"Steerage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fitted out in the most complete manner for defence, at a very considerable expense, and are well provided with small arms. All mariners, recruiting parties, soldiers upon furlow, and all other steerage passengers who have been accustomed to the use of firearms, and who will engage to assist in defending themselves, will be accommodated with their passage to and from London upon satisfying the masters for their provisions, which in no instance shall exceed 10s. 6d. sterling." This was the year ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... laughed while I spoke in panting jerks, and the water dripped out of my clothes. After I had made it clear that I wanted to go with Carlos, and could pay for my passage, I was handed down into the steerage, where a tallow candle burnt in a thick, blue atmosphere. I was stripped and filled with some fiery liquid, and fell asleep. Old Rangsley was ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... from the Mediterranean have announced their intention of charging for steerage only five to ten dollars more to the Pacific Coast ports than to the Atlantic ports. It costs the immigrant from sixteen to twenty-five dollars to go west from Atlantic ports. It can hardly be doubted that a great many immigrants will ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... his latest day, When Death, just hovering, claim'd his prey, With Palinure's unalter'd mood Firm at his dangerous post he stood; Each call for needful rest repell'd, With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall with fateful sway The steerage of the realm gave way. Then—while on Britain's thousand plains One polluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around The bloody tocsin's maddening sound, But still upon the hallow'd day Convoke the swains to praise ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... in question he resolved to remain on deck until the weather should have assumed some more decided aspect. There was fortunately still a gentle breeze from about east-south-east fanning the convoy along at a speed of some two knots in the hour, just giving the ships steerage-way; and they were consequently able to keep out of each other's way, and thus avoid collision, always a great element of danger when a large number of craft happen to be sailing ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... board on the Quarter, which they did; but seeing no body appear, they feared some Stratagem. However, some of the Crew ran into the Steerage and Great Cabbin; but seeing nobody, they went between Decks, and, upon Examination, found her a Ship abandon'd, and that she had Six Foot Water in the Hold. They took out of the Great Cabbin Two Chests of Pieces of Eight, with some ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... mortals now call the Ndravo River. When the ghosts arrived on the bank, they hailed the ferryman and he paddled his canoe over to receive them. But before he would take them on board they had to state whether they proposed to ship as steerage or as cabin passengers, and he gave them their berths accordingly; for there was no mixing up of the classes in the ferry-boat; the ghosts of chiefs kept strictly to themselves at one end of the canoe, and the ghosts of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... alone in the world—his mother was dead, too, and had never seen his success—he resolved to make a reputation in another country. Of course that was very young of him. He sees that now. He crossed to New York in the steerage, and vowed he'd never set foot in Scotland again, or take back his name of MacDonald, until old Duncan not only openly claimed him as a cousin, but begged him as a personal ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the world to seek my fortune, the richer for some $40 which Ribe friends had presented to me, knowing that I had barely enough to pay my passage over in the steerage. Though I had aggravated them in a hundred ways and wholly disturbed the peace of the old town, I think they liked me a little, anyway. They were always good, kind neighbors, honest and lovable folk. I looked back with my ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... or firemen, by turns, and when we took wood most of the male deck passengers were required to assist. On American steamboats the after cabin is the aristocratic one; on the Amoor the case is reversed. The steerage passengers lived, moved, and had their being and baggage aft the engine, while their betters were forward. This arrangement gave the steerage the benefit of all cinders and smoke, unless the wind was abeam ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... is over, and we are at sea. I am so glad it is done. It was dreadful to see poor Uncle William and Uncle Henry and Cousin Willie and Cousin Ferdinand of Bulgaria, coming up the gang-plank into the steerage, with their boxes on their backs. They looked so different in their rough clothes. Uncle William is wearing an old blue shirt and a red handkerchief round his neck, and his hair looks thin and unkempt, and ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... other Women are, Madam; she has her Gun-Room, her Steerage, her Fore-Castle, her Quarter-Deck, her Great-Cabbin, and her Poop; as for her good Qualities, few Women care to hear each other prais'd; but I'll tell you what Imperfections she has not: She is no proud conceited haughty Dame, that tow'rs over Mankind with an Estate; no vain Coquet, ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... God's sake! Our thrust shaft has cracked!" The words came faintly. "Our Captain was washed from the bridge. . . . Tried to put out sea anchor, but couldn't make it hold without steerage way. . . . It broke adrift. . . . This . . . the Veiled Ladye, with Mr. Horace Howland and ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... partners out to them. Think what a meeting for all these poor people, dear Harriet, in this little hive of English industry and energy in the far west, the fertile wildernesses of Indiana! How often I thought of the fears and misgivings of these poor women in the steerage, when our progress was delayed by tempestuous, contrary winds, when the heavy seas leaped over our laboring vessel's sides, and when, during a violent thunderstorm, our masts were tipped with lambent fire, which played round them like a ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... to Philadelphia, and with some friendly assistance, sailed, in 1850, from New York, as a steerage passenger for San Francisco. Arriving at Aspinwall, the point of debarkation, on the Atlantic side, boats and boatsmen were engaged to transport passengers and baggage up the "Chagress," a small and shallow ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... passage at present from San Francisco to New York are— Steerage, 150 dollars; second cabin, 250 dollars; first cabin, 300 dollars per berth for each passenger. An entire state-room is the price of two passengers—600 dollars. From New York to San Francisco the fares are the same. San Francisco to Panama, sometimes the same as to ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... this. He could not explain why he accepted it as fact. He merely wrote it down as one of his hunches. And with his old-time faith in the result of that subliminal reasoning, he counted what remained of his money, paid his bills, and sailed from Kingston northward as a steerage passenger in a United ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... a laugh at this, while Isagani continued: "That's why my uncle, being a conscientious man, won't go on the upper deck, fearful that Dona Victorina will ask him about Don Tiburcio. Just imagine, when Dona Victorina learned that I was a steerage passenger she gazed at me with ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... 125 feet long. Number of persons on board: 27 engaged on the vessel, including the Captain, two mates, two cooks, two stewards and a carpenter, with nine passengers, making, with 152 steerage passengers, ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... there was now no alternative; but he was doing it on a system which, as he explained it to Roswell, was not only to leave him materials with which to construct a smaller craft in the spring, but which would allow of his inhabiting the steerage and cabin as long ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... have gone beyond it, as we discovered afterward, for the old lady's handkerchief was in her box, lost under some more of her property; and the tide of sleepy charity taking this direction under such vehement impulse, several other steerage passengers lost their goods, but found themselves too late in doing so. But the Major was satisfied, and the rude man who had told him to go amiss, begged his pardon, and thus we sailed ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... threatening aspect of the weather unexpectedly disappeared. A faint hot breeze from the land, just enough to give the ship steerage-way, offered Mr. Duncalf a chance of getting to sea. Slowly the Fortuna, with the mate himself at the wheel, half sailed, half drifted into the open ocean. At a distance of barely two miles from the island the ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... from the day that we made up our mind to try what luck there was in store for us in Australia, we were on board of a clipper ship, and with some two dozen other steerage passengers (for Fred and myself were determined to be economical) we were passing through the Golden Gate on our way to a strange land, where we did not possess a friend or acquaintance that ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... included the admirable account of the prison petition of John Dickens as the prison petition of Wilkins Micawber. There is no particular reason why even the gregarious Americans should so throng the portals of a perfectly obscure steerage passenger like young Chuzzlewit. There was every reason why they should throng the portals of the author of Pickwick and Oliver Twist. And no doubt they did. If I may be permitted the aleatory image, you bet they did. Similar troops of sociable ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... the less drawn to the idea because of a face she could see down in the steerage: face of an immigrant girl who was also turning eager face, not to the land for which her forefathers had fought, but to that which would be the land ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... a little rest, they would strike out for Havre or Boulogne, and take passage across on the first boat that could give them any sort of accommodations; for in the rush of American tourists to get home people were even willing to sleep in the steerage in order to quit the inhospitable shores of Europe ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... down the ladder to the gun-deck as Mr. Mouse, and making another dive down to the berth-deck, exchanging a rapid volley of pleasantry with the midshipmen in the steerage, he opened the wardroom door and entered. There, in a large open space, transversely dividing the stern of the ship, with rows of latticed-doored staterooms on either side, lighted by open skylights from above, with a barrel ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... the undulating wave, and "Boat a-hoy!" from the watchful quartermaster would bring us back to reality and the ship; overboard would go our magical cheroot, over the side our imaginative self, and having duly reported the important fact of our return on board, down we would dive through the steerage hatch, to conjure up again in dreams the dear face we saw in ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... steerage-way, or we can do nothing," I replied with quick tones, for we were within a few fathoms of the whirl of waters that were dashing through the crevasse. I felt the speed of the steamer increasing, and I firmly grasped the wheel ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... grave face, but once again he had a sharp misgiving about letting her go away alone. It seemed dangerous to turn her, practically an anchorite, loose among so many people. He wished, now, that he had let her brave the freezings of the saloon rather than the thawings of the steerage. But she seemed so confident, so eager, that he could say nothing to damp her spirits, only he was very glad, on going with her to look at her cabin, to find that she was to have it to herself. That, at any rate, prevented a too close intimacy that he ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt came to New Amsterdam as a "settler"—the euphemistic name for an immigrant who came over in the steerage of a sailing ship in the seventeenth century instead of the steerage of a steamer in the nineteenth century. From that time for the next seven generations from father to son every one of us ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... did not pace the deck, as most modern heroes do, for his passage was steerage, and there was very little deck for him to promenade. Just at first he was low-spirited, he felt the loneliness of his own company, everything seemed different without the bright companionship of his friend beside him. He felt ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... of these. It was crammed with emigrants. You know Langhetti's extraordinary pluck, and his queer way of devoting himself for others. Well, what did he do but this: as soon as the ship- fever broke out he left the cabin and took up his abode in the steerage with the sick emigrants. He is very quiet about this, and merely says that he helped to nurse the sick. I ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... nearly twenty pounds. This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself for want of money to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the match, and away, in thunder and lightning went the ball, which, entering the cabin windows, shattered the two young friends: thence raging through the bulk-heads and steerage, it shivered three sailors on the main deck, and, after all, bursting through the forecastle into the sea, sunk with sullen joy to ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... intellect, if only for the reason that not one person in a thousand has any; and birth does not count for much. Of course, it is quite true that all of our remote ancestors came over with William the Conqueror—I have sometimes thought that the number of steerage passengers his ships would accommodate must have been little short of marvellous—but it is equally true that the grandfathers of most of our leisure class were either deserving or dishonest persons—who either started life on a farm, and studied Euclid ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... until lunch-time, and then enjoyed hugely the novelty of the first meal on shipboard. After this, the young people went aft to look down upon the steerage passengers, and forward to the bow of the noble ship, while Mrs. Douglas ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... the Murrumbidgee that Fergus Carrick first heard the name of Stingaree. With the cautious enterprise of his race, the young gentleman had booked steerage on a river steamer whose solitary passenger he proved to be; accordingly he was not only permitted to sleep on the saloon settee at nights, but graciously bidden to the captain's board by day. It was there that Fergus Carrick encouraged ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... who is a gentleman, furnished them with flour, tea, sugar, porter, cold tongue, ham, eggs, etc., etc. The men remained about half an hour on board, and as they were remanning their boat we saw a whole cargo of eatables carried to it from our steerage passengers. You know that these are always poor people, who are often barely supplied themselves with necessaries for their voyage. The poor are almost invariably kind and compassionate to one another, and Gaffer Gray is half right ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... next day, when a device occurred to some inventive mind, possibly that of Mistress Bradstreet herself, which was immediately carried out. "Our children and others that were sick and lay groaning in the cabins, we fetched out, and having stretched a rope from the steerage to the main mast, we made them stand, some of one side and some of the other, and sway it up and down till they were warm, and by this means they ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... was dark enough, Captain Penman let his vessel drift landward with the tide, then running strong into the wide swallow of the Solway. The wind was light, and a jib was sufficient to give her steerage-way. It was intended that the passengers should be set on shore at a point nearly opposite to Julian Wemyss's house, where a spit of sand and the shoulder of cliff formed a neat little anchorage. The sailors of the Good Intent, accustomed ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... I am a miserable walker. I found it impossible to get back that night, so I took refuge with one of my friends who is sailing on Saturday. Every one seems to be sailing on that day, and most of them don't seem to care much how they get away—"ameliorated steerage," as they call it, seems to be the fate of many of them. I can assure you that I was glad enough to get back the next day. Silent as it is here, it is no more so than Paris, and not nearly so sad, for the change is not so great. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... mustered on poop and forecastle, and some were sent aloft to the tops to assist the tars there to sweep the British decks with handgrenade and musket. And, lastly, the surgeon and his mates went below to cockpit and steerage, to make ready for the grimmest ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... today along the great trade routes of the modern world, exchanging both the people and their products. The holds of the ships are filled with coal and grain and manufactured implements and commodities of every description, while their steerage space is crowded with modern Marco Polos and Magellans going forth to see the world. The Hindoo walks the streets of Cape Town, London, Sydney, New York, San Francisco, and Valparaiso; the Russian Jew is found in all the Old and New World cities; the Englishman and the American ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... was so powerful that, with a full head of steam and steering a few points off the eye of the wind, the ship could just hold her own. But when heavy gusts swooped down and the propeller raced on the crest of a mountainous wave, Davis found it impossible to keep steerage-way. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... afternoon I was reading in my deck-chair, drawn close to Mrs. Ess Kay's side, when that Mrs. Van der Windt whom Sally called a silly old thing, toddled up and spoke to us. "Do come and watch them dancing in the steerage," she said. "It's ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... crowded together on the lee of the smoke-stack, and kept up a stubborn cheerfulness on a very small capital of comfort. There were few cabin-passengers on board, but the usual crowd of emigrants in the steerage. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... of Alwyn Hill's romance wound itself up under his eyes. That the poor young woman in the steerage had been the young Duchess of Hamptonshire was never publicly disclosed. Hill had no longer any reason for remaining in England, and soon after left its shores with no intention to return. Previous to his departure he confided his story ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... met and fell in love with Mrs. Osbourne. So after she returned to her home in California, Stevenson received the news that she was seriously ill. He immediately sailed for San Francisco, travelling as a steerage passenger because of lack of funds and a desire for literary material. Out of this experience grew a number of stories and essays. Exposure on the voyage affected his health and caused a very dangerous illness. After his recovery he married Mrs. Osbourne and returned to England with his wife ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... its sincere religious worship of money and financial success—I should put its intense self-consciousness as a class. The world is a steamer in which it is travelling saloon. Occasionally it goes to look over from the promenade deck at the steerage. Its feelings towards the steerage are kindly. But the tone in which it says "the steerage" cuts the steerage off from it more effectually than many bulkheads. You perceive also from that tone that it could never be surprised by anything that the steerage might do. Curious social phenomenon, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... afterwards to have heard some indistinct rumor buzzed about the packet on the day preceding, that a gentleman, and some even spoke of him by name as a Colonel ——, for some unknown purpose, was concealed in the steerage of the packet. And other appearances indicated that the affair was not entirely a secret even amongst the lady's servants. To both of us the story proclaimed a moral already sufficiently current, viz., that women of the highest and the very lowest rank are alike thrown ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... be slowed down so as to give no more than steerage-way until oil lamps could be substituted for the binnacle, masthead, and side-lights, also for the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Benjamin, fiercely, turning his forbidding face to the glare of light from the canoe, and exhibiting every feature teeming with the expression of disgust. If you want to come aft and cun the boat round, come and be damned, and pretty steerage youll make of it. Theres but another heave of the net in the stern-sheets, and were clear of the thing. Give way, will ye? and shoot her ahead for a fathom or two, and if you catch me afloat again with such ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... answer, "those are owned or managed by the steamboat companies. They bring all the steerage passengers who can't show that they are citizens, and all the cabin passengers ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... patriotism they are prepared for mass suicide rather than leave. Because dukes are emigrating and sending the price of shippingspace into brackets which make the export of any commodity but diamonds or their own hides a dubious investment, even the pawning of all the family assets would not buy steerage passage for a year old baby. Besides there are not enough bottoms in the world to transport a hundred and fifty million people. If the Grass is not stopped, except for a negligible few, it will cover Americans when ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... this. Nineteen or twenty years old, homely as a mud fence; ungraceful, doltish, she sits staring out of the window and her eyes blink at the rain. A peasant from southeastern Europe, a field hand who fell into the steerage of a transatlantic liner and fell out again. Now she has a day off and she goes riding into the country on a ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... stature on that first night out from Libau. The battered old craft that carried him slouched before the waves that swept over her decks, but he was not afraid. Down among the million and one smells of the steerage he induced a thin-faced Livonian to play upon a mouth organ, and Big Ivan sang Paleer's "Song of Freedom" in a voice that drowned the creaking of the old vessel's timbers, and made the seasick ones forget their sickness. They sat up ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Mr. Falk, and Roger, whose duties included oversight of the cargo, supervision of matters purely of business and trade in foreign ports, and a deal of clerical work that Captain Whidden had no mind to be bothered with; three in the steerage—the cook (contrary, perhaps, to the more usual custom), the steward, and the carpenter; ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... strangers.[180] But we unsparing [of the toil,] when we beheld the crafty stratagem, laid hold of the female stranger and of the cables, and tried to drag the rudders from the fair-prowed ship from the steerage-place. But words ensued: "On what plea do ye take to the sea, stealing from this land the images and priestess? Whose son art thou, who thyself, who art carrying this woman from the land?" But he replied, "Orestes, her brother, that you may know, the son of ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... figure which he had seen silhouetted against the angry dawn had not again appeared to disturb or trouble him. His journey across the Atlantic had been uneventful; he had personally investigated the saloon passenger lists, the second and third cabins and the steerage of the Lusitania, not forgetting the crew, only to be reassured by the absence of anybody aboard who even remotely suggested an Indian spy. But from the hour that the Poonah with its miscellaneous ship's company, white, yellow, brown, and black, had warped out into the Thames, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... those odious men and women," said she: "such people should be steerage passengers. Are you going ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... up, a part of them at least, with rough pine boards for seats. The men of the Twenty-Third Regiment having, up to this period of their existence, missed somehow the disciplining advantages of "traveling in the steerage," or as emigrants or cattle, cannot be expected to appreciate at sight the luxury of the style of conveyance to which they are thus suddenly introduced. But we tumble aboard and dispose ourselves for a miserable night. A few of us are glum, and revolve horrible thoughts; ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... to arms, and forty of his crew prepared to board, with pistols in their hands and daggers held between their teeth. As soon as they got on deck, they rushed upon the affrighted crowd, who retreated to the steerage, and endeavored to defend themselves there. Lafitte thereupon ordered a second division to board, which he headed himself; the captain of the Indiaman was killed, and all were swept away in a moment. Lafitte caused a gun to be loaded ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... the passenger who had just placed his finger on his lip, and indicated a stolid-looking Chinaman, overlooked before, who was sitting in the back or "steerage" seat. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... acquaint the unfortunates who remained behind with their terrible calamity! This was their parting from Rome, at three o'clock, after midnight! But let us follow the victims of papal fury over the wide waters. Cast into the steerage, always handcuffed, the vessel rolling in a heavy and tempestuous sea, these wretched young men remained eighty hours in a painful position, till they reached Leghorn, where they were conducted to the quarantine, as though affected with leprosy and plague, and thence embarked for New York, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... wanted to tell you, Lester," he said, "that your guess was right. The mysterious Frenchman came over on La Touraine, landing at noon yesterday. He came in the steerage, and the stewards know nothing about him. What time was it ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... cheered because this indicated the end of their uncomfortable voyage; and even if new discomforts awaited them, they would, at least, be those occurring on shore and under broad heavens, in pure, cool air, where the fetid atmosphere of ship's steerage quarters ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... fish. Another boat shall be ready to take up whom I should direct, for fear of the worst: and then, if Tom. has a mind to be decent, one suit of mourning will serve for all three: Nay, the hostler-cousin may take his plunge from the steerage: and who knows but they may be thrown up on the beach, Thomasine and he, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... says his people set the fashion, and then wisely stopped when they found that such inventions did more harm than good. I think they have a right to complain of us. Why, there's one of our soldiers in the steerage with seventeen of their pigtails with the scalps still fastened to them as trophies! Old Chung says our ribbons and decorations are the equivalent of the scalps dangling at a savage's belt. I didn't tell him we had the genuine article. But, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... he said again. "I've had a beastly time. By God! I came steerage. I've got nothing but what I stand up in, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Cuffe; there is not a washerwoman or a shopkeeper in Naples who does not treat me exactly as if I were a podesta, and it were my duty to hear all the contentions about lost clothes and mislaid goods. His Majesty must appoint a Lord Chief Justice of the Steerage, to administer the law for the benefit of the young gentlemen, or he'll soon get no officer to serve with ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... reality. He had married Helen May and taken her himself to Los Angeles. But there had not been money enough for him to go any farther, and his chief had wired him peremptorily to return and arrest the leaders of the Alliance and all connected with it. So he had bought a steerage ticket for Helen May and put her aboard the boat, where she must herd with a lot of leering Chinamen. He had stood on the pier and watched the boat swing out and nose its way to the open sea, and a submarine ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... closest approach to a quarrel that had yet occurred. The other three men hastily threw themselves into the breach. "Shut up, you mick," Honey called to Pete. "Remember you came over in the steerage." ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... cause of the influence he exerted upon Farragut. "He took me under his charge, counseled me kindly, and inspired me with sentiments of true manliness, which were the reverse of what I might have learned from the examples I saw in the steerage of the John Adams. Never having had any real love for dissipation, I easily got rid of the bad influences which had assailed me in that ship." He noted also that, of the twelve or thirteen midshipmen there associated with him, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... a woman with a child by her side. She had made her way from the steerage. She was being deported, for she suffered from trachoma. She had been refused permission to land and join her husband who had stood outside the "pen" and gazed at her and the child. Quincy placed the woman ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... soldier was to take heart of grace, remembering that he had a son; remembering also that the son was now a man grown, stout of arm, steady of head, and otherwise fighting-fit. If the storm should come, the watchword must be to hold on all, keeping steerage-way on the Chiawassee Consolidated craft at all hazards. The June examinations were not far off, and these disposed of, the man-son would be ready to lay hold. Meanwhile, let Caleb Gordon, in his capacity of principal minor stock-holder, insist on a full and exact statement of the company's ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... dashed here and there, winding their foam wakes about the fleet, by night as well as by day. How they managed to avoid collisions in the dark was a mystery beyond imagining; Jimmie lay awake, picturing one of them plunging like a sharp spear into the rows of bunks in the steerage where he had been stowed. But when morning dawned, his berth was unspeared, and the watch-dogs of the sea ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... know," she said brusquely, "those people are actually going steerage? I'd no idea of it. Mr and Mrs Cotterill kept it from me, and I should not have heard of it only from something Nellie said. That's why they've gone to-day. The boat ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... but it was soon lost to the eye amid the confusion of the disturbed element. Along this narrow path the vessel moved more heavily than before, being brought so near the wind as to keep her sails touching. The pilot silently proceeded to the wheel, and, with his own hands, he undertook the steerage of the ship. No noise proceeded from the frigate to interrupt the horrid tumult of the ocean; and she entered the channel among the breakers, with the silence of a desperate calmness. Twenty times, as the foam rolled away to leeward, the crew were on the eve of uttering their joy, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... emigrants on board the merchant ship, in which Friend Hopper returned home. He soon established friendly communication with them, and entered with sympathy into all their troubles. He made frequent visits to the steerage during the long voyage, and always had something comforting and cheering to say to the poor souls. There was a clergyman on board, who also wished to benefit them, but he approached them in an official way, to which they did not so readily respond. One day, when he invited ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... endeavour to tack about. But it was too late, for within less than a quarter of an hour after they had eighteen fathom water, the ship struck upon a bank of sand, and there stuck fast. Whitelocke was sitting with some of the gentlemen in the steerage-room when this happened, and felt a strange motion of the frigate, as if she had leaped, and not unlike the curveting of a great horse; and the violence of the striking threw several of the gentlemen from ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... squarely in the eyes. Nothing more was said, and soon I reached the steward's office, unmolested. Here I found a number of men dressed in blue uniforms. They told me they were discharged members of the Eighth Indiana Volunteers. They were traveling to Kansas, steerage, saving their money so they might have it to invest in homes when they reached their destination. They had all heard of me, and now proposed to arm and defend me should there be any further hostile demonstrations. ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... 45 Tons, Square sterned, with a Round House, with a Partition under dividing the Cabin and Steerage, the Waste black, yellow Gunwales and Drift Rails, and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... doing the washing. And when she goes to Europe for the summer on the same ship with the Astors and the Vanderbilts, it sounds more magnificent than it really is. She is on the same ship, but about eleven decks down, in a corner of the steerage close to the stern, where the smells are rich and undisturbed. And she doesn't visit ruins and art galleries in Europe, but a huge circle of loving relatives, who pass her around from farm to farm for months, while she does amateur business agent work for the steamship ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... hand as a countryman that you will not breathe a word of this, whatever you hear. Beenah and I have sold a few little trinkets which our children gave us, and we have reckoned that with six pounds more we shall be able to take steerage passages and just exist till ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... her into the room, and heard the rest from his own lips. He gathered together all his small savings, and made his journey in the cheapest possible way,—in the steerage of the vessel, and in third-class carriages,—so that he might have some trifle left to ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... through the crew's quarters to the lowest sleeping deck of steerage. Here a few old people and some children, too discouraged, too indifferent, or too helpless, were clinging to their bunks. On the next deck he found a gathering in the open space surrounding a freight hatch. One whom he knew for a Polish woman, with her baby at her breast, ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... as if by a giant's hand. The crew managed to cut the wreckage away before it had pounded a hole in her side, and with what canvas they could set on the mizzen the captain attempted to drive her before the wind. But naturally enough the ship had no steerage-way and simply revolved in ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... mother she wastes on that miserable sickly babe, who would be a thousand times better dead than alive. If I leave her she will go back to St. Penfer. I have a hundred dollars; I will give her fifty of them. She can pay a steerage passage out of it or go in a sailing-vessel, or if she does not like that way she has things she can sell. If I give her half of what I have I do very ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... risk, we put the boat's head direct for the landing-place. By this time we had got so far out of the run of the current that we kept steerage way even at our necessarily gentle rate of rowing, and I could keep her steady for the goal. But the worst of it was, that with the course I now held, we turned our broadside instead of our stern to the Hispaniola, and offered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and newspapers. I never felt more happy than I did when I found one put into my hands. It is necessary to be far from home and friends, to feel the real delight of receiving a letter. I went down into the most solitary place in the steerage, that I might enjoy it without interruption. I cried with pleasure before I opened it, but I cried a great deal more with grief, after I had read the contents—for my eldest brother Tom was dead of a typhus fever. Poor Tom! when I called to mind what tricks he used to ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... he found an ancient tar Who served with RODNEY and his crew Against the French in 'Eighty-two, (That gained the peerage). He gave him fifty pounds a year, His rum, his baccy, and his beer; And had a comfortable den Rigged up in what, by merchantmen, Is called the steerage. ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... could not answer for the moment, the steerage claiming all his attention. When he turned towards the bank she was no longer there. He looked back over his shoulder. She had come to a dead halt and stood watching, her print gown glimmering in the dusk. And so, as the ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... visit the steerage forward nearly every day. There was an unmistakable lady so unfortunate as to be a passenger there. She appreciated our visits, and eventually confided the story of her life to my wife, and what a story it was of woman's ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... paused at the taffrail, by the side of the man who stood idle at the wheel, for the brig had not motion enough to give her steerage-way. This time Captain 'Siah listened longer than usual. From far away to seaward, between the peals of thunder, came a confused, roaring sound. At the same time a slight puff of air swelled the sails of the brig, and the helmsman ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... presently attracted her attention, and turning round, she saw that a steamer was arriving, and that the sailors were busy catching the thick cables and fastening the vessel to the wharf. The gangway was thrown across, and a few passengers stepped on shore. They had evidently travelled steerage—two or three women, with babies and bundles, and a party of Irish labourers come over for the harvest, with their belongings tied in red pocket-handkerchiefs; but after them strode a tall figure, with a grey moustache, at the sight of whom Honor sprang up from her seat with a perfect scream of ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... was a French merchant ship of three-hundred tons, home-bound from Quebec. The master gave us a long account of the distress of his ship; how the fire began in the steerage by the negligence of the steersman, which, on his crying out for help, was, as everybody thought, entirely put out; but they soon found that some sparks of the first fire had got into some part of the ship so difficult to come at that they ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... "Redoutable" on the other side, and the French "Fougueux" upon the "Temeraire," so that for a few minutes the four ships were fast together, in the heat of the fight. About quarter past two, the "Victory" was shoved clear, and lay with her head to the northward, though scarcely with steerage way. The three others remained in contact with their heads to the southward. While this melee was in progress, the French flagship "Bucentaure" surrendered, at five minutes past two; but, before hauling down the flag, Villeneuve made a signal to his recreant van,—"The ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Saronia slipped smoothly away from a Liverpool dock. Twenty-five hundred Americans—about twice the number the boat could comfortably carry—stood on her decks and cheered. Some of those in that crowd who had millions of money were booked for the steerage. All of them were destined to experience during that crossing hunger, annoyance, discomfort. They were to be stepped on, sat on, crowded and jostled. They suspected as much when the boat left the dock. ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... group were now called to work, and I was ordered below to bring up a hammock, and swing it in the steerage. I was vexed, as I would have given anything to have helped ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of an ocean-going steamer at close range and everything about it interested him. He wished he might have gone aboard and looked the vessel over. He would like to know about the engines and see the cabins, and especially the steerage about which he had read so much. But perhaps there would be an opportunity again. Surely there would be. He would go to Ellis Island, too, and see the emigrants as they came into the country, seeking a new home where they had been led to expect to find comfort and ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... spoken Portuguese their features would not have been sufficient to undeceive me. They were noble-looking men, and bore upon their faces the stamp of consecration to a noble work. On the other steamer, the Tchang, instead of a man with revolvers and a cutlass keeping guard over the steerage grating, a large hose pipe is laid on to each hatch-way, through which, in case of need, boiling water can be sent under strong pressure. Just as we landed here, about five hundred large fishes were passed through a circular net from a well in the steamer into a well in a ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... it should be carefully inculcated, that, to enter the road of life without caution or reserve, in expectation of general fidelity and justice, is to launch on the wide ocean without the instruments of steerage, and to hope that every wind will be prosperous, and that every coast will afford ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... most uncomfortable for the men. Four officers and 140 other ranks from the second line had joined us at Devonport and we were very overcrowded. Each man had a stuffy and inaccessible bunk and a place at a table in the steerage saloon for meals, which had to be served in three relays owing to the numbers on board. This meant either very perfect time keeping or very perfect chaos, and, needless to say, for the first few days it was the latter. The captain also ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... passengers on board. The four cabin places were taken by Count B—, myself, and two young people who hoped to make their fortune sooner in the Brazils than in Europe. The price of a passage in the first cabin was 100 dollars (20 pounds 16s. 8d.), and in the steerage 50 ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... and the talent of a Shakespeare. He had a sketch of Bez in his portfolio, which he was filling with crooked trees, common diggers, and ugly blackamoors. I could see no Shakespeare in Bez; he was nothing but a dissipated tailor who had come out in the steerage, while I had voyaged in the house on deck. I was, therefore, a superior person, and looked down on the young man, who was seated on a log near the fire, one leg crossed over the other, and slowly stroking his Elizabethan beard. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... lowering it down into the hold through a square opening in the deck of the ship. As for the trunk, my father took that with him to the place where he was going to be himself during the voyage. This place was called the steerage. It was crowded full of men, women, and children, all going to America. Some talked French, some German, some Dutch, and there were ever so many babies that were too little to talk at all. Pretty ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... anchor, and to make across them past the Whittaker Beacon into the channel as soon as there was sufficient water to enable him to do so. The wind was light, sometimes scarcely sufficient to belly out the sails and give the boat steerage way, at others coming in short puffs which heeled her over and made ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... promised to send back the amount of the draft immediately upon his arrival. In this letter Cabot also enclosed fifteen dollars, just to help White out until he could send him some more money. This outlay left our young engineer but twenty-five dollars, but that would pay for a steerage passage, which, he reflected, would be plenty good enough for one in his reduced circumstances, and leave a few dollars for emergencies when he reached ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... last, we got into the south-west monsoon for one day, and I sat up by the steersman in intense enjoyment—a bright sun and glittering blue sea; and we tore along, pitching and tossing the water up like mad. It was glorious. At night, I was calmly reposing in my cot, in the middle of the steerage, just behind the main hatchway, when I heard a crashing of rigging and a violent noise and confusion on deck. The captain screamed out orders which informed me that we were in the thick of a collision— of course I lay still, and waited till the row, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... Ship, and at 7 William Greenslade, Marine, either by Accident or design, went overboard and was Drowned. The following circumstances makes it appear as tho' it was done design'dly. He had been Centinel at the Steerage door between 12 and 4 o'clock, where he had taken part of a Seal Skin put under his charge, and which was found upon him. The other Marines thought themselves hurt by one of their party commiting a crime of this nature, and he being a raw young fellow, and, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... who sat on the cross trees with the night-glass in his hand, had been instructed to use extra vigilance. There was a heavy ground swell on, showing that there had recently been a blow somewhere, and the schooner had just breeze enough to give her steerage way, with nothing to spare. Marcy was thinking of home, and wondering how much longer it would be necessary for him to lead this double life, when he saw something that called him back to earth again. He took a short look at it through ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... ever saw. He was richer, in feeling, than the Vanderbilts. He said he had a wife and children in Liverpool, and would take the first steamer from New York for that port. He said he had not seen his family for several years, and now that he had the gold he could make them all happy. He was in the steerage. A few days after I heard he was sick. He had fainted. Some parties had helped him up; evidently pickpockets had taken that opportunity to rob him; his gold was all gone. I explained his case to Captain Porter, but nothing could be done. There was no way to identify his gold dust ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... six more "Choicest Flowers" arrived from San Francisco (rare orchids whose grandfathers had come over from Ireland in the steerage). The third son of an English baronet who owned a chicken-ranch near Los Angeles and a German count who sold Rhine wines to the best families also appeared; for that night Blakely's mother was to give such a dinner as had never before been given in ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... half hour, showing the sufferings of a poor Hindu buffeted around the world—a long, dreary portion of starvation, imprisonment and pain. The dramatic climax lifted me from the chair. It was his heaven and happiness. His stormy passage was ended. I saw him standing in the rain among the steerage passengers of an Atlantic steamer—and suddenly through the gray rushing clouds, appeared the Goddess of Liberty. He had come home at last—to a port of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... had any adventures on the steamer, for he came back steerage," Wrayson continued thoughtfully, "and he was in funds almost from the moment he landed in England. I am afraid, Mr. Barnes, that he must have been ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which they are made, tinned meats and fruits that look suspiciously like condemned provisions or unsavoury salvage; in fact the only really genuine article of diet was that contained in the milk-pails. I may here remark that these alien steerage passengers don't really care for wholesome food. Nothing could be better than the excellent food prepared by the ship's steward, but these emigrants prefer to bring with ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... going to try my fortune in a new world; that if I succeeded I should come back to bring her plenty and happiness, but if I failed I should never look upon her face again. I kissed her hand and the baby once, and slipped out of the room. Three nights after I was out at sea, bound for Melbourne, a steerage passenger with a digger's tools for my baggage, and seven shillings in my pocket. After three and a half years of hard and bitter struggles on the goldfields, at last I struck it rich, realised twenty thousand pounds, and a fortnight later I took my passage for England. All this time I had never ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... degree, depend on the tonnage which it is considered most proper to adopt. The utmost quantity of coals which any of them will require to carry, will be (Fayal to Barbadoes, and Fayal to Pernambuco) 300 tons. Airy accommodation for from fifty to sixty cabin passengers, and twenty-five to thirty steerage ditto, with the crew, will be all that is requisite, leaving a room for specie and the mails, and space for from forty to one hundred tons of goods. Since the present calculation was made, the price ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... with dangerous seas that way, too, but if it's the route you've decided on, that's all there is to it. What's going on with the three hundred Chinamen in the steerage?" ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... Register." On the 1st of September in the same year, the first steam vessel entered the harbor, the "Walk-in-the-Water," commanded by Captain Fish, from Buffalo, putting in on its way to Detroit. It was 300 tons burthen, had accommodations for one hundred cabin and a greater number of steerage passengers, and was propelled at eight or ten miles an hour. Its arrival and departure were greeted with several rounds of artillery, and many persons accompanied her ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... fact that during the voyage we passed two dolphins, one whale and one iceberg (none of them moving very fast at the time), and that on the fourth day out the sea was so rough that the Captain said that in forty years he had never seen such weather. One of the steerage passengers, we were told, was actually washed overboard: I think it was over board that he was washed, but it may have been on board ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... By steerage he made his way to America ... to Chicago ... all his works of art, his priceless manuscripts sold ... the money gone like water through the assiduities of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Gravesend for Sydney, in the full-rigged clipper ship Ariadne, of London, with one hundred and forty-seven other emigrants and eighteen first-class passengers. It was, I suppose, a part of my father's enthusiastically desperate state of mind at this time that we were booked as steerage passengers. We were to lay aside finally all the effete uses of sophisticated life. We were emigrants, bent upon carving a home for ourselves out of the virgin wilderness. Naturally, we were to travel in the steerage. And, indeed, I have good reason to suppose that my father's supply ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... such a course by wild wind, wild tide, and steerage and non-steerage, these three years, has become weary of its own existence, sees all men weary of it; and wishes heartily to finish. To the last, it has to strive with contradictions: it is now getting ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to leap out of bed, dash for the Liverpool train, and take passage for America on the first boat. But perhaps the officials in charge of the emigrants and the steerage (and of course a fellow would go steerage to save money) would want to know his religion and the color of his hair—as bad as trying to ship. They might hold him up for a couple of days. There were quarantines and customs and things, of which he had heard. Perhaps for two or even three days more ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... doctor," interrupted the woman I had heard called Clayton by her mistress. "He had not time to do more than inquire about you, I suppose, there are so many ill in the steerage; but he has been very kind and will ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... down stream in the upper reaches of a river is even more exciting and pleasurable. The crew paddles sufficiently to keep good steerage way on the boat, as it glides swiftly between the rocks and shallows; as it shoots over the rapids, the steersman stands up to choose his path, the water splashes and gurgles and leaps over the gunwale, and ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... I always travel steerage; I'd sooner eat my Sunday hat Than take a nasty Peerage; Such sops the snobbish crowd may soothe, But not yours ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... up the fore-topgallant and royal-masts again and were once more under all plain sail; while, as for the two Indiamen, built as cargo-carriers rather than for speed, they appeared to scarcely have steerage-way, and seemed to maintain their luff only with the utmost difficulty—indeed, there were times when they fell so broad off as to present their full broadsides to us. But although their capture ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... prudently answered; "she was sitting on a sofa, close to the steerage, and gave me—bless ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... West Australia, steerage—Mitchell, the Oracle, and I. I had gone over saloon, with a few pounds in my pocket. Mitchell said this was a great mistake—I should have gone over steerage with nothing but the clothes I stood upright in, and come back saloon with a pile. He said it was a very common mistake that men ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... naturalization laws that were more than liberal, agencies for the encouragement of settlers organized by individual States and by railroad corporations and other great landed proprietors, and the eager competition of steamship companies drumming for steerage passengers in all parts of Europe—all these cooeperated with the growing facility and cheapness of steam transportation to swell the current of migration. The discovery of gold in California quickened the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... it? For the Argo is supposed to have measured only twenty-seven tons: how she would have been classed at Lloyd's is hard to say, but certainly not as A 1. There was no state-cabin; everybody, demi-gods and all, pigged in the steerage amongst beans and bacon. Greece was naturally proud of having crossed the herring-pond, small as it was, in search of an entrenched enemy; proud also of having licked him 'into Almighty smash;' ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... fare consisted of fourteen ounces of hard bread, a pound and a quarter of salt beef or one of pork, per day, and half a pint of souchong tea, with sugar, per man. The pork and beef were served alternately: rice and beans, each once a week; corn-meal pudding with molasses, ditto; on Sundays the steerage passengers were allowed a bottle of Teneriffe wine. All except the four partners, Mr. Lewis, acting as captain's clerk, and Mr. T. M'Kay, were in the steerage; the cabin containing but six berths, besides ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... testify in prayer-meeting she always mentioned her "cross" and everybody knew that the cross was Luther. She carried him, but it is no more than fair to say that she didn't provide him with cushions. She never let him forget that he was a steerage passenger. However, Lute was well upholstered with philosophy, of a kind, and, so long as he didn't have to work his passage, was happy, even if the voyage ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... they sighted and passed, within a quarter of a mile, a big battleship. She was riding head to wind, and apparently steaming ahead dead slow, or, at all events, merely at a speed sufficient to give her steerage-way. She was making positively frightful weather of it, diving deeply into every sea, as it met her, and literally burying herself in a perfect smother of whiteness which had no time to flow off ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... fire to the Philadelphia, which had fallen into the hands of pirates at Tripoli, and helping Thomas Truxtun in 1799-1800 when the Constellation whipped the Frenchmen, L'Insurgente and La Vengeance. In wardroom or steerage almost every man could tell of engagements in which he had behaved with credit. Trained in the school of hard knocks, the sailor knew the value of discipline and gunnery, of the smart ship and the willing crew, while on land the soldier rusted ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... under way an old woman came across her in the steerage, and exclaimed, "Why, child, where ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... small door that is open for a moment only, and find ourselves in an apartment about fifteen feet square. We can touch the ceiling on tiptoe, yet there are three tiers of bunks placed with head boards to the wall, and each bunk just broad enough for two occupants. It is like the steerage in an emigrant vessel, eminently shipshape. Every bunk is filled; some of the smokers have had their dream and lie in grotesque attitudes, insensible, ashen-pale, having the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... read 'First Cabin with Meals,'" said Fred. "Those meals aren't good enough for steerage passengers. Unless you ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... porters, I threaded my way at a snail's pace through the dense crowd of waiting passengers, swarthy-faced sons of Italy, apparently bound for the steerage. The great gray bulk of the Re d'Italia loomed before me, floating proudly at her stern the green, white, and red flag ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the yellow glare of a large lamp hanging from the shed. He had taken off his hat, and was waving it to his son. It seemed to Henry suddenly that the old man's hair was very grey and thin.... He took out his handkerchief and waved it vigorously in response. Somewhere in the steerage people were singing ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the cockpit and quickly lowered the centerboard. Almost at once the Wavecrest began to ride more evenly. I could see little but the beacon, the night was so black; but I ran to the tiller and found that the sloop was under good steerage way and answered her ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... head domestic of each petty baron—deemed it not advisable to interfere with the favourite of the Lady, and especially since she had brought the estate into the present family. Master Jasper Wingate was a man experienced, as he often boasted, in the ways of great families, and knew how to keep the steerage even when the wind and tide chanced to ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Shoemaker" keenly enjoyed the whole of the voyage. He breathed the fresh, briny air with much relish; the wonders of the sea furnished him with many instructive and pious thoughts; and the ship itself supplied him with an inexhaustible fund of interest. In particular, he paid frequent visits to the steerage, where large numbers of emigrants were bestowed. He spent many hours amongst these poor people; and, by entering into conversation with such of them as were disposed to talk, he became acquainted with many cases of necessity, which he was not slow to relieve. ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... left to fret for nearly a week; though what he could have done had he been at liberty, he knew as little as I know. At last, long after it was useless to make any inquiry about Miss Lindsay, he was set at liberty. He could just pay for a steerage passage to London, whence he wrote to Dr. Anderson for a supply, and was in Aberdeen a few ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to remain all night on deck. On the next morning all hands were called and placed on the forecastle, booms and gangways, excepting the officers and such part of the crew in whom Captain Barry confided, who, armed strongly, guarded the quarterdeck, the steerage and the main deck to keep the remainder of the crew together on the forecastle and boom. The three designated men were brought out of their irons on the quarterdeck, and being stripped and hoisted by the thumbs to the ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... are not proof against fate, and most of these notable personages perished as pitiably as the more humble steerage passengers. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... One often sees a grasping parent in the court, utterly broken down when the Americanized youth who has been brought to grief clings as piteously to his peasant father as if he were still a frightened little boy in the steerage. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... again and eyeing him. "I put it to you, now. Here I be, tumbled out 'pon a terminus platform in a country I've never set eyes on. As if that wasn' enough, straightaway things start to happen so that I want to hold my head. And as if that wasn' enough, you work loose on the jawin' tacks till steerage way there's none. ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the professor quietly. "A ship, once fairly entangled in the grass or sea weed, seldom gets out. If it is a sailing ship the weed clings to the rudder, making steerage impossible, and even in a strong wind the ship cannot get free of the mass. The grass winds about the propellers of steamships, and holds them as ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... matter of fact, there was nothing for him to do. The ship had no steerage way. She lay with her head to the westward, the everlasting Koh-ring visible over the stern, with a few small islets, black spots in the great blaze, swimming before my troubled eyes. And but for those bits ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... who was one of this party, was very much interested in the billows, and in the attentions of a student who sat opposite her. From time to time she remarked also on some of the steerage passengers on the deck below; particularly was she interested in a young girl who sat watching the threatening swells emerge from the mist. Miss Sylvia spoke to the young lady alongside of her about that interesting young girl in the ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... lost many hours in indecision. As soon as he had made up his mind what to do, he wired to find out if there were still a berth to be had on board the New York bound ship sailing from Cherbourg next day. Even if he had been forced to travel in the steerage he would have gone, though he keenly disliked physical hardships; but he was fortunate, and obtained a good cabin for himself. As soon as this matter was arranged he left for Cherbourg; and next day, on board his ship, gazing across the tumbled gray expanse of ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... sailor's clothes that Dan had bought for him. Vincent had given him full instructions as to the course he was to pursue. The ship was bound for Liverpool; on his arrival there he was at once to go round the docks and take a passage in the steerage of the next ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... Canada from Ireland. This aid consisted of a free ocean passage. Many who could not convince the Government of their desirability and yet could raise the money, came with them, paying their regular steerage rate of $15. These were alike to the outside world, but not to themselves. Those who paid their way were "passengers," and were, in their own opinion, many social worlds above the assisted ones, who were called "Emmy Grants." This distinction was never ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... an hour, with never an instant's pause between sight and stroke. The Indian in the stern took his cue from Dominique; now paddling for dear life, now flinging his body back as with a turn of the wrist he checked the steerage. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... five-and-twenty, and could hardly look on anything requiring agility or dexterity without attempting it, so I consented, with a renewal of the sensations I remembered when, as a child, I had danced with grown-up men, only with alarm at the responsibility of what Dermot called "the steerage of the Great Harry," since collision with such momentum as ours might soon be would be serious; but I soon found my anxiety groundless; he was too well made and elastic to be clumsy, and had perfect power over his own weight and strength, so that he could dance as ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge |
