"Keel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deeps repose Beneath the stout ship's keel whereon we glide; And if a diver plunge far down within Those depths and to the surface safe return, His smile, if so it chance he smile again, Outweighs ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... small bark have following sail'd, Eager to listen on the adventurous track Of my proud keel, that singing ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... someone wounded, began to be swallowed up, amid the terrified screams of all the crew. Mary, horror-stricken, pale, dumb, and motionless, watched her gradually sink, while her unfortunate crew, as the keel disappeared, climbed into the yards and shrouds, to delay their death-agony a few minutes; finally, keel, yards, masts, all were engulfed in the ocean's gaping jaws. For a moment there remained some black specks, which in turn disappeared one after another; then wave followed upon wave, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... prosperous voyage, reached Hispaniola, on the 29th of June. The intention of Columbus, acting on the queen's advice, was not to land upon the island whence he had been so unworthily expelled; but his badly-constructed ship was scarcely sea-worthy, and repairs to the keel were greatly needed. Therefore the admiral demanded permission of the governor to enter ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... are frequently made of boats, and the ordinary river-craft found in the vicinity of the intended passage. Flat-bottomed boats are the most suitable for this purpose, but if these cannot be obtained, keel boats will serve as a substitute. When these water-craft are of very unequal sizes, (as is frequently the case,) two smaller ones may be lashed together to form a single support; they can be brought ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... help her. They saw the impetuous girl going to doom, and they would not be a party to her madness. Getting three or four round pieces of driftwood, which were slippery with water-slime, she laid them along the dock; two other billets she placed under the boat's keel. Then gathering her strength for one pull, she sent the boat into the churning surf. One of the fishermen advanced to detain her, but she waved him back with a gesture so determined and imperious that he hesitated. He then held ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... seemed to be tossed like foam, very much at the mercy of the elements. The Chloe was passing the admiral, on the opposite tack, quite a mile to leeward, and yet, as she mounted to the summit of a wave, her cut-water was often visible nearly to the keel. These are the trials of a vessel's strength; for, were a ship always water-borne equally on all her lines, there would not be the necessity which now exists to make her the well-knit mass of ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... took the track-line myself for a quarter of an hour, but it did not appeal to me as a permanent amusement. It taught me one thing that I did not suspect, namely, that it is much harder to haul a canoe with three inches of water under her keel than with three feet. In the former case, the attraction of the bottom is most powerful and evident. The experience also explained the old sailor phrase about the vessel feeling the bottom: this I had often heard, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of Ladyfield, where he was born and where he had slept without an absent night since first his cry rose there, a coronach in the ears of his dying mother, would be shut against him; the stranger would bar the gates at evening, the sheep upon the hills would have another keel-mark than the old one on their fleecy sides. Surely the sobs that sometimes rose up in his throat were the utter surrender of sorrow; were the tears that mingled with the rain-drops on his cheek not griefs most bitter essence? For indeed he ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... primrose and pale green To hold the tender Hesper in; Hesper that by the moon makes pale Her silver keel and silver sail. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... wretched, unkempt state of melancholia at once. Tanrade has told me much. You know as well as I do, the village is a nest of gossip—that they make a mountain out of a molehill; if I were a pirate chief and had captured this vagabond port, I'd have a few of those wagging tongues taken out and keel-hauled in the bay." ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... was of goodly size, and contained a large writing desk. My bed was parallel to the keel, and hung so that it could swing when the ship rolled. Previous to my embarkation the room was the receptacle of a quantity of chronometers, sextants, charts, and other nautical apparatus. There were seventeen chronometers in one box, and a few others lay around loose. I never had ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... aspirations and the power to bring a depth of human understanding to earth's problems, but what chance has he against the ring of antagonists who confront him? Flunkeyism, 'swank,' the timid worship of the peerage, the leprosy of social hypocrisy, all sap his strength, as barnacles clinging to the keel of a ship lessen her speed with each ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... had to be built near the sea, as it would have been impossible to transport it overland from Shopton. So, before the keel was laid, Mr. Swift rented a large cottage at a seaside place on the New Jersey coast and there, after, erecting a large shed, the work on the Advance, as the under-water ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... and keel I'll win your bread, And spindles and whorles for them wha need, Whilk is a gentle trade indeed, To carry the Gaberlunzie on. I'll bow my leg and crook my knee, And draw a black clout owre my ee, A cripple or blind they will ca' me, While we ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... robbers came by the river," continues the detective. "Before sundown I sauntered along the river bank; to-morrow I can show you traces, indistinct but sufficient, to prove that a boat has been drawn out of the water, and overturned upon the grass; keel, prow and oar-locks have left their traces. There is also the print of a clubbed and muffled oar, above the water mark, where an impatient hand has pushed off the boat. Here is blunder number one. All these traces might ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... punishment of the 17th and 18th centuries; consisted in dropping the victim into the sea from one yardarm, hauling him under the keel and up to the yardarm on the other side; is now a term for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the halcyon days of the bush. My husband had purchased a very light cedar canoe, to which he attached a keel and a sail; and most of our leisure hours, directly the snows melted, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... came sliding toward them ominously. They scraped by. The ship dived, throwing Tolto forward, and his instinctive grab threw the elevator up. The levitators screamed madly as they lost their purchase on the air, due to the ship's unstable keel. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... she took her staunch friend to the shore, and launched out in the wild squall under an inky-black sky; and she had to row against a wind that drove her back time after time. Finally she reached the wreck, only to find the boy had gone under. The soldiers were clinging to the bobbing keel of the boat, and Ida grasped them with a firm, practised hand, while at the same time managing to keep her own boat near enough so that when a wave washed them together she was able to help the exhausted soldiers to climb into ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... mate went in her, but she was capsized directly. The ship's boat was hanging on the weather davits, and it was no use letting her down to windward on account of the heavy sea. Davy ran out to the end of the jibboom with a lead line. He could see the second mate hanging on to the keel of the capsized boat, and his two men in the water. The ebb sea kept washing them out, and the heavy sea threw them back again, and whenever they could get their heads above water they shouted for help. Davy threw the lead towards them from the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... 'n this to keel me over," he said, ignorant that he was lighting that terrible article, a ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... on the rocks. The length of our cables was here of the greatest advantage to us. About noon, the rope by which the small boat was fastened, broke. She was immediately carried up the bay, and thrown, by the violence of the surf, on the top of a rock, where she stuck fast, keel upwards. It was impossible to render us any assistance, till the tide turned, when the raging of the sea, and the wind, began to abate. As soon as it was practicable, Jonathan and the other men came to us in the skin-boat. He seemed quite overcome with joy, and, not able ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... with a centre-board, or sliding keel, which was drawn up, when not in use, into a case standing in the boat's middle, very much in the way. But the American whalemen regard these clumsy contrivances as indispensable, so there's an end on't. The other furniture ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... right to the front of the boat, where he stood thrusting back the vegetation as it collected about the bows, while the men rowed hard forcing the boat onward, the huge leaves being sent to right and left and others passing right under the keel, but all floating back to their former positions, so that as Rob looked back the jacanas were again running over the vegetation which had re-covered the little channel the boat ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... direction of the skipper the sail was secured after a great deal of difficulty. Dory let her off again under the jib alone. This proved to be a decided change for the better. The Goldwing kept on a tolerably even keel, and drove ahead almost as fast ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... "making his getaway," the American hoping to be lucky enough to pick up Fritz's trail, and get a shot at him when he rose again to the top. And while the two blind ships manoeuvred there in the dark of the abyss, the keel of the fleeing German had actually, by a curious chance, scraped along the top of the American vessel and carried ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... produced as sudden a revolution below. The ship was no longer running easily on an even keel, but was pitching violently into a head-beating sea, and the wind, which a few minutes before, was scarcely felt to blow, was now whistling its hundred strains among the cordage. Some sought their berths, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the cabin as Thuvia took the control. A moment later the boarding tackle dropped from the keel of the Thuria, and from a dozen points along either side stout, knotted leathern lines trailed downward. At the same time a signal broke ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... only with great trouble and danger that we could proceed. At the end of the second day we were only a short distance up the stream; some one had to stand with the sounding-rod in hand continually, and the boat received so many shocks that it shuddered to the keel. A wooden vessel would have been smashed. Around us we saw nothing but the flooded land.... The Indigirka, here, had torn up the land and worn itself a fresh channel, and when the waters sank we saw, to our astonishment, that the old river-bed had become merely ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... downward velocity terminated, for not only were they again on a level keel, but the motor commenced working with its customary intensity and the whole fusilage quivered as usual when ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... the flitter seldom spoke. Raf kept his attention on the controls. Sudden currents of air were tricky here, and he had to be constantly alert to hold the small flyer on an even keel. His glimpses of what lay below ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... lightly to the very centre of his place, with the lithe caution of a cat. Then if the water happened to be smooth, he would sit gravely on his haunches, or would rest his chin on the gunwale to contemplate the passing landscape. But in rough weather he crouched directly over the keel, his nose between his paws, and tried not to dodge when the cold water dashed in on him. Deuce was a true woodsman in that respect. Discomfort he always bore with equanimity, and he must often have been very cold ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... was being made with the boat. There was plenty of canvas, and a cask of Stockholm tar was found. After paying both the boat and a piece of canvas sufficiently large to cover her over with the tar, the canvas was passed under her keel and fastened inside the gunwale on either side. It went, of course, from stem to stern, and the thickly tarred folds nailed over the bows served somewhat to strengthen them. In our researches La Motte and I had found a hammer and a pair of pincers, which were very useful, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the sea From that Leucadian rock. Beneath your feet Lie sand and surf in curving parallels. Off shore, a buoy gleams like a dolphin's back Dripping with brine, and guards a sunken reef Whose sharp incisors have gnawed many a keel; There frets the sea and turns white at the lip, And in ill-weather lets the ledge show fang. A very pleasant nook ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... last the ship was finished, and they tried to launch her down the beach; but she was too heavy for them to move her, and her keel sank deep into the sand. Then all the heroes looked at each other blushing; but Jason spoke, and said, 'Let us ask the magic bough; perhaps it can ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... moment, the catastrophe that followed could not have happened; but the boat lying almost motionless, received all the force of the wind, and instantly upset. Mr. Armstrong, unable to swim, and encumbered by his clothes, sank, but was caught by the strong arm of Sill, and pulled upon the keel. In a state of great discomfort, though of safety, there both remained for some time, waiting for assistance. None arriving, Sill, at last, became impatient, and as he was an excellent swimmer, proposed to throw off the heavier part of his clothing, and swim to land to hasten succor. As Mr. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... little,' returned Carker. 'Upon the whole we have not had our usual good fortune of late, but that is of little moment to you. At Lloyd's, they give up the Son and Heir for lost. Well, she was insured, from her keel to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... shouted, melodramatically. "Why, I would keel you, that's what I would do. I would keel her. I weel make a terrible scene. Just let me knaw that this ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... with boats when we capsized. I went down backwards for some few feet before I started to swim, then I came spluttering upwards towards the light; but, instead of reaching the surface, I hit my head against the keel of a boat and went down again. I struck out almost at once and came up, but before I reached the surface my head crashed against a boat for the second time, and I went right to the bottom. I was confused and thoroughly frightened. I was desperately in need of air, ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... had made the thought and history of the entire past contemporaneous; while a crowd of translators put every man who could read in inspiring contact with the select souls of all the centuries. A new world was thus opened to intellectual adventure at the very time when the keel of Columbus had turned the first daring furrow of discovery in that unmeasured ocean which still girt the known earth with a beckoning horizon of hope and conjecture, which was still fed by rivers that flowed down out of primeval ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... pea-green, which is considerably darker than the pale aquamarine of the surface at the spot. Its shadow is detached from it just about half the depth of the reflection; which, therefore, forms a bright green light between the keel of the boat and its shadow; where the shadow cuts the reflection, the reflection is darkest and something like the true color of the boat; where the shadow falls out of the reflection, it is of a ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Darien summits may subdue, Our Balboa eyes reveal But a vaster sea come to— New endeavor for our keel. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipped, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whoo; To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... strange thing happened. Four light rays, dazzling in intensity, stabbed up at them from the forest beneath them and converged on the vessel's hull. The Nomad staggered, then came to an even keel and slackened in her mad dash to the surface. She vibrated from stem to stern under the mighty conflict of energies and they felt themselves pressed hard against the floor-plate. But the mysterious energy beams had come too ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... reversed and the port guns run in in order to bring her on an even keel, while the fire from her starboard battery was reopened on the forts. The engines were backed with all the steam that could be put upon them, and the backing was continued for thirty ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... had set out in a canoe, chosen his place of habitation and built a temporary shelter on it for family and flock, while at home the boys, with the help of a few settlers, had laid the keel and fashioned the hull of a rude but seaworthy boat, such ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... as a light. By this time the launch was near enough for us to distinguish its whistle, to which of course we could not reply, having no steam. Meanwhile the tide was very low. "Nine feet," announced some one, sounding, and the coral grated harshly under our keel. A moment more and the launch might be ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... destroy her. The Carteret was accordingly reinforced by two midshipmen and ten men from the Tribune; a landing was effected, and the guard defeated: but the brig was found to have a plank out on each side of the keel, and she was therefore destroyed. This service was performed with the loss of one of the Carteret's men, Mr. Parker (a midshipman), and two men of the Tribune; while the enemy's loss was five killed and ten prisoners, who ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... perpendiculars, 350 feet; breadth, moulded, 40 feet; depth, moulded, 32 feet; tons, B. M., 2,600; tons net, 2,000. At A, in fig. 1, is shown in dotted lines a portion of the vessel and pontoon, the ship having just been hauled in and centered over the keel blocks. At B, is shown the pontoon with the ship raised and swung round on to a low level quay. Going a step further in the operation, we see at C, the vessel hauled on to the slipways on the high-level ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... determine that the "Pterodactyles" possessed the power of flight, quite apart from the extraordinary conformation of the hand. The proofs of this are to be found partly in the fact that the breast-bone was furnished with an elevated ridge or keel, serving for the attachment of the great muscles of flight, and still more in the fact that the bones were hollow and were filled with air—a peculiarity wholly confined amongst living animals to Birds only. The skull of the Pterosaurs is long, light, and singularly bird-like in appearance—a ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... by the truant child. The last bound that I gave, pitched me into the rigging of a small vessel on her beam ends, and I hardly had time to fetch my breath before she turned over. I scrambled up her bends, and fixed myself astride upon her keel. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of Mont Blanc forms a ridge from southwest to north-east, two hundred paces long and a yard wide at the culminating point. It seemed like a ship's hull overturned, the keel in the air. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... of their clothing that they might swim more freely. He did the same, and the boat floating near to him he seized hold of it. The two islanders joined him, and, uniting their forces, they succeeded in turning the boat upon her keel; then bearing down her stern and rocking her, they forced out so much water that she was able to bear the weight of a man without sinking. One of the islanders now got in, and in a little while bailed out the water ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... roomy, shaded cockpit and cabin, and comfortable revolving chairs to fish from. These chairs have moving sockets into which you can jam the butt of your rod; and the backs can be removed in a flash. Then you can haul at a fish! The boat lies deep, with heavy ballast in the stern. It has a keel all the way, and an enormous rudder. Both are constructed so your line can slip under the boat without fouling. It is equipped with sail and a powerful engine. Danielson can turn this boat, going at full speed, in its own length! Consider the ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... "And mark me, the man who betrays Harry Morgan will not live many minutes to boast of it! I'd kill him if he sat on the steps of a throne. Easy there!" he called out to the oarsmen, assuming the command as by right, while the boat's keel grated on the shingle. "All out now and lead the way. Nay, gentlemen, you shall all precede me. Carib, here, will bring up the rear. And it may be well for you to keep your weapons in ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... beginning to thrust the paddle down for a strong, deep stroke when the sampan struck something. The shock was so great that Jack was flung on his face. As he sprang up again he heard Buck cry, "She's hit a floating log." The sampan was uninjured. She had struck the obstacle with her tough keel-piece, and had been turned aside at right angles. The Shan had been flung down too, but was up in an instant and gathering his oars. But this loss of a moment gave the pursuing skiff her chance. Driven ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... idleness of spirit ponder on bygone scene, that has brought us anything but happiness,—to gaze on the curling waves, as impelled by the boisterous wind, we ride o'er the angry waters, lashed by the sable keel to a yeasty madness,—to look afar upon the disturbed billow, presenting its crested head like the curved neck of the war horse,—then to mark the screaming sea bird, as, his bright eye scanning the waters, he soars ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... course of the majestic river rolling its yellow flood to the sea and watched the lazy flat and keel boats drift slowly down to New Orleans bearing the wealth of the new Western World. The men who had manned these rude craft were slowly tramping on foot back to their homes in the North. Their boats could not stem the tide for the return trip. Every day they passed ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Otter River, and at the mouth erected earthworks and batteries. He sent for Brown (of the firm of Adam and Noah Brown) a famous New York shipbuilder. Brown agreed to launch a ship of twenty-four guns in sixty days. The trees were standing in the forest on March 2d the keel was laid March 7th, and on April 11th the Saratoga was launched—forty days after the timbers were green standing trees ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... under the violence of the shock, as if she had struck upon a rock! Captain Deblois immediately descended into the forecastle, and there, to his horror, discovered that the monster had struck the ship two feet from the keel, abreast the foremast, knocking a great hole entirely through her bottom. Springing to the deck, he ordered the mate to cut away the anchors and get the cables overboard, to keep the ship from sinking, as she had a large quantity of pig iron on board. In doing this, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... construction of the ship, the outline of the swan is followed as nearly as possible. The prow rises out of the water, shaped like the bird's neck and head; the keel is rounded like the belly; the stern is an imitation of the tail; the legs are supplied by two large adjuncts in the shape of webbed feet, with the addition, however, of numerous wheels fastened round the swan's belly, which are partially immersed ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... easy matter to keep the conversational bark on an even keel; the rocks were thick on every hand. Business, politics, and local affairs were all for obvious reasons tabooed. More than once they were near an upset, as when they began ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Council Bluffs, western Iowa of to-day, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Leavenworth (Fort Leavenworth of Kansas is named for him) of the Sixth United States Infantry, hastened up with six companies of regulars, several cannon and three keel-boats. Joshua Pilcher, president of the Missouri Fur Company, joined him; General Ashley and Major Henry met him with other men; four or five hundred Sioux enlisted—the Sioux hated the Arikaras. And all together (except that the Sioux soon quit, disgusted with the way the white ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... My weak keel shall cleave you like a sword. On, my boat, even though we miss the goal, let us struggle on ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... propelling mechanism of this craft. Miela explained it hastily to me as we got under way. It used a form of the light-ray from a sort of strange battery. The intense heat of the ray generated a great pressure of superheated steam in a thick metal cylinder underneath the keel. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... he could bend the extremities upwards; and having so bent them, he secured the bent portions in their places by means of lashings of raw hide. The spliced trees now presented a rude outline of the section of a boat, having the stem, keel, and stern all in one piece. This having been placed lengthwise between the stakes, four other poles, notched in two places, were lashed from stake to stake, running crosswise to the keel, and forming the knees. Four saplings ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... peril fails, Well armed, and better hearted, scorns his power. Like a tall ship when spent are all her sails, Which still resists the rage of storm and shower, Whose mighty ribs fast bound with bands and nails, Withstands fierce Neptune's wrath, for many an hour, And yields not up her bruised keel to winds, In whose stern blast no ruth nor grace ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the mere multitude of flowers offer an obstacle to this, I suspect this obstacle is counteracted by tendency to have sexes separated. But I have forgotten to say that my maximum difficulty is trees having papilionaceous flowers: some of them, I know, have their keel-petals expanded when ready for fertilisation; but Bentham does not believe that this is general: nevertheless, on principle of nature not lying, I suspect that this will turn out so, or that they are eminently sought by bees dusted with pollen. Again I do NOT ask ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the army having given him more money than he had ever possessed at one time before. His voyages and trading success had given him a taste for similar occupations in the future, and his first step was to build a vessel for himself. His first essay in ship-building was something novel. The keel was laid for a ship of thirty-five tons, to be named the Pilot. There was no iron for spikes, but wooden pins supplied their place. Other devices of similar primitiveness were resorted to in the course of the work, and at last she was finished. Now came the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... now riding an even keel in the more quiet waters of the harbor, swept at slower speed to the side of the towering hull of the Kennebunk. A sentinel at the starboard ladder, which was lowered, hailed sharply. A moment later a deck officer came to ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... river yell and rave; They had no power above the wave, But they heaved the billow before the prow, And they dashed the surge against her side, And they struck her keel with jerk and blow, Till the gunwale bent to the rocking tide. She wimpled about in the pale moonbeam, Like a feather that floats on a wind tossed-stream; And momently athwart her track The quarl upreared ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... has a boat, or as they call it a "vessel," and the build and rig of these vessels is a subject of constant discussion and rivalry in the section. Much critical inquiry is directed to the propriety of Arthur's jib, or the necessity of "ballasting" or pouring a little molten lead into Edward's keel. The launch of a new vessel is the event of the week. The coast-guardsman is brought in to settle knotty questions of naval architecture and equipment, and the little seamen listen to his verdicts, his yarns, the records of his voyages, with ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... water's edge, mending his boat, which lay with its keel upward. He heard my footsteps among the pebbles, and turned round to greet me with one of his grave smiles, which had never failed me whenever ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... he cried, in a tone reminding me of Captain Cawson; "he'd better 'ware of running across my course. If I come athwart his hawser I'll turn him keel ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... she cut loose The sacred band with which the Allfather binds Unto the stronger power her gentle being? The water-lily pale resembles her; It rises with the wave and with it falls. The sailor's keel goes forward over it And marks it not although it cut the stem. Such is indeed her fate! And yet the flower, As long as clings the root unto the sand, Its growth increases, borrowing color pure From its pale sister stars which shine above,— Itself a ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... look in the direction in which the old man pointed. A huge rock, which in general, even in spring-tides, displayed a hulk like the keel of a large vessel, was now quite under water, and its place only indicated by the boiling and breaking of the eddying waves ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... die like an Englishman this day, or I'll know the reason why!" and turning, he sprang in over the bulwarks, as the huge ship rolled up more and more, like a dying whale, exposing all her long black hulk almost down to the keel, and one of her lower-deck guns as if in defiance exploded upright into the air, hurling the ball ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... works five year' for that saddle. I am a good gambler, si, si! but I keel somebody biffore I lose it ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... lead the line, Have the biggest ship to steer, Get this Formidable clear, Make the others follow mine, And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well, 60 Right to Solidor past Greve, And there lay them safe and sound; And if one ship misbehave —Keel so much as grate the ground, Why, I've nothing but my life;—here's my head!" ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... night was spent around the fire, which was kept up to enable Jan to dry his clothes. By daylight the tide had risen, so that the lighter again floated on an even keel. By sunrise a simple breakfast of bread-and-butter and coffee had been eaten, and our emigrants were once more afloat and moving slowly up the ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... were timber rafts from the mountain streams; pirogues built of trunks of trees; broadhorns; huge pointed and covered hulks carrying 50 tons of freight and floating downstream with the current and upstream by means of poles, sails, oars, or ropes; keel boats for upstream work, with long, narrow, pointed bow and stern, roofed, manned with a crew of ten men, and propelled with setting poles; flatboats which went downstream with the pioneer never to come ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... voyage in that chaotic status quo so loved by President Buchanan. At twelve we stood for the bar, sounding our way with extreme caution. Without accident we passed over the treacherous bottom, although in places it could not have been more than eighteen inches below our keel. The shores closed in on both sides as we passed onward. To the south was the long, low, gray Morris Island, with its extinguished lighthouse, its tuft or two of pines, its few dwellings, and its invisible batteries. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Silence reigned in the airship, but the wind still howled outside. As Tom had hoped, the ship became a little more steady with the stopping of the big curved blades, though had the craft been undamaged they would have served to keep her on an even keel. ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... splashing of oars became audible, a keel grated on the beach, and then hurried footsteps were heard in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... begun, And soon throughout the ship-yard's bounds Were heard the intermingled sounds Of axes and of mallets, plied With vigourous arms on every side; Plied so deftly and so well, That ere the shadows of evening fell, The keel of oak for a noble ship, Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong, Was lying ready, and stretched along The blocks, well placed upon the slip. Happy, thrice happy, every one Who sees his labour well begun, And ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... fine— Common, loppage and pannage, the theft and the track of kine— Statutes of tun and market for the fish and the malt and the meal— The tax on the Bramber packhorse and the tax on the Hastings keel. Over the graves of the Druids and under the wreck of Rome Rudely but surely they bedded the plinth of the days to come. Behind the feet of the Legions and before the Norseman's ire, Rudely but greatly begat they the framing of state ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... up and boast that you're outlaws, going to keel the Government off its pins. Then you get the gaff, and the first thing you do is whine for help from that same Government! You say it's rotten, but you expect it to watch over you while you knock it down. If you're going to be an outlaw, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Smithfield, I think it was called, at the mouth of the Cumberland River, Tennessee, which was thought a favorable place for transferring the cargo from an ark to a keel-boat, to prepare it for the ascent of the Mississippi River; for we were now drawing closely towards the mouth of the Ohio. Here ensued a delay of many days. During this time, I made several excursions in this part of Tennessee, and always with the rifle in hand, in the use of which I had ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?) Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard, And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water, Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, The institution of the dear love ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... extended On the grass the vessel's keel; High above it, gilt and splendid, Rose the figure-head ferocious With its ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... and prow there stands, Close-veiled, an angel winged!—the sands Beneath the shallop's keel wake music; Folded am I ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... days when the South was breaking over the Appalachians and exploring the middle and lower West. Adventurers were dropping down the old river roads and "traces" across Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, into Louisiana and Texas. The flatboat and keel-boat days of the great rivers were at their height, and the population was in large part transient, migratory, and bold; perhaps holding a larger per cent. of criminals than any Western population since could claim. There ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... Captain Bourne had never been off the coast during his whole life. After the tug and pilot left, a course was shaped towards the hidden mysteries that lay across the sea. The passage was made quickly, but not without mishap, for the vessel had struck on a reef of rocks, and it was thought her false keel and copper had received considerable damage. From the time the vessel left the port of loading the captain had been little seen. It was well known that a morbid brooding had taken complete possession of ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... never mind, but take care of the packet." The packet was carefully handed aboard, the eyes of Morgan Jones saw the patriarch receive it into his own hands, when the huge ark gave a most terrific lurch, and hitting poor Morgan, he sunk under her counter, was thumped by the keel, and was seen no more; but the packet was received, and proved to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... BULGE. That part of the floor in a ship—on either side of the keel—which approaches nearer to a horizontal than to a perpendicular direction, and begins to round upwards. It is where the floors and second futtocks unite, and upon which the ship would rest if laid on the ground; hence, when a ship receives ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... for, had his brigantines been of a larger draught of water, they could not have navigated canals intended only for Indian canoes. One of these vessels, when supplied with a sail, a cannon, and a movable keel or side-board, would be a formidable auxiliary in an assault upon the city at the present day. And if one such scow was placed in the ditch on each side of the southern causeway, as Cortez alleges, it would enable an assailing enemy to present just so much more front as the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... differ importantly the one from the other. One form is exemplified by the ostrich, rhea, emeu, cassowary, apteryx, dinornis, &c. These are the struthious birds. All other existing birds belong to the second division, and are called (from the keel on ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... driver, in a temper, slashed his horses, and off we went, over ruts and stones full speed ahead. It was like being in a small boat in a smart cross-choppy sea, with little torpedoes exploding beneath the keel at three minute intervals; and this road was marked on the map as a first-class road; the mind staggers at what the second and third-class must be like. These countries are still barbarous at heart, but Europe cries out upon open atrocities, and so they have ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... a pull that sent the head of the boat spinning round in the opposite direction. Then the sturdy Norseman and the stalwart Scot gave a pull together with all their might, and sent the boat like an arrow into the creek, where, in a few seconds, her keel grated on the shore. ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... was so heavy that Thad had to return to the bridge, and shut off the current in the gravity plates along the keel, before he could move it. He dragged it to the lock through which he had entered the flier, and ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... ole man ver' queek. Sometam' he ver' slow. One day Injun mak' heem ver' mad; he let heem go, and shot dat Injun right off. Noder tam he get mad on one voyageur, but he don' keel heem queek; he bring heem here, mak' heem stay in dose warm room, feed heem dose plaintee grub. Purty soon dose voyageur is get fat, is go sof; he no good for dose trail. Ole man he mak' heem go ver' far off, mos' to Whale Reever. Eet is plaintee cole. ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... winter there came sickness, chiefly on account of a lack of proper provisions. Late in the fall Lieutenant Oliver had left Prairie du Chien with supplies in a keel boat. But the river froze and the boat was unable to progress farther than the vicinity of Hastings, Minnesota. Here it was necessary to keep a guard all winter to protect the food from the Indians and the wolves. The Indians refused to sell them game; ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... left with but seven feet of water, the ice threw her over on her starboard bilge, and she was almost lost. Not quite lost, however, or we should not be telling her story. At midnight she was got off, leaving sixty feet of her false keel behind. Captain Kellett forged on in her,—left a depot here and another there,—and at the end of the short Arctic summer had come as far westward as Sir Edward Parry came. Here is the most westerly point the reader will find ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... my business and attending to it without instructions from landlubber! When you appointed me you said remember speed synonymous with dividends in shipping business. How can I make fast passages with whiskers two feet long on my keel? Send new flying jib and spanker next loading port. Send new skipper, too, if you feel that ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... knew that one machine there would be as good as a dozen, and he realized that to keep the big ship on an even keel would ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... way to name a compass course. It is by using the name of the point toward which the ship is heading. On every ship the compass is placed with the lubber line (a vertical black line on the compass bowl) vertical and in the keel line of the ship. The lubber line, therefore, will always represent the bow of the ship, and the point on the compass card nearest the lubber line will be the point toward which the ship ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... fifty slaves, or sailed under her enormous spread of canvas, there was no swifter vessel upon the Mediterranean than the galeasse of Sakr-el-Bahr. Onward she leapt now with bellying tateens, her well-greased keel slipping through the wind-whipped water at a rate which perhaps could not have been bettered by ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... begged the frightened wretch. "Spare me, senyor! Spare me, good senyor! Eef you throw me through the window, eet will keel me!" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... the metalloid. In shape my Astronaut somewhat resembled the form of an antique Dutch East-Indiaman, being widest and longest in a plane equidistant from floor and ceiling, the sides and ends sloping outwards from the floor and again inwards towards the roof. The deck and keel, however, were absolutely flat, and each one hundred feet in length and fifty in breadth, the height of the vessel being about twenty feet. In the centre of the floor and in that of the roof respectively I placed a large lens of crystal, intended ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... show a small square covered with clay, upon which a fire can be built. Pots and pans are seen snugly stowed away around this, so that, by means of movable platforms, trap-doors, etc., the entire boat is rendered available to its very keel. At night, when the business of carrying passengers is over, all the boards are made into a fine flush deck, which is divided, in a very few minutes, into sleeping apartments by means of bamboo poles and mats; and so it comes to pass that what I was before disposed to ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Surely in the darkness I saw something! No. All was pitch black. The wind roared through the rigging, and the water seethed up at the plunging prow. But though I saw nothing, I felt the pursuer near; so near, I wondered not to hear the swish of her keel through the waves. On we went and nearer and nearer we seemed together. Oh for one sign of them, were it even a gun across our path! But sign there came none. The darkness ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... was also applied to many other heroic actions. The idea of "keel-hauling," for instance, adapted from the nautical code, was said to be practically enforced in the case of duns, attorneys, and other objectionable persons, in the lake at Crompton; while the administration of pommelings to poachers and agriculturists generally, by the athletic Squire, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... with this sail added to her, the ship sprang through the water like a thing possessed. The sail being nearly all forward, it lifted her out of the water, and she seemed actually to jump from sea to sea. From the time her keel was laid, she had never been so driven; and had it been life or death with everyone of us, she could not have ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Laurence," went on the Butterfly Man, speculatively. "Laurence is making plenty of trouble, but not so much money. No, Mrs. Eustis wouldn't faint at the notion of Inglesby, but she'd keel over like a perfect lady at the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... reliance at this crisis. As has been said, there was money enough, and every ship-yard in the country could be set to work to build ironclad men-of-war: but it takes a long time to build ships, and England's navy was afloat. It was the British keel ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... section of which provided "That any person or persons who, after the said tenth day of September [1737], shall steal any ship, sloop, or other vessel whatsoever, out of any place within the body of any county within this province, of seventeen feet or upwards by the keel, and shall carry the same ten miles or upwards from the place whence it shall be stolen, or who shall steal any negro or other slave, or who shall counsel, hire, aid, abet, or command any person or persons to commit the said offences, or who shall be accessories to the said ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... afloat; and not far away, an early star. He had found no creed in the prayer-book that accounted for the stars. Here at the bottom of an ocean of sky, we look aloft and see them thick-speckled—mere barnacles, perhaps, on the keel of some greater ship of space. He remembered how at home there had been a certain burning twinkle that peeped through the screen of the dogwood tree. As he moved on his porch, it seemed to flit to and fro, appearing and vanishing. He was often uncertain whether it was a firefly a few yards ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley |
