs about on the big rollers; and my old gymnastic practice stands me in good stead on boarding and leaving ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The Roadstead, or Great Harbour, of Sebastopol runs due eastwards inland from a point not far from the south-western extremity of the Crimea. One mile from the open sea its waters divide, the larger arm still running eastwards ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... while I choose! You could be killed in this room, removed in sacks, thrown to the sharks in the roadstead, and nobody the wiser! But I have no intention of killing you. As it happens, that would ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... was very like a mosque. Milner and St. Aubyn were to sleep that night at a hotel and start for Damascus next morning by diligence. I returned to the ship alone, and I found myself twelve hours later looking at Cyprus from the open roadstead of Larnaca. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... shore. "To Eden!" cried Glenarvan. Immediately the mail-coach resumed the route round the bay, toward the little town of Eden, five miles distant. The postilions stopped not far from the lighthouse, which marks the entrance of the port. Several vessels were moored in the roadstead, but none of them ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... travelled down to Southampton together one hot summer day, and were rowed out to the Aurora, an uncommonly neat little schooner which lay in that over-rated and frequently odoriferous roadstead, Southampton Water. However, I admit that on that evening—the tide being high—the place looked remarkably pretty; the level rays of the setting sun turned the water to gold; a soft luminous haze hung over the town and the shipping, and by a stretch of imagination one might have thought the view ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... like a crescent, and by three large islands opposite to it and at the distance of some twenty miles. These points are just sufficient to give it the name of a bay, while at the same time it is so large and so much exposed to the southeast and northwest winds, that it is little better than an open roadstead; and the whole swell of the Pacific Ocean rolls in here before a southeaster, and breaks with so heavy a surf in the shallow waters, that it is highly dangerous to lie near in to the shore during the southeaster season, that is, between the months ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... to St. Miguel, when Raleigh was left to watch the roadstead, while Essex pushed inland. While Raleigh lay here, a great Indian carrack of sixteen hundred tons, laden with spices, knowing nothing of the English invasion, blundered into the middle of what she ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Monday, July 12th.—The roadstead of Monrovia was made about noon, when I, in company with B. E. Castendyk, Esq., a young German gentleman traveling for pleasure, took lodgings at Widow Moore's, the residence of Rev. John Seys, the United States consular agent, and commissioner ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... arrived in the roads of San Juan, and anchored well out of gunshot from the forts, seemingly without exciting any suspicion whatever. We carefully examined the roadstead, and there, sure enough, was just the craft for our purpose; but she was lying right under the guns of the fort. She was a pretty vessel: schooner-rigged, very low in the water, and—as we found out when we took her—of very deep draught; broad in the beam, ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... taking the place to Provence occupied by Iona to Scotland and Lindisfarne to Northumberland, a cradle of Christianity, a cradle rocked by the waves. I cannot do better than quote Montalembert's words on this topic. "The sailor, the soldier, or the traveller who proceeds from the roadstead of Toulon to sail towards Italy and the East, passes among two or three islands, rocky and arid, surmounted here and there by a slender cluster of pines. He looks at them with indifference, and avoids them. However, one of these islands has been for ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... mostly a heap of ruins, except the church of St Mark, and two or three more, which still look tolerably well. What helps to give it a very desolate appearance is, that the houses near the sea are only covered with mats. Being situated on the sea-shore, in an open roadstead, it has no fortifications of any kind to defend or command the anchorage, the Spaniards thinking it sufficiently secured by the heavy surf, and the rocky bottom near the shore, which threaten inevitable destruction to any European boats, or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... is separated from it by a small passage; and the third, like a real harbor, is seen far back. The last named is called Avernus, and the middle bay Lucrinus: the outer one belongs to the Tyrrhenian Sea and takes its name from that water. In this roadstead within the other two, which had but narrow entrances then, Agrippa, by cutting channels close along the shore through the land separating Lucrinus from the sea on each side, produced harbors affording most safe anchorage for ships. While the men ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... this and the never-ending game, Tantamount to teetering, plot and counterplot; Impenetrable armor—all-perforating shot; Aloof, bless God, ride the war-ships of old, A grand fleet moored in the roadstead of fame; Not submarine sneaks with them are enrolled; Their long