"Nautical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... directions. When we returned at the appointed time, the boy was missing. None of the household had seen him for an hour. Each supposed that someone else had taken charge of him. After a twenty minutes' search in all directions by the whole establishment, he was discovered at the window of a nautical instrument maker's shop, eight or ten doors below the inn, on the same side of the street, within the recess of the door-way, gazing in riveted attention on the attractive display before him. The owner told me that he had noticed him ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... and even with the greatest care errors were unavoidable and numerous. Thus in a multipltcation-table prepared by a man so eminent as Dr. Hutton for the Board of Longitude, no fewer than forty errors were discovered in a single page taken at random. In the tables of the Nautical Almanac, where the greatest possible precision was desirable and necessary, more than five hundred errors were detected by one person; and the Tables of the Board of Longitude were found equally incorrect. But such errors were impossible to be avoided so long as the ordinary ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... have been going to write a faithful history of what was said, done, and suffered on the occasion ever since, and now put my design into execution, even at the risk of having my head combed with a three-legged stool by my excellent wife, who, when she sees this in print, will be taken, in nautical phrase, all aback. But, when a history of our own shortcomings, mishaps, mistakes, and misadventures will do others good, I am for giving the history and pocketing the odium, if there be such a thing as odium attached to revelations of human weakness ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... had kept the nautical instruments which they carried over the deserts of Northern Africa, and they amused themselves by taking daily observations and calculating the ship's position. Sometimes they were wrong, and sometimes they were right, ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... one of five ports equally efficient, equally protected, and equally furnished with the products of mechanic and nautical invention. Brest, L'Orient, and Rochefort, on the west, have far greater natural and scarcely less acquired advantages; while the old port of Toulon on the Mediterranean, old only in name, has been so enlarged and strengthened, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... which opened into the cook-room. Over the table was a rack for bottles and glasses, and there was a score of lockers filled with dishes and other table ware, with charts, books, compasses, and other nautical necessaries. A handsome spy-glass hung on a pair of brackets. At the end of the transoms were several cushions, used as pillows, and some robes to cover ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... or going about the docks at Liverpool, "Consul Hawthorne" was evidently a very typical New Englander abroad, and popular with his own people. He had laid the author off, and was as purely a practical man of nautical affairs as would be found in any shipping office in the city; and it needed no close observer to see that the native element in him was of a very obstinate ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... gale (in nautical language, sixty-five miles or more an hour) and as the submarine chaser was meeting the seas on a slant, it might almost as well have been a hurricane. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... decrease due to the ceasing of that current. The possible speed of signalling was found to be very nearly proportional to the squares of the lengths spoken through. Thus, a speed which gave fifteen dots per minute in a length of 2191 nautical miles reproduced all the effects given by a speed of thirty dots in a length of 1500. At these speeds, with ordinary Morse signals, speaking would be barely possible. In the Red Sea, a speed of from seven to eight words per minute was attained ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Dundonald's matchless ruse de guerre. He was as deeply religious as Havelock or one of Cromwell's major-generals; he had the frugality of a Scotchman, and the heavy-footed common-sense of a Hollander. He was as nautical as a web-footed bird, and had no more "nerves" than a fish. A domestic Englishman, whose heart was always with the little girls at Brokehall, in Suffolk, but for whom the service of his country was a piety, and who might have competed with Lawrence for ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... a nautical area, and could imagine the excitement that would be caused amongst the natives when the beacon fires warned them of the approach of the Spanish Armada, for Dartmouth was then regarded as ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... I sat and smoked my pipe in the heathery garden of Strathmyrtle, a shooting-lodge at which we were being hospitably entertained by Kitty's uncle, Sir John Rubislaw, a retired Admiral of the Fleet, whose forty years' official connection with Britannia's realm betrayed itself in a nautical roll, syncopated by gout, and what I may describe as a hurricane-deck voice. My three companions in the debate were my host, Master Gerald, and another guest in the house, one Dermott, an officer in ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... party turned their thoughts to nautical affairs. Shelley had already done a good deal of boating with Williams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occasion nearly lost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They now determined to build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea; ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... manoeuvres commanded by Baptiste, the expressive sneer with which he criticised his decisions, and a few biting remarks which had escaped him in the course of the day, and which had conveyed any thing but compliments to the nautical skill of the patron and his fresh-water followers. Still there were signs of better stuff in this suspicious-looking person than are usually seen about men, whose attire, pursuits and situation, are so indicative of the world's pressing hard upon their principles, as happened to be the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... is what we nautical Men shout to one another as we pass in our Ships. The Answer is generally only an Echo; but you will have to tell me something more. I find it rather disgusting to set you an example by telling of my Doings; for it ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... jerk the boat's head sharply round to avoid a barge or an anchored vessel. It seemed to Racksole that vessels were anchored all over the stream. He looked about him anxiously, but for a long time he could see nothing but mist and vague nautical forms. Then suddenly he said, quietly enough, 'We're on the right road; ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... greater danger was at hand, and one that it was too late to prevent. About half-past eleven, John Mangles and Wilson, who stayed on deck throughout the gale, were suddenly struck by an unusual noise. Their nautical instincts awoke. John seized the sailor's hand. "The ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... at the bead of Indian gold which Mordacks pulled out of his pocket. Buttons are a subject for nautical contempt and condemnation; perhaps because there is nobody to sew them on at sea; while ear-rings, being altogether useless, are held ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... suggestions from his meetings with frank, unconscious, and individual people of tastes and life unlike his own. I have heard it told with a polite, self-satisfied scorn, that he was in the habit of visiting now and then a tavern patronized by 'longshore-men and nautical veterans, to listen to their talk. I can well believe it, for it is this sort of intercourse that a person of manly genius, with a republican fellow-feeling for the unrenowned, most covets. How well he gives the tone of these old sea-dogs, when he writes: "The blast will ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... case. The bold project, so boldly avowed, seemed to him a sheer absurdity. The "Dandy" and a crew of nine convicts navigate a brig round the world! Preposterous; why, not a man aboard could work a reckoning! His nautical fancy pictured the Osprey helplessly rolling on the swell of the Southern Ocean, or hopelessly locked in the ice of the Antarctic Seas, and he dimly guessed at the fate of the deluded ten. Even if they got safe ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... shop did not thrive, and the large dreams she had entertained of her sons' education and career became attenuated in the face of realities. Their schooling was of the plainest, but, being by the sea, they grew alert in all such nautical arts and enterprises as were attractive ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... laid in the interior of Daland's house, the large living-room, where a flock of girls sit around the fire with their spinning-wheels. Beside the maps and pictures of nautical interest forming the natural decoration of a sea-captain's house, there hangs on the wall the picture of a pale black-bearded man, dressed in the Spanish fashion of years ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... eighteen; and this misfortune is the subject of his poem. Again, in 1760, he was cast away in the Channel. In 1769, the Aurora frigate, of which he was the purser, foundered in Mozambique Channels, and he, with all others on board, went down with her. The excellence of his nautical directions and the vigor of his descriptions establish the claims of his poem; but it has the additional interest attaching to his curious experience—it is his autobiography and his enduring monument. The picture of the storm is very fine; but in the handling of his verse there is more ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... it as the spot where that ingenious pirate and empire-maker had once landed his vessels and scraped the barnacles from his adventurous keels. But of this Edgar Pomfrey—or "Captain Pomfrey," as he was called by virtue of his half-nautical office—had thought little. ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... it, so tenacious is public opinion of its errors; but since that time, naval officers of rank have written on the subject, and stripped the Nile, Trafalgar, &c, of their poetry, to give the world plain, nautical, and probable accounts of both those great achievements. The truth, as relates to both battles, was just as little like the previously published ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... keep her head a little more up the stream, will you?' said Cluffe, thinking no evil, and only to show his nautical knowledge. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... d'Apres De Mannevillette published his "Neptune Oriental," in which he rectified the charts of the African, Chinese, and Indian coasts. He added to it a nautical guide, which was the more precious at this period, as it was the first of the kind. Up to the close of his life he amended his manual, which served as a guide for all French naval officers during the latter ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... he said. "Look here!" and he pulled a greasy book from his pocket. "Here is a nautical almanack. What day is it? December 23rd, or rather some time in the morning of December 24th, Christmas Eve. On the evening of December 24th it is full moon, and dead low water at Falmouth about 11.30 p.m. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... so much died as "slipped his wind"—a nautical expression that conveys the idea of an easy exit. He went off, quiet and genteel. He was past eighty, and had lived fast. His servant called him at seven in the morning. "I will shave at eight," said Mr. Cibber. John brought the hot water at eight; but his master had taken advantage of this interval ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Hospital" designs, which must not be passed over. "Greenwich Hospital" is a hearty, good-natured book, in the Tom Dibdin school, treating of the virtues of British tars, in approved nautical language. They maul Frenchmen and Spaniards, they go out in brigs and take frigates, they relieve women in distress, and are yard-arm and yard-arming, athwart-hawsing, marlinspiking, binnacling, and helm's-a-leeing, as honest seamen invariably ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... slant to the earth's orbit plane as theirs, crossed that plane ascendingly and descendingly at almost exactly the same points, and made its nearest approach to the sun at very nearly the same place. To the astronomer such evidence is decisive. Mr. Hind, the superintendent of the "Nautical Almanac," and as sound and cautious a student of cometic astronomy as any man living, remarked, so soon as the resemblance of these comets' paths had been ascertained, that if it were merely accidental, the case was most unusual; nay, it might be described as unique. And, be it noticed, he was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... morning it was still clear, and the temperature was down to minus 45 deg.. Again we made a fair march of not less than twelve nautical miles, crossing in the first half many cracks and narrow leads, and in the latter half traversing an unbroken series of old floes. I felt confident that this zone of numerous leads which we had crossed in the last two marches was the "Big Lead," and was ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... down and bale them out has always been our aim; But you, you just play larks with them. What is your little game? You, young, the latest chap on board, but of a sound old stock Of Royal navigators, do you think it right to mock All nautical traditions in this reckless kind of way, And greet these waves, as BYRON did, as though with them you'd play? They're dangerous playfellows, boy; tiger-cubs hardly in it For riskiness! I say, do stop! You'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... series of desultory conversations here set down. It is talk on board ship, or specimen "yarns," such as really are to be picked up from nautical men. The article usually served up for magazine-consumption is, of course, utterly unlike anything here given, and is as entirely undiscoverable anywhere on salt water as the three legendary rocks above alluded to. The place was the deck ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... usually, "A bloody war and a sickly season." Some few were gentlemanly, but the majority were every-day characters—when on deck doing little, and when below doing less. Books they had very few or none; as an instance of it, we had only one, except the Hamilton Moore's and the Nautical Almanack, among ten of us, and that was "Extracts from the Poets." One of the mates above mentioned, seeing me moping with the blue devils, brought it me. "Here," said he, "is a book nobody reads. I have looked into it myself, but there is so much dry stuff in ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... scenery in "We," such as the vivid account of Bermuda and the waterspout in Chapter XI., and that of the fire at Demerara in Chapter XII., and she owed to the same kind helpers also the accuracy of her nautical phrases and her Irish dialect. Certainly this second part of the tale is full of interest, but I cannot help wishing that the materials had been made into two books instead of one. There are more than enough characters ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... Tower, now, driving that same 'goose-pen' which he speaks of as such a safe instrument for unfolding practical doctrines, with such patient energy, is not now occupied with the statistics of Noah's Ark, grave as he looks; though that, too, is a subject which his nautical experience and the indomitable bias of his genius as a western man towards calculation in general, together with his notion that the affairs of the world generally, past as well as future, belong properly to his sphere as a man, will require him to take up and examine and report upon, before ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... my chair—then sank back again with a laugh at my imagination's too vivid power of portrayal. A figure did certainly present itself, but one of sufficient bulk to convince me of its substantiality. This was the captain of the 'Diana,' a cheery-looking personage of a thoroughly nautical type, who, approaching me, lifted his cap ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... falls into the tone of one's surroundings. Here I have caught the tone of the bored man of society, there you will see that I shall be a breezy sailor—cheerful in storm or in calm, ready to take my glass and to toast my lass and all the rest of it in true nautical fashion." ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... taken as a proof of their familiarity with the stage; whereas, in fact, it only shows their unfamiliarity with theatrical history. They might as well set forth to describe a modern battleship in the nautical terminology of Captain Marryat. "Right First Entrance," "Left Upper Entrance," and so forth, are terms belonging to the period when there were no "box" rooms or "set" exteriors on the stage, when the sides of each scene were composed of ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Captain Guy, stepping forward, "of course she is. Why not?" I made no answer, but with open arms I rushed upon Mary Phillips and folded her in a wild embrace. I heard a burst of nautical oaths, and probably would have been felled by a nautical fist, had not Mary ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... sense of [Greek: keleyo] arises its nautical meaning, also [Greek: keleystes], the man who gives the signal and cheers on the rowers. See Mollus on Long. Past. iii. 14. So Athenaeus, xii. p. 535: [Greek: Chrusoyonos men eylei to trierikon. Callipses ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... strange, unpleasant-looking fellows, dressed up in scraps of incongruous clothing, semi-nautical, semi-agricultural. One was completely enveloped in a great-coat that had belonged to a very tall and stout man, and he was short and thin. Another was incompletely dressed, for what garments he had on were in rags that afforded glimpses between them of tattered ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... dismounted and taken "ashore," to borrow a nautical phrase. These were set up in strategic positions before the liner, and full supplies of ammunition both blank and ball ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... our intention to enter into a comparison of the contents of our Nautical Almanack with those of its rival, the Connaissance des Temps; but we shall defer it for the present. The Nautical Almanack for 1851 will contain Mr. Adams's paper 'On the Perturbation of Uranus'; and when it comes, in due ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... added, "out there lies true existence! And I can imagine the founding of nautical towns, clusters of underwater households that, like the Nautilus, would return to the surface of the sea to breathe each morning, free towns if ever there were, independent cities! Then again, who knows whether ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the facts to be established are such that any ordinary person can speak concerning them with reasonable accuracy, or whether they can be understood only by persons who have received special training. A landsman could well testify that a naval battle had occurred, but only a man with nautical training could accurately describe the maneuvers of the ships and tell just how the engagement progressed. A coal heaver's description of a surgical operation would establish nothing, except perhaps the identity of the people and ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... stocked with kitchen herbs and adorned with a few flowers. The whole front of the cottage was overrun with a honeysuckle. On the top was a ship for a weathercock. The interior was fitted up in a truly nautical style, his ideas of comfort and convenience having been acquired on the berth-deck of a man-of-war. A hammock was slung from the ceiling which in the daytime was lashed up so as to take but little room. From the centre of the chamber hung a model of a ship, of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... deep and mellow voice, and his words rolled and rumbled out like the reverberations of a good-natured thunder storm. From the windows of the bright, breeze-swept office the boys could look far out to sea, and it was possible that the faintly nautical atmosphere that appertained both to the office and its occupant was due to the sight and smell of the salt water. While Steve told his story the lawyer's expression slowly changed from jovial amusement ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... so it is. How stupid in me! I suppose all my nautical learning went down in 'The Aquidneck.' By the way, Mr. Brady and I are talking of going up to the wreck soon to try what can be got out of her by diving. Wouldn't you ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... can overrule all feelings into compliance with the master-key. Some of these rambles led me to great distances, for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time; and sometimes in my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... tin canister, about fifteen inches square, filled with spare shirting, trowsers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilized life, and others in a bag, which were expected to wear out on the way; another of the same size for medicines; and a third for books, my stock being a Nautical Almanac, Thomson's Logarithm Tables, and a Bible; a fourth box contained a magic lantern, which we found of much use. The sextant and artificial horizon, thermometer, and compasses were carried apart. My ammunition was distributed in portions through the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... with which she greeted him. She had not yet ventured to rebel against his authority, although she had frequently hinted her remonstrances and wrongs. But there was now a darkness charged with thunder on her brow, and the fermier-general began seriously (in nautical phrase) to ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... into which it has fallen, attained this object by "arming" the bottom of the lead with a lump of grease, to which more or less of the sand or mud, or broken shells, as the case might be, adhered, and was brought to the surface. But, however well adapted such an apparatus might be for rough nautical purposes, scientific accuracy could not be expected from the armed lead, and to remedy its defects (especially when applied to sounding in great depths) Lieut. Brooke, of the American Navy, some years ago invented a most ingenious machine, by which a considerable portion of the superficial layer ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to the delay in the arrival of the reinforcements under Major-General Alured Clarke, without which an advance on Cape Town was perilous. The Dutch meanwhile received supplies from interlopers, concerning whom Elphinstone wrote with nautical emphasis: "The seas are infested with Americans, Danes, Genoese, Tuscans, etc., or in other terms smuggling ships, mostly belonging to Britain and Bengal, entrenched with oaths and infamy, who trade to the French islands [Bourbon, etc.] and all the ports in India, changing their ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... he is the S. often mentioned in Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast." Dana and Stimson were friends, and ran away together. It was quite the rule for all my Yankee cousins to do this, and they all benefited by it. In consequence of his nautical experience Sam was soon at home among all sailors, and not having my scruples as to knowing who was who or their affairs, soon knew everything that was going on. Our captain was a handsome, dissipated, and "loud" young man, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... framework of the awning; the side-screens had been lowered all round; Captain Whalley filling the depths of the wicker-chair seemed to sit benumbed in a canvas tent crudely lighted, and used for the storing of nautical objects; a shabby steering-wheel, a battered brass binnacle on a stout mahogany stand, two dingy life-buoys, an old cork fender lying in a corner, dilapidated deck-lockers with loops of ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... York Nautical School on board the ship St. Mary's must not be confounded with the school-ship Mercury, which formerly existed at this port; the latter was a floating reformatory, while the former was established for the purpose of training American boys ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of Osborne v. Aaron's Reef, Limited, Mr. Justice CHITTY, in the interests of the public, was justly severe on both plaintiff and defendants, declining "to give any costs in this action to such a Company." Everyone is familiar with the nautical expression of "taking in a reef," which seems to have been a slightly difficult operation for anyone to perform with AARON's Reef, which, after the manner of AARON's Rod, when it was transformed into a serpent, appears ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... means of conveyance across the scant streams whose fordable waters made even those scarcely a necessity. The long, narrow, hooded wagon, drawn by swaying oxen, known familiarly as a "prairie schooner," in which he journeyed across the plains to California in '53, did not help his conception by that nautical figure. And when at last he dropped upon the land of promise through one of the Southern mountain passes he halted all unconsciously upon the low banks of a great yellow river amidst a tangled brake of strange, reed-like grasses that were unknown to ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... previous year, and, looking on them as a great rarity, he had kept them to be placed on the table before his royal guests. As he knew more about ploughing the ocean than ploughing the land, and affairs nautical than horticultural, it did not occur to him that fresh green peas were to obtained on shore. The bottled green peas were therefore proudly produced on ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... a pipe, followed by a hulking nautical form, hove slowly in sight as he spoke, and never did a sail cheer the eyes of shipwrecked mariners as did this apparition bring comfort to Dick ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... seeing the fix I was in, gave me a helping hand, and up I crawled as far as the maintop. This, I must explain to my non-nautical reader, is not the mast-head, but a comparatively comfortable half-way resting-place, from whence one can look about feeling ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... the ladies helped Primmie clear the table while the men sat in the sitting room and smoked. The sitting room of the light keeper's home was even more nautical than that at the Phipps' place. There was no less than six framed paintings of ships and schooners on the walls, and mantel and what-not bore salt-water curios of many kinds handed down by generations of seafaring Halletts—whales' ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... constructed from a model and under the personal supervision of Engineer Serko, and fitted with all the known appliances of nautical science. The screw was worked with electric piles of recent invention which imparted enormous propulsive power to ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... added considerably to its flow. By now the sun was shining, and the rain clouds had about vanished, being "hull-down" in the distance, as Jud expressed it; for since they were now on a voyage, he said that they might as well make use of such nautical terms as they ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... Food is excellent, society charming, captain and engineer quite acquisitions. The saloon is square and roomy for the size of the vessel, and most things, from rowlocks to teapots, are kept under the seats in good nautical style. We call at the guard-ship to pass our papers, and then steam ahead out of the Gaboon estuary to the south, round Pongara Point, keeping close into the land. About forty feet from shore there is a good ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... outside of that mysterious and somewhat suggestive nautical hindrance the coasting steamers anchor, while the smaller local fry find harbour nearer to the land. The passenger is not recommended to go ashore—indeed, many difficulties are placed in his way, and he usually stays on board while the steamer ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... drawn 46 1/2 deg. further to the east, that is to say, as much further as it is from Berlin to the coast of Labrador, or to the lesser Altai; for, in the latitude of Calcutta 46 1/2 deg. are equivalent to two thousand five hundred and seventy-five nautical miles. Albo's log-book gives the difference in longitude between the most eastern islands of the Archipelago and Cape Fermoso (Magellan's Straits), as 106 deg. 30', while in reality it amounts to 159 ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... day the principal quality sought was beef. Being embryo sailors we had to have nautical terms for our signals, and they made our opponents sit up and take notice. When I played halfback I remember my signals were my order relating to the foremast. For instance, 'Fore-top-gallant clew lines ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... London. He saw Nancy Jarvis, became enamoured of the fisherman's daughter, told his tale of love, and was accepted. The old man was rather averse to the match; for, in his eyes, no man was worthy of his Nancy, who was not a genuine son of the sea. Robert Green at last succeeded in overcoming his nautical prejudices; and a day was fixed for the wedding. Nancy's rosy, artless face was all smiles and sunshine, as night after night she sauntered past Flora's windows, leaning upon the arm of her betrothed. Only two days previous to the one appointed for the wedding, the father ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... society, of English rural society, and of clerical society, which Fielding, by birth and education, knew much better than Smollett. But Smollett had the advantage of his early years in Scotland, then as little known as Japan; with the "nautical multitude," from captain to loblolly boy, he was intimately familiar; with the West Indies he was acquainted; and he later resided in Paris, and travelled in Flanders, so that he had more experience, certainly, if not more ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... all I possibly could to impress upon him the responsibility Germany was taking for herself and for us by her decision in this question, pointing out very particularly that before any decision was arrived at our opinion from a nautical-technical standpoint must also be heard, in which the Secretary ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... rather than waning, buffeted them for two days with immense unintermittent surges; and being not far from the island of Majorca, as the third night began to close in, wrapt in clouds and mist and thick darkness, so that they saw neither the sky nor aught else, nor by any nautical skill might conjecture where they were, they felt the ship's timbers part. Wherefore, seeing no way to save the ship, each thought only how best to save himself, and, a boat being thrown out, the masters first, and then the men, one by one, though the ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... The lugger, being piloted with great ability, and using every nautical shift to make her escape, had now reached, and was about to double, the headland which formed the extreme point of land on the left side of the bay, when a ball having hit the yard in the slings, the main-sail fell upon the deck. The consequence of this accident appeared ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... arithmetically genuine, sometimes only a hoax. In Lilliput all the dimensions are scientifically computed on a scale one-twelfth as large as that of man; in Brobdingnag, by an exact reversal, everything is twelve times greater than among men. But the long list of technical nautical terms which seem to make a spirited narrative at the beginning of the second of Gulliver's voyages is merely an ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the labors of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that now, to ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... first three or four hours' sail Geoffrey and Lionel acquired much nautical knowledge. They learned the difference between the mainmast and the mizzen, found that all the strong ropes that kept the masts erect and stiff were called stays, that the ropes that hoist sails are called halliards, and that sheets is the name given to the ropes that restrain ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... their industry chiefly to agriculture and navigation. But rude and imperfect are their implements for field labor, as well as their nautical vessels. To a stranger nothing can appear more extraordinary than their mode of ploughing. As to a regular plough, I do not believe such a thing is known in Chiloe. If a field is to be tilled, it is done by two Indians, who are furnished with long poles, pointed ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... who were to carry into the rosy future the burden of the debt—accepted failure with youth's uncalculating joy. For, here was sport, aquatic and nautical, added to the meagre round of life's pleasures. In yachting caps and flowing neckties they pervaded the lake to its limits. Girls wore silk waists embroidered with anchors in blue and pink. The trousers of the young men widened ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... Smeet' was not sorry to get out of the government house—palazzo, as some of the simple people of Elba called the unambitious dwelling. He had been well badgered by the persevering erudition of the vice-governatore; and, stored as he was with nautical anecdotes and a tolerable personal acquaintance with sundry seaports, for any expected occasion of this sort, he had never anticipated a conversation which would aspire as high as the institutions, religion, and laws of his adopted country. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... importance, Sinclair treated him with much courtesy, and presently a friendship sprang up between the two. Sinclair was then engaged with a fleet of thirteen vessels in conquering and annexing to his earldom the Faeroe islands, and on several occasions profited by the military and nautical skill of the Venetian captain. Nicolo seems to have enjoyed this stirring life, for he presently sent to his brother Antonio in Venice an account of it, which induced the latter to come and join him in the Faeroe islands. Antonio arrived in the course of 1391, and remained in the service ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... loose from that frantic grip and continued his pull on the whistle until the Maggie, taking a false note, quavered, moaned, spat steam a minute, and subsided with what might be termed a nautical sob. "Now see what you've done," he bawled. "You've made me bust ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... lunch gong sounded, we all went below (doesn't that sound real nautical?) to try and get settled in our home for the next three months. Apparently there was no place left for even our hats, thoughtful gifts, fruits, candy and flowers, filled every inch of ordinary space. Christmas time was ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... tale of the mutiny of the "Bounty"—he reverts to the manner and theme of his old romances, finding a new scene in the Pacific for the exercise of his fancy. In this piece his love of nautical adventure reappears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from Rousseau and Chateaubriand. There is more repose about this poem than in any of the author's other compositions. In its pages the sea seems to plash about rocks and ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... was on an island. Of the parish of Harray, which borders on Mr. Garson's property, no part touches the sea-coast; and the people of the parish are represented by their neighbors, who pride themselves upon their skill as sailors and boatmen, as a race of lubberly landsmen, unacquainted with nautical matters, and ignorant of the ocean and its productions. A Harray man is represented, in one of their stories, as entering into a compact of mutual forbearance with a lobster,—to him a monster of unknown powers and formidable proportions,—which he had ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... been reading Marooned, by Mr. CLARK RUSSELL, an author who delights in stories of nautical adventure. My worthy follower declares that the novel, although rather spun out, is full of interest. He was especially pleased with Mr. CLARK RUSSELL'S anxiety to make his meaning clear when talking of things maritime. He particularly instances ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... lad with a stronger liking for a nautical life. Nothing would have delighted him more than to become a sailor. What makes me respect Jack, is that with all this overwhelming fondness for a sailor's life, he has had too much good sense to yield to it. He has never asked me to allow him to go to sea, but has always ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... because I did not run at him, embrace him, and shake his arms off, that therefore I did not feel grateful! I was awfully grateful. I felt inclined to alter the name of the vessel to the Gratefully Castle. But "she" (you always call a vessel "she"—isn't that nautical?) "is" as the song says "another's, and never can be mine!" so I can't change her name. I was overpowered by my feelings—and what does that mean but the swallowing, with a gurgle in the throat, of the silent tear, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... watch. "Five minutes more," he said. I had noticed some minutes back that the ardour of the attack seemed to centre round one man in particular—a short, very burly man in a costume that seemed somehow vaguely nautical. His face wore the expression of one cheerfully conscious of being well on the road to intoxication. He was the ringleader. It was he who threw the largest cabbage, the most pass tomato. I don't suppose he had ever enjoyed himself so much in his life. He was standing now on a cart full of potatoes, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... Times (Sept. 18, 1914) the German nautical newspaper Hansa on Sept. 12 admitted that England had captured many millions of marks worth of German shipping, and that "the cessation of business will cost our shipowners many millions more." "It will hold up the development of our shipping trade for years." The Neue ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... of this same image, as "Our Oldest Inhabitant," after attributing it to the same man's workmanship, states: "Deacon Shem Drowne, whose name suggests pious and patriarchal, if not nautical associations, carved the grasshopper which still holds its place over Faneuil Hall, and also the gilded Indian,[2] who, with his bow bent and arrow on the string, so long kept watch and ward over the Province House, the stately residence of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... of the journal becomes nautical, and strong in praise of the conduct of the little ship, which took the party first to Nelson, where Sunday, the 7th of October, was spent, the Bishop going ashore while Patteson held a service for the sailors on board, first going round to the vessels anchored in the harbour to invite ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as the discoverer of "Miss Mitchell's Comet." Another had been added to the list of Mary Somervilles and Caroline Herschels. Perhaps there was additional zest now in the mathematical work in the Coast Survey. She also assisted in compiling the American Nautical Almanac, and wrote for the scientific periodicals. Did she break down from her unusual brain work? Oh, no! Probably astronomical work was not nearly so hard as her mother's,—the care of a house ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... tie. She got him to tie a four-in-hand for her one day. Fred used to be a sea-captain in his early days and, although he could make all kinds of splices with a rope, he had never tackled a four-in-hand. He was game, however, and, after a hard tussle, accomplished what is known in nautical parlance as a 'clove hitch.' Fred's sister wore it night and day for a week and then cut it off ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... "Bab Ballads" a great deal of verse has been produced along the same general lines. Mr. Wallace Irwin's "Nautical Ballads of a Landsman" are the most notable additions of ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... is that it always falls to Bob's lot to go upon the look-out in bad weather. How is it?" asked an individual in semi-nautical costume at the far end of the room, whose bearing and manner conveyed the impression that he regarded himself, as indeed he was, somewhat of an intruder. He was a ship-chandler's shopman, with an ambition to be mistaken for a genuine "salt," and had ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... to make sure that I understood him above the howling of the wind, I could only make out that it was an endless ballad telling the fortune of a young man who went to sea, and had many adventures. The English nautical terms were employed continually in describing his life on the ship, but the man seemed to feel that they were not in their place, and stopped short when one of them occurred to give me a poke with his finger and explain gib, topsail, and bowsprit, which were ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... definite and rigid enough to make up. The Spectator set is chiefly remarkable for its marginal notes; Captain Elkanah bought the books in London and read and annotated at spare intervals during subsequent voyages. His opinions were decided and his notes nautical and emphatic. Hephzibah read a few pages of the notes when the books first came into the house and then went to prayer-meeting. As she had announced her intention of remaining at home that evening I was surprised—until I ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... took possession of his mind, and insensibly had a marked effect in his studies, giving them a special direction; although he was not aware of this fact himself. As he had made up his mind to travel, he commenced to study cosmography and nautical matters; in fact, everything that was taught in the ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... on a former occasion, to state, that, in sketching his marine life, he did not deem himself obliged to adhere, very closely, to the chronological order of nautical improvements. It is believed that no very great violation of dates will be found in the following pages. If any keen-eyed critic of the ocean, however, should happen to detect a rope rove through ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the owners had but just quitted her, was still equipped with mast and sails and oars. Aboard which boat she forthwith got, and being, like most of the women of the island, not altogether without nautical skill, she rowed some distance out to sea, and then hoisted sail, and cast away oars and tiller, and let the boat drift, deeming that a boat without lading or steersman would certainly be either capsized by the wind or dashed against some rock and broken in pieces, so that ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... survives on the low plains of the Danube and Theiss, have a generic word for herd, csorda, and special terms for herds of cattle, horses, sheep, and swine.[71] While the vocabulary of Malays and Polynesians is especially rich in nautical terms, the Kirghis shepherd tribes who wander over the highlands of western Asia from the Tian Shan to the Hindu Kush have four different terms for four kinds of mountain passes. A daban is a ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... pitched at the singer without the least tenderness for the time or tune - mostly from great rolls of copper carried for the purpose - and which he occasionally dodges like shot as they fly near his head) are of the sentimental sea sort. All the rooms are decorated with nautical subjects. Wrecks, engagements, ships on fire, ships passing lighthouses on iron-bound coasts, ships blowing up, ships going down, ships running ashore, men lying out upon the main-yard in a gale of wind, sailors and ships in every variety of peril, constitute the illustrations ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... chamber-door," or, in sea phrase, pounding upon my hatch. I soon discovered that my visitor was Captain Daniel Fry, United States Inspector of Steamboats. His pretty cottage, environed with beds of blooming flowers, was perched upon the sandy bluff above us. The captain, in a nautical way, claimed us as salvage, and we were soon enjoying his generous hospitality. In this isolated town, once a busy cotton-shipping port, there was a population of about one thousand souls, among whom, conspicuous for his urbane manners and scientific ability, lived Dr. ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... days, And, at yesterday's dinner, when, full to the throttle, We lads had begun our dessert with a bottle Of neat old Constantia, on my leaning back Just to order another, by Jove, I went crack!— Or, as honest TOM said, in his nautical phrase, "Damn my eyes, BOB, in doubling the Cape you've missed stays."[2] So, of course, as no gentleman's seen out without them, They're now at the Schneider's[3]—and, while he's about them, Here goes for a letter, post-haste, neck and crop. Let us see—in my last I was—where ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... their legs—the mountaineer, so far as my experience has gone, is generally modest enough. Perhaps he sometimes flaunts his ice-axes and ropes a little too much before the public eye at Chamonix, as a yachtsman occasionally flourishes his nautical costume at Cowes; but the fault may be pardoned by those not inexorable to human weaknesses. This opinion, I know, cuts at the root of the most popular theory as to our ruling passion. If we do not climb the Alps to gain notoriety, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... wanting something more nautical, Captain? Something yachty, if I may suggest. . . . I've a neat thing here in yachting caps." Mr Benny selected and displayed one, turning it briskly in his hands. "The Commodore. There's a something about that cap, sir,—a what shall I say?—a distinction. Or, if you prefer a straight up-and-down ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the battleship," said Johnny, "that's what I want to see." As they came on board the brick ship, the first words they heard were quite nautical. ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... porticos, which (to my own taste, and, I fancy, to that of the old sailors) produce but a cold and shivery-effect in the English climate. Had I been the architect, I would have studied the characters, habits, and predilections of nautical people in Wapping, Rotherhithe, and the neighborhood of the Tower, (places which I visited in affectionate remembrance of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and other actual or mythological navigators,) and would have built the hospital in a kind of ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark, ugly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various |