shadows dwarf us, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... and Princess Victoria paid a visit to the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle—the old tower with fruit-trees growing in the dry moat, and a slip from the weeping-willow which hung over the grave in St. Helena flourishing in its garden, where the Warden of the Cinque Ports could look across the roadstead of the Downs and count the ships' masts like trees in a forest, and watch the waves breaking twenty feet high on the Goodwin Sands. "The cut-throat town of Deal" which poor Lucy Hutchinson so abhorred, pranked its quaint red ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... length the masts and spars of several line-of-battle ships came in view. Still the frigate stood on till a three-decker—an eighty-gun ship— three seventy-fours, four frigates, and three brigs were counted. The little English frigate paraded up and down before the roadstead, but none ventured out to attack her. It was the French ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... fared at the fated moment, sturdy Scyld to the shelter of God. Then they bore him over to ocean's billow, loving clansmen, as late he charged them, while wielded words the winsome Scyld, the leader beloved who long had ruled.... In the roadstead rocked a ring-dight vessel, ice-flecked, outbound, atheling's barge: there laid they down their darling lord on the breast of the boat, the breaker-of-rings, {0b} by the mast the mighty one. Many ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... without a sight of sun, moon, or stars. The black night twinkled with the guiding lights of seamen and the steady straight lines of lights on shore; and all around the Fair Maid the riding lights of ships cast trembling trails upon the water of the roadstead. Captain Whalley saw not a gleam anywhere till the dawn broke and he found out that his clothing was soaked ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... wealth and industry of men. Here in front of us was New Brighton; the long shelving ledge of rock was a seawall already made, rows of stately buildings covered the grassy slopes; the shipping of many nations lay in the roadstead; above the whole scene waved The Flag, and in the foreground on the sandy beach the great-grandchildren of the crossing-sweeper and the sandwich-man sported by the waves that beat by the Southern Pole, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... from Glenelg to the mouth of the Port River is very low, a continuous ridge of sandy dunes fringing a beautiful sea beach from which the waters recede far at low tide. The mail boats anchored in the open roadstead; passengers landed at the Semaphore jetty, cargo being placed in barges and towed up the river to Port Adelaide. It was a most unsatisfactory arrangement, and many have been the times that I got wet through when meeting the steamers. In ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Capri a violent storm broke over it, and drove it as far as Paola, a little seaport situated ten miles from Cosenza. Consequently the vessels were anchored for the night of the 5th of October in a little indentation of the coast not worthy of the name of a roadstead. The king, to remove all suspicion from the coastguards and the Sicilian scorridori, [Small vessels fitted up as ships-of-war.] ordered that all lights should be extinguished and that the vessels should tack about during the night; but towards one o'clock such a violent land-wind sprang up that the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... increasing to a fresh gale from the northward in the afternoon, and the ice still continuing to oppose an impenetrable barrier to our farther progress, I determined to beat up to the northern shore of the bay, and, if a tolerable roadstead could be found, to drop our anchors till some change should take place. This was accordingly done at three P.M., in seven fathoms' water. This roadstead, which I called the BAY OF THE HECLA AND GRIPER, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... in the right channel, had followed us. We had escaped what seemed almost certain death, but were not out of danger. Our new good chain was attached to our bad chain, and the captain had let out all our chain to free us from the other vessel, so we were actually hanging by our bad chain in the open roadstead, not in the protection of a harbor, and liable to drag our anchor or break our chain and be wrecked; but we could do nothing more than submit to our fate. I thought I would get into my berth and try and get to sleep, and, if I found myself alive in the morning, we might be ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... of Stromness, on the Orkney main island, called Pomona, lived, in 1814, an aged dame called Bessie Millie, who helped out her subsistence by selling favourable winds to mariners. He was a venturous master of a vessel who left the roadstead of Stromness without paying his offering to propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was extremely moderate, being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her kettle and gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she disclaimed all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure, she said, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there is neither harbour nor roadstead, but only a small bay or cove, appropriately called Gulfe de la Napoul; and it is indeed worthy of its name, being a miniature Bay of Naples,—but without its Vesuvius. It is, however, so shallow that the coasting vessels that use it are obliged to anchor at some ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... mustered at the roadstead of St. Valery, at the mouth of the Somme. But the winds were long hostile, and the rains ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 144 open presence, honesty and truth in their words and actions.—On our return to Delemy's castle, in Shtuka, the Prince asked me, what observations I had made respecting Tomie; I told his Royal Highness that it was an open roadstead, and not a convenient place for ships to lie. The Prince appeared pleased at this report; but Delemy had rendered to Muley Abdsalam so many essential services, that the latter could not, in courtesy, refuse him any thing. When Delemy found that my report to the Prince ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... passage of Craggeen lies the wide roadstead of Finilaun. Here the water is deep, and the shelter, from every quarter, almost complete. Across the western end of it stretches like a bent bow, the long island of Finilaun. On the south, reaching almost to the point of Finilaun, is Craggeen, ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... The distance from this harbor on the Gulf of Mexico to Aguas Calientes is a trifle over four hundred miles. With the improvements already under way, it will be rendered the best seaport on the Gulf, infinitely superior, especially in point of safe anchorage, to the open roadstead of Vera Cruz. Every ton of freight is now landed at the latter port by lighters, and must continue to be so from the nature of the coast; while in a couple of years at farthest Tampico will have a most excellent harbor, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Bay, on the northwest coast of the island. Bridgetown, where the chief harbor or roadstead lies, is at the southwest, and H.M.S. Richmond, which the pirates rightly viewed with apprehension, lay there; she had gone out to Barbados ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... future of this port and our national interests, have devoted themselves to finding a means of enlarging it, not by dredging new basins, which would prove ruinous to the budget and useless in twenty years, but by installing a true roadstead at the entrance to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... Nieuport (to which place also were brought the vessels built at Antwerp) 14,000 men were to be conveyed across to England, and from Dunkirk 12,000. But where were they to effect a junction with each other and with the Spaniards? Tassis assures us that they had selected for this purpose the roadstead of Margate on the coast of Kent, a safe and convenient harbour;[270] there immediately after the Spanish armada had arrived, or as nearly as possible at the same time with it, the fleet of transports from the Netherlands also was to make ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... up a mountainous coast which rose steadily into majestic, barren ranges, still white with the melting snows; and at ten in the evening under a golden sunset, amid screaming whistles, they anchored in the roadstead of Nome. Before the rumble of her chains had ceased or the echo from the fleet's salute had died from the shoreward hills, the ship was surrounded by a swarm of tiny craft clamoring about her iron sides, while an officer in cap and gilt climbed the bridge and greeted Captain ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... All these differences were concentred in the gloomy streets of a town in those days choked up within its narrow girdle of fortifications. The most peculiar feature about this small dark town is, that it lies exactly between two broad seas of light, between the marvellous mirror of its roadstead and its glorious amphitheatre of mountains, baldheaded, of a dazzling grey, that blinds you in the noonday sun. All the gloomier look the streets themselves. Such as do not lead straight to the harbour and draw some light therefrom, are plunged at ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... erection of a Time-Signal Ball at Deal, for the use of the shipping in the Downs, to be dropped every day by a galvanic current from the Royal Observatory. The construction of the apparatus is entrusted to me. Probably there is no roadstead in the world in which the knowledge of true time is so important.'—The Report includes an account of the determination of the Longitude of Cambridge Observatory by means of galvanic signals, which ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... the captain of the dispatch-boat held a short consultation as to the advisability of running into Chi-fu harbour for shelter; but as the roadstead was somewhat open, it was finally agreed to push on, at top speed, and endeavour to get clear of the Shan-tung peninsula and the Miao-tao islands before the storm broke. Otherwise, they might find themselves in rather an ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... activity of the Port Louis harbor in Mauritius, there were a few vessels rolling about in the roadstead, and some forty or fifty fishing canoes hauled up on the sandy beach. There was a peculiar dullness throughout the town—a sort of something which seemed to say, "Coffee does not pay." There was a want of spirit in everything. The ill-conditioned guns upon the fort looked as though not intended ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... into a certain roadstead one evening where lay more huge battleships, cruisers and smaller armored vessels than Whistler and his mates had ever seen before. They flew the flags of three nations, and they were prepared to move en masse upon the enemy at ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... of them the turquoise waters were dotted by islets whose heights were densely overgrown, while sands of coral whiteness ringed their shore lines. Here and there a fleet of fishing-boats drifted. Far out in the roadstead lay two cruisers, slate-gray and grim. The waters over-side purled soothingly, the heavens beamed, the breeze was like a gentle caress. The excursionists ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... several high wooden structures with platforms on the top. They are built to enable the pilots or boatmen to take a survey of the roadstead and the sands beyond, that they may see any vessel ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... necessarily rendered valueless, however, by the events of the Crimean war. She speaks of its harbour as one of the most remarkable in Europe. It owes all its excellence to Nature, which has here, without assistance from the science of the engineer, provided a magnificent roadstead, the branches of which form a number of basins admirably adapted for the requirements of a great naval station. The whole expanse of this noble harbour is commanded from the upper part of the town. The roadstead first catches the eye; it stretches east and west, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... quarantine, and during the fortnight I waited at Syra an English steamer without passengers, and with a clean bill of health, having finished her term, was condemned to make another term of two weeks, because a steamer had come in with refugees from Alexandria, and had anchored in the same roadstead. Mr. Lloyd, the English consul, protested and insisted on the steamer being released, and the people threatened to burn his house over his head if he persisted; but, as he did persist, the ship was finally ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... largest town on the island, having a population of 25,000, the majority of whom are white. The harbor is next best to that at San Juan,—102 miles distant,—and is an open roadstead formed by two projecting capes. It is a seaport of considerable commerce, and exports sugar, coffee, oranges, pineapples, and cocoanuts in large quantities,—principally, with the exception of coffee, ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... 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
... nine miles, and is thus exposed to the fury of the sea for this distance; for it is not on a river, like Calcutta, or a sheltered bay, like Bombay. Formerly, on the approach of a cyclone, vessels lying in the roadstead, as the only harbor it had, which was no harbor, had to put to sea to avoid being driven on the shore. Decidedly it was a very inconvenient place to build a city; but the town formerly consisted of a number of villages, which have ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... the sensation produced in a ship I commanded one evening on the coast of Peru, as we steered towards the roadstead of Payta. An immense balsa was dashing out before the land-wind, and sending a snowy wreath of foam before her like that which curls up before the bow of a frigate in chase. As long as she was kept before the wind, we could understand this in some degree; but when she hauled up in ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Roraima, of the Quebec Line, arrived at St. Pierre early Thursday morning. For hours before we entered the roadstead we could see flames and smoke rising from Mont Pelee. No one on board had any idea of danger. Captain G. T. Muggah was on the bridge, and all hands got on ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... probable that Anlaf sailing from Dublin would come over to England by the usual route to the havens opposite, near the great roadstead ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... water within half a mile of the town of Key West a few minutes before six o'clock in the evening of her eleventh day out from the Lizard. There were several American men-o'-war of various descriptions, ranging from battleships to torpedo boats, lying at anchor in the roadstead, as well as two cruisers, three gunboats, and a torpedo boat flying the Spanish flag; and Singleton noticed, with mingled concern and amusement, that, as the little Thetis swept past the Spanish vessels at close quarters, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... that might be anchored at Patras, in order to convince the enemy that the Karteria was to be dreaded, even after receiving the greatest injury. A favourable opportunity fortunately offered itself of displaying the power of the steamer to Ibrahim Pasha's camp at Patras. On approaching the roadstead, a brig heavily laden was seen at anchor, which had evidently arrived the preceding night, little expecting that the Greek squadron would quit the gulf in the daytime. Hastings immediately made every preparation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... blew fair until the Revenge approached the landmarks familiar to Blackbeard and found a channel which led to the wide mouth of Cherokee Inlet. It was a quiet roadstead sheltered from seaward by several small islands. The unpeopled swamp and forest fringed the shores but a green meadow and a margin of white sand offered a favorable place for landing. As the Revenge slowly rounded the last wooded point, the tall ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... period, 1794, Cherbourg, although a strong place, was nearly an open roadstead, and we frequently stood in so close as to oblige the outer vessels at ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... and then with a faint spasmodic motion, which barely stirred the shingle on the shore, much less plashed on the beach; while a thick, heavy white mist was steadily creeping up from the sea, shutting out, first the island, and then the roadstead at Spithead from view, and overlapping the whole landscape in thick woolly folds, moist yet warm. Jim had said that the sea-fog, coming as it did, was a sign of heat, and that we should have a regular old-fashioned hot summer, ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... swelled and quickened daily as the news of George Carmack's discovery spread across the world, but at Healy & Wilson's log-store, where the notice above referred to had been posted, the stream slowed. A crowd of new-comers from the barges and steamers in the roadstead had assembled there, and now gave voice to hoarse indignation and bitter resentment. Late arrivals from Skagway, farther down the coast, brought word of similar scenes at that point and a similar feeling of dismay; they reported a similar increase in the general ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... state that any ship arriving off the bar when there is not sufficient water on it for them to enter the port, will find good anchorage all round the lightship, particularly a little to the westward of it. The whole Gulf, indeed, from this point, may be considered as a safe and extensive roadstead. As regards Port Adelaide itself, I cannot imagine a securer or a more convenient harbour. Without having any broad expanse of water, it is of sufficient width for vessels to lie there in perfect safety, whether as regards the wind ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... payment of a fee for a second inspection by another officer, if provided with a certificate from the proper inspecting officer of that district; but if, after proceeding on her voyage, she returns to the port or place of departure, or enters any other port, river, or roadstead in the State, the said vessel shall be again inspected, and pay a fee of five dollars, as if she had undergone no previous examination ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... here, I am only like to make bad worse; and your honour's sister, Miss Rachel, must be looked to, that's certain; for if the rogues once get their hand to mischief, they will come to Mount Sharon after they have wasted and destroyed this here snug little roadstead, where I thought to ride at anchor ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... landed at Port Elizabeth (after three days' knocking about at sea) on the 18th, being let down, like St. Paul, in a basket, from the deck of the Anglian to the tug, which took me to the pier in the open roadstead. Right glad was I to ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... my own element, and will endeavour to describe some of the occurrences of the war in the Black Sea. The Russians had three lines of action in those waters. First, to capture Sulina, and to destroy the squadron lying at anchor in its roadstead; second, to capture Batoum and its much-envied harbour; third, the somewhat undignified action of sending out fast vessels, mostly mail-boats, armed with a couple of guns, their object being to destroy the Turkish coasting trade. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... a little movement of the lips, and glanced at her slowly, holding his lip between his teeth as he was wont to hold it during the moments of suspense before letting go the anchors in a crowded roadstead as he stood at his post on the forecastle-head awaiting the captain's signal. She was the first to divine what the ship had been to him. Her eyes were waiting for his. They were alight with a gentle ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the morning, after having visited the Marine Arsenal and all the docks, the weather being very fine, the First Consul embarked in a little barge, and remained in the roadstead for several hours, escorted by a large number of barges filled with men and elegantly dressed women, and musicians playing the favorite airs of the First Consul. Then a few hours were again passed in the reception of merchants, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the eye could reach into the dusky North. Thus hopelessly cut off from all access to the western and better anchorage, it only remained to put about, and—running down along the land—attempt to reach a kind of open roadstead on the eastern side, a little to the south of the volcano described by Dr. Scoresby but in this endeavour also we were doomed to be disappointed; for after sailing some considerable distance through a field of ice, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... is rendered difficult both by sudden storms and by the absence of good bays and ports. [v.03 p.0216] The principal port on the western shore, Listvinichnoe, near the outflow of the Angara, is an open roadstead at the foot of steep mountains. Steamers ply from it weekly to Misovaya (Posolskoe) on the opposite shore, a few times a year to Verkhne-Angarsk, at the northern extremity of the lake, and frequently to the mouth of the Selenga. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... we cast anchor in the roadstead of Kobe, where the Tenyo Maru has to remain for twenty-four hours in order to take cargo on board. A launch takes us to the busy town, and we determine to spend the night on shore in a genuine Japanese hotel. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... wired-in entrenchments with strong points here and there, and a series of communication trenches and redoubts behind them for 3000 yards to Sheikh Hasan, which was the port of Gaza, if you can so describe an open roadstead with no landing facilities. From Rafa Redoubt the contour of the sand dunes permitted the enemy to construct an exceedingly strong line running due south for 2000 yards, the strongest points being named by us Zowaid trench, El Burj trench, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... Batoum, and we take passage aboard a Messageries Maritimes steamer for Constantinople. Late at night we depart, amid the glare and music of a violent thunder-storm, and in the morning wake up in the roadstead of Trebizond. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Besides its sardine and mackerel fishing industry, the town has flour-mills, breweries, foundries, forges, engineering works, and manufactures of blocks, candles, chemicals (from sea-weed), boots, shoes and linen. Brest communicates by submarine cable with America and French West Africa. The roadstead consists of a deep indentation with a maximum length of 14 m. and an average width of 4 m., the mouth being barred by the peninsula of Quelern, leaving a passage from 1 to 2 m. broad, known as the Goulet. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... if we have a situation without natural advantages, and unfit to shelter ships from storms, it is obvious that we must proceed as follows. If there is no river in the neighbourhood, but if there can be a roadstead on one side, then, let the advances be made from the other side by means of walls or embankments, and let the enclosing harbour be thus formed. Walls which are to be under water should be constructed as follows. Take the powder which comes from the country extending from ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... the Filipinas begin at the large island of Burnei, not far from Malaca, which serves as a roadstead for the Portuguese who sail for Maluco. This island extends from the first or second degree on the south of the equinoctial line to about the eighth degree on the north side. The Mahometan king of this island, although he retained his own religion, rendered obedience as a vassal of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... would discharge our shingle ballast into the water, contrary to law; and, in the day, we took in cargo. So clear was the water, that our night's work might easily be seen next morning, lying beneath the ship. As we lay in a roadstead, it mattered little, few vessels touching at the port. While at this place, there was an alarm of an attack from an English man-of-war that was seen in the offing, and priests enough turned out to defend an ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... on coming to anchor or grounding, to pay the sum of two shillings and two pence. All foreigners paid double. And since, in addition to ships putting in from abroad, it sometimes happened that two hundred sail of coasters would be driven by easterly gales to shelter in St. Lide's Harbour, or roadstead, or in Cromwell's Sound, you may guess that this made a very pleasant addition to the Commandant's ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... being little more than an open roadstead. Into this harbor empties a small stream called the Arecibo. Goods are transported on this river, to and from the town, in flat-bottomed boats, with the aid of long poles and ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... air of departure about her, notwithstanding. The deacon was not much concerned; and some of Roswell Gardiner's clothes were still at his washerwoman's, circumstances that were fully explained, when the schooner was seen to anchor in Gardiner's Bay, which is an outer roadstead to all the ports ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Castle and then Accra were the next places of general interest at which we stopped. The former looks well from the roadstead, and as if it had very recently been white-washed. It is surrounded by low, heavily-forested hills, which rise almost from the seashore, and the fine mass of its old castle does not display its dilapidation at a distance. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... in after me, and I threw them largess recklessly. Some arch-bellboy or other potentate had mounted to the seat beside the driver. Madly we clattered over cobbled ways. Out on the smooth waters of the roadstead lay ships great and small, ships with stripped masts and smokeless funnels, others with faint gray spirals wreathing upward from their stacks. Was one of these the Rufus Smith, and would I reach her—or him—before the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... long sandy beach whereon the blue ripples are crumbling between the black fishing boats drawn up upon the strand. This is Phaleron, the old harbor of Athens before Themistocles fortified the "Peireus"—merely an open roadstead in fact, but still very handy for small craft, which can be hauled up ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... a very pleasant week in Madras, we sailed at daylight, on the 11th of January, in the P. and O. steamship Teheran, for Calcutta, through the Bay of Bengal, a five days' voyage. Soon after leaving the roadstead of Madras there was pointed out to us on the port bow the low lying coast of Orissa, India, where the famine of 1866 carried off one million of souls. As we drew northward a decided difference in the temperature was realized, and was most ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou |
