"Merchantman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be rowed for, which carried every body up the Thames. and afterwards there was a great ball at Carlton house. There have two good events happened at that court: the town was alarmed t'other morning by the firing of guns, which proved to be only from a large merchantman come into the river. The city construed it into the King's return, and the peace broke; but Chancellor Bootle and the Bishop of Oxford, who loves a tabour next to promoting the cause of it, concluded the Princess was brought ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... gently from the bow to the stern of the canoe, and he was about to question him, when the other, grasping his arm with an expressive touch, pointed to a dark object moving across the road. Gerald turned his head, and beheld the same figure that had so recently quitted the cabin of the merchantman. Following its movements, he saw it noiselessly enter into the grounds of a cottage, opposite an old tannery, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... were driven off the sea, the privateers continued the naval war. At that time a merchantman could be turned into a capable fighting ship by adding strengthening timbers and providing the necessary guns. Such a ship, when commissioned as a privateer by the United States government, could capture the enemy's ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart
... astern, to protect the steersman. The women and children are crammed down below, where the unhappy prisoners are likewise stowed away during an action. Their principal plan is boarding a vessel, if possible, and carrying her by numbers; and certainly if a merchantman fired ill, she would inevitably be taken; but with grape and canister fairly directed, the slaughter would be so great that they would be glad to sheer off before they neared a vessel. This is, of course, supposing a calm, for in a breeze they would never have the hardihood to venture ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... unsettled mind could enjoy in any state; but at the end of that space, good usage had so far spoiled him that he longed to be at liberty again, though at the expense of another sea voyage. Accordingly, leaving his master, he went away again on board of a merchantman bound for the Straits. During the time which the ship lay in port for her loading, he contracted some distemper from the heat of the country, and his immoderate love of its wine and the fruits that grow there. These brought him ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... step had, in Villeneuve's eyes, actually happened. The admiral considered the fight of July 22nd la malheureuse affaire; his ships were encumbered with sick; they worked badly; on August 15th a north-east gale carried away the top-mast of a Spanish ship; and having heard from a Danish merchantman the news—false news, as it afterwards appeared—that Cornwallis with twenty-five ships was to the north, he turned and scudded before the wind. He could not divine the disastrous influence of his conduct on the plan of invasion. He did not know that his master was even then beginning to hesitate ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... down the mighty river were ships of all nations, craft of every description, from the three-decker East India merchantman, going or returning from her distant voyage, to the little schooner-rigged fishermen trading up and down the coast. These were the sights. The songs of birds, the low of cattle, the hum of bees, and the murmur of the water as it washed the sands—these ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... have been more adventuresome than the other boys in Priscilla's family. He was master of a merchantman in Boston and commander of armed vessels which supplied marine posts with provisions. Like his sister, Elizabeth, he had thirteen children. He was once accused of witchcraft, when he was present at a trial, and was imprisoned fifteen ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... insisting, for example, upon the impossibility of having a speech delivered by one who is actually blind, and deaf, and dumb, we need only imagine here its utterance, by some wall-eyed stammerer, who has a visage about as wooden and inexpressive as the figure-head of a merchantman. Occasionally, it is true, physical defects have been actually conquered, individual peculiarities have been in a great measure counteracted, by rhetorical artifice, or by the arts of oratorical delivery: instance the lisp of Demosthenes, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... embark in a sea-going ship, and stand by to fight it out with any cruisers they may meet. Like cautious sportsmen, they mark down their prey first, and do not waste powder and shot. In a breeze there is no danger on their coast. But wo betideth the trabaccalo or short-handed merchantman that may happen to be becalmed in their sight. Incontinent they launch their boats,—terrible vessels that hold twenty or thirty armed men besides the rowers, and cleave their irresistible course towards the motionless and defenceless victim. On such occasions it is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... unshipped. The storm abating, he made for the first port, to repair the ship's damages, intending to return to Jamaica, to deliver her up to her captain; but, from a vessel they spoke at sea, he learned that Jemmison was gone to England in a merchantman. To England then Walsingham ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... holding his sinking head and moistening his mouth with wine, the dews of death on his forehead, and his poor emaciated frame heaving like one great pulse at each breath. For four days that he has been there (brought in a dying state from the Merchantman) I have been with him, and yesterday I administered to him the Holy Communion. He had spoken earnestly of his real desire to testify the sincerity of his repentance and faith and love. I have been there daily for nine days, but I cannot always ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Star and the Queen Flavia—whose captain had contemptuously ignored an order from Gram to re-christen her Queen Evita—had remained. They were his ships, not King Angus'. The captain of the merchantman from Wardshaven now on orbit refused to take a cargo to Newhaven; he had been chartered by King Angus, and would take orders from no ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... fishing village shopkeeper, ran away to sea in a Whitby collier, and presently got himself properly apprenticed to her owners, two Quaker brothers named Walker, and how at twenty-seven years of age, when he had become mate of a small merchantman, he determined to anticipate the hot press of May, 1755, and so at Wapping volunteered as A.B. on board His Majesty's ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... reserved for Middleton and the "mightie merchantman," the Trade's Increase, Downton resumed command of the Peppercorn and returned direct to England with a full cargo. Many times her timbers sprang aleak on the voyage—for she was but a jerry-built craft at best—but she finally ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... terrific. Every window in the hotel was shattered, and some scores of labourers working near the Gatun Locks were killed instantly. Six hundred tons of dynamite, secreted in the hold of a German merchantman, had been exploded as the vessel passed through the locks, and ten thousand tons of Portland cement had sunk in the tangled iron wreck, to form a huge blockading mass of solid rock on the floor of the ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... a tedious business—what with fogs, calms, and headwinds—working towards Copenhagen. We rounded the Scaw in a thick mist, saw the remains of four ships that had run aground upon it, and were nearly run into ourselves by a clumsy merchantman, whom we had the relief of being able to abuse in our native vernacular, and the most ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... of the pirates, except in China, when even to this day accounts reach us, through the Press, of piratical enterprises; but never again will the black, rakish-looking craft of the pirate, with the Jolly Roger flying, be liable to pounce down upon the unsuspecting and harmless merchantman. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... mix well with men trained in the other service; their customs and habits of life and work are quite different to those of the merchant seaman. It used to be a recognised belief that the sailor of the merchantman could adapt himself with striking facility to the work of the Royal Navy and its discipline, but the Navy trained man was never successful aboard a cargo vessel. The former impression originated, no doubt, during the good old times when it was customary for prowling ruffians ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Jones was given charge of an old merchantman named Duras whose name he was allowed to change to suit his own pleasure. In deference to Benjamin Franklin who had always been his close friend Jones called his new craft the Bonhomme Richard, in honor of Benjamin Franklin's famous ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... seat of his government was at S. Helier, while S. Aubin, on the opposite point of the bay, was filled with his skippers and their crews, and the traders who profited by their piratical proceedings. Hardly a week passed but some rich prize—usually an English merchantman—was brought in there, to be condemned by Carteret's court, and sold, together with her cargo, while the unfortunate mariners who had manned her were left to their own resources. Adventurers from all parts flocked to Jersey, to share the gains of this new and irregular trade, ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... who had commanded the "Molly" merchantman, was tried February 18, 1752, for the murder of Kenrich Hossack, by whipping him to death; after a trial of eight hours he was found guilty. "The Royal Oak Foremast" was the name he gave to a stick used in his manner ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... accent. I am not a Frenchman, although I write 'monsieur' before my name. Still less am I either a German or an Italian. Neither am I a genuine Russian, although I look to Russia as my native country. In brief, my father was a Russian, my mother was a Frenchwoman, and I was born on board a merchantman during a gale ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... fleets of commerce, With proud breasts cleaving the tide,— Like emmet or bug with its burden, the tug Hither and thither plied,— Where the quick paddles flashed, where the dropped anchor plashed, And rattled the running chain, Where the merchantman swung in the current, where sung The sailors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... was a native of North Carolina and, resigning his commission in the United States service at the opening of the Civil War, subsequently entered the Confederate Navy, where he was finally assigned to the command of the celebrated cruiser Shenandoah. This ship, formerly the British merchantman Sea King, was bought in England for L45,000 by James D. Bulloch, the Naval Agent of the Southern Confederacy in Great Britain, to take the place of the Alabama, which had been sunk by the Kearsarge in June, 1864. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... summer of the year 18—, I was the only passenger on board the merchantman, Alceste, which was bound to the Brazils. One fine moonlight night, I stood on the deck, and gazed on the quiet ocean, on which the moon-beams danced. The wind was so still, that it scarcely agitated the sails, which were spread ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... ship-of-war, and I intend to be implicitly obeyed," he continued sternly, looking even more fiercely at them. "Nevertheless," he added, somewhat relaxing his set features, "although we be not a peaceful merchantman, yet I expect and intend to do a little trading with the ships of the enemy, and in any prizes which we may capture, you know you will all have a just, nay, a liberal, share. It must not be lost sight of, however, that the first business of this ship, as of every ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... an English merchantman, had been captured by a French frigate, and brought into the port of Philadelphia, where she was completely equipped as a privateer, and was just about to sail on a cruise under the name of le petit Democrat, when the secretary of the treasury communicated her situation ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... aisles mount to the summit of the great ridge, and the ruined forts on each wooded promontory recall the long-past days when the "fruit of gold" demanded the increasing vigilance of military power to defeat the onslaught of merchantman or privateer, willing to run every risk in order to capture a cargo of spices, and secure fabulous gains by appeasing the frantic thirst of Europe for the novel luxury of the aromatic spoils. The mediaeval craze has died away, and ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... too, the pilot of the biggest merchantman, grasping the steering oar by its handle, which the Greeks call [Greek: oiax], and with one hand bringing it to the turning point, according to the rules of his art, by pressure about a centre, can turn the ship, although she may be laden with a very large ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... in and under their batteries that it was impossible to get at them in that position. We, one morning at daybreak, captured a row-boat with twenty-two men, armed with swivels and muskets. We had disguised the ship so much that she took us for a merchantman, and before she discovered her mistake was within pistol-shot. Three months had now expired, which had been passed much in the same manner as the last cruise, when a cutter came out to order ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... this doom when toward six o'clock we approached Gibraltar, running beneath a crimson sunset and between misty purple shores. On one hand lay Africa, on the other the Moorish country, both shrouded in a soft haze and edged with snowy foam. Down below the soldiers of Italy were singing. A merchantman of belligerent nationality, our ship proudly flew its flag again. Indeed, had it failed to do so, the British patrol-boats would long since have ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... he exclaimed. "I should like to fall in with them. I hope, however, they will not fall in with my prize. Ah! Good!! Listen, monsieur, I fell in with and captured an English merchantman yesterday, with a valuable cargo on board. You shall oblige me by going on until you fall in with him—he is only about one hundred miles south-east of us—and you shall escort him into Toulon; while as for 'Le Narcisse'—parbleu, she will remain here in waiting for the accursed ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Alerte, she is a merchantman and French; she will become your prize. I am sorry for my poor countrymen, but it is the fortune of war," he answered as he turned away with ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... caught in this little rebel craft, which had actually been captured from English owners and condemned as prize by rebel tribunals, and which now added the aggravating circumstance that she carried an armament sufficient to destroy a merchantman but not to encounter a frigate, he would have had before him at best a long imprisonment, at worst a trial for high treason and a halter. Horace Walpole gave the news that "Dr. Franklin, at the age of seventy-two ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... luck suddenly deserted him; for no sooner was he berthed, with sails stowed and anchors out, than he discovered that the French merchantman next him was none other than a vessel which on his last voyage out he had attempted to board in mid-channel, and, but for a sudden squall, would have captured and plundered. The captain of the merchantman had ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... Myra) Paul and his party had to tranship, for their vessel was probably of small tonnage, and only fit to run along the coast. In either port they would have no difficulty in finding some merchantman to take them across to Syria. Accordingly they shifted into one bound for Tyre, and apparently ready to sail. The second part of their voyage took them right out to sea, and their course lay to the west, and then to the south of Cyprus, which Luke mentions as if to remind ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... shipped, d'ye see, in a Revenue sloop, And, off Cape Finistere, A merchantman we see, A Frenchman, going free, So we made for the bold Mounseer. D'ye see? We made for the bold Mounseer! But she proved to be a Frigate—and she up with her ports, And fires with a thirty-two! It come uncommon near, But we answered with a cheer, Which ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... defend themselves, and one of Moses Brown's ships, the Anne and Hope, sailed into Providence from a voyage to the West Indies, bearing in her rigging the marks of conflict with a French privateer, whom the merchantman had bravely repulsed. During the two years and a half of naval war with France eighty-four armed French vessels, nearly all of them privateers, were captured, and no vessel of our navy was taken by the enemy, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... three or four, are talking or chewing betel; one is making a new handle to his chopping-knife, another is stitching away at a new pair of trousers or a shirt, and all are as quiet and well-conducted as on board the best-ordered English merchantman. Two or three take it by turns to watch in the bows and see after the braces and halyards of the great sails; the two steersmen are below in the steerage; our captain, or the juragan, gives the course, guided partly by the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... rather, indeed, departed without taking leave; and, having broke open his mother's escritore, and carried off with him all the valuable effects he there found, to the amount of about fifty pounds, he marched off to sea, and went on board a merchantman, whence he was afterwards pressed into a man ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... visit to the Tonga, or Friendly group, the high state of cultivation in which he found the islands, the apparently friendly reception he met with from the chiefs, and their treacherous purposes to cut off the ship, as they shortly afterwards did a merchantman which visited their shores, murdering most ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... search for truth and the shaping of character the principle remains the same as in science and literature. Trivial causes are followed by wonderful results, but it is only the merchantman who is on the watch for goodly pearls who is represented as finding the pearl ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... only sinking slowly, and there was ample time for the whole of her crew to escape. Very different would be the fate of an unarmed vessel, for the explosion of a torpedo would probably blow such a large hole in the thin steel plates that she would go to the bottom like a stone. To torpedo a merchantman simply means the cold-blooded murder of the crew, for their chances of escape would be almost negligible, whilst it is impossible to find words to describe the attempts which have been made to sink hospital ships. About the last ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... in hopes of there meeting with the Irish fleet, which her sons, Edmund and Godwin, were bringing against the West of England. How the fleet had never come, and they had starved for many days; and how she had bribed a passing merchantman to take her and her wretched train to the land of Baldwin the Debonnaire, who might have pity on her for the sake of his daughter Judith, and Tosti her husband who died in ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... was born in 1820, at Amsterdam, his father being the captain of a merchantman trading in the Dutch colonies. At the age of eighteen Dekker sailed on his father's vessel for the East Indies, determined to abandon the business career that had been mapped out for him and enter the colonial service. In ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... his own trade. But the neutrality of the island must be respected. Skinner, the Zebra's captain, sailed away towards the Boca, and found, to his grim delight, that the privateers had mistaken him for a certain English merchantman whom they had blockaded in Port of Spain, and were giving him chase. He let them come up and try to board; and what followed may be easily guessed. In three-quarters of an hour they were all burnt, sunk, or driven on shore; the remnant of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... this morning for Venice," Browning wrote to a friend on Good Friday, 1838. He voyaged as sole passenger on a merchantman, and soon was on friendliest terms with the rough kindly captain. For the first fortnight the sea was stormy and Browning suffered much; as they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, Captain Davidson aided him to reach the deck, and a pulsing of home-pride—not ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... through, stout ship that she was, and her weary sailors found brief respite in the harbor of Valparaiso on March 14, 1813. Thence Porter headed up the coast, disguising the trim frigate so that she looked like a lubberly, high-pooped Spanish merchantman. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... succeeded beyond his expectations. In Venice there were constantly bargains to be purchased from ships returning laden with the spoils of some captured Genoese merchantman, or taken in the sack of some Eastern seaport. The prices, too, asked by the traders with the towns of Syria or the Black Sea, were but a fraction of those charged when these goods arrived in London. It was true that occasionally some of his cargoes ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... the background to haunt British thought was the growing American navy. John Paul was a Scots sailor, who had been a slave trader and subsequently master of a West India merchantman, and on going to America had assumed the name of Jones. He was a man of boundless ambition, vanity, and vigor, and when he commanded American privateers he became a terror to the maritime people from whom he sprang. In the summer of 1779 when Jones, with a squadron of ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... spoke, there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and having closed the door, and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... school; the Dirghagama and Samyuktagama Sutras; and also the Samyukta-sanchaya-pitaka;—all being works unknown in the land of Han. Having obtained these Sanscrit works, he took passage in a large merchantman, on board of which there were more than two hundred men, and to which was attached by a rope a smaller vessel, as a provision against damage or injury to the large one from the perils of the navigation. With ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... the vessel hove to, which we took it for granted was a merchantman, which the pirate had been plundering, the captain ordered one of the cutters to be lowered down with a midshipman and boat's crew to take possession of her. The men were all in the boat, but the midshipman had gone down for his ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... the red embers of his fire were fading away in the bright beams of the morning sun, that looked aslant through the open window. He ran out to the cliff. The sturdy sea-breeze fanned his feverish cheeks and tossed the white caps of waves that beat in pleasant music on the beach below. A stately merchantman with snowy canvas was entering the Gate. The voices of sailors came cheerfully from a bark at anchor below the point. The muskets of the sentries gleamed brightly on Alcatraz, and the rolling of drums swelled on the breeze. Farther on, the hills of San Francisco, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... say that she must go to the Port the next day and learn what vessel had been lost, and if any passengers were saved; and by daybreak he set out on that errand. He returned early in the morning with the news that a merchantman, the "Gabriel," had gone down, and that cargo and crew were lost. While he was telling this to Clarice he observed the ring upon her finger, and he coupled the appearing of that token with the serenity of the girl's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... of a yeoman-farmer. Besides, he has heard of harsh discipline on war-vessels, and that the navy tar, when in a foreign port, is permitted to see little more of the country than may be viewed over the rail or from the rigging of his ship. A merchantman is the craft he inclines to—at least, to make a beginning with—especially one that trades from port to port, visiting many lands; for, in truth, his leaning toward a sea life has much to do with a desire to see the world and its wonders. Above all, would a whaler ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... ships took place in various seas. The career of the raider Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, a fast converted liner, was ended by the British ship Highflyer, a cruiser, near the Cape Verde Islands, on August 27, 1914, after the former had sunk the merchantman Hyades and had stopped the mail steamer Galician. The greater speed of the German vessel was of no advantage to her, for she had been caught in the act of coaling. What then transpired was not a fight, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Morison" was making her debut, I paid my first visit to Melbourne. I went with Mr. and Mrs. Stirling in a French ship consigned to him, and we were 12 days on the way, suffering from the limited ideas that the captain of a French merchantman had of the appetites of Australians at sea. I intended to pay a six weeks' visit to my sister and her family, but she was so unwell that I stayed for eight months. I found that Melbourne in the beginning of 1854 was a very expensive place to live in, and consequently ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... a very uneventful voyage. The foul winds prophesied never blew, the icebergs kept far away to the northward, the excitement of flight from Russian privateers was exchanged for the sight of one harmless merchantman; even the fogs off Newfoundland turned out ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... mind the plane-tree. Come, Callicles, you were not so timid when you plundered the merchantman off Cape Malea. Take up the torch and move. Hippomachus, tell one of the slaves to bring a sow. (A sow was sacrificed to Ceres at the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... your heart for trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked toward Roosevelt Street. It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the children, and what did it matter? ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... "Merchantman fitted out for privateersman, probably. That's the sort of craft Russia would be likeliest to send to a secret prison like ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Citadel and at Murray Bay of the freebooting gentlemen, whose Ninety-Nine had furnished forth many a table in the great walled city. But Black Tarboe himself was down at Anticosti, waiting for a certain merchantman. Passing vessels saw the Ninety-Nine anchored in an open bay, flying its flag flippantly before the world—a rag of black sheepskin, with the wool on, in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... She was attached to the Chinese station, but had recently obtained information that war had been declared between England and the States. She was now making her way to the west by a circuitous route to avoid the British squadron, and, at the same time, with a view to pick up an English merchantman or two. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... of June, the owners of the merchantman Deliverance received news that the ship had touched at Plymouth to land passengers, and had then continued her homeward voyage to the Port of London. Five days later, the vessel was in the river, and was towed ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... simple form of deceptive paint-work that a special camouflage section of the naval service, with an eminent artist as its director, was formed, and all kinds of grotesque designs were painted on the broadsides and superstructures of almost every British merchantman operating in the ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... that merchant-ships ought not to carry weapons for defense; it is too dangerous for the dainty U-boat; every merchantman thus armed must be treated as a vessel of war. But the law of nations for more than two centuries has sanctioned the carrying of defensive armament by merchant-ships, and precisely because they might need it to protect themselves ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... the English ports, having accomplished nothing, and having expended superfluously a considerable amount of money and trouble. Essex, with a few of the vessels, subsequently made a cruise towards the Azores, but, beyond the capture of a Spanish merchantman or two, gained no ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... so developed and expanded as to include the following prescriptions: (1) In general all import and export trade must be conducted in ships built in England, in Ireland, or in the colonies, manned and commanded by British subjects. Thus, if a French or Dutch merchantman appeared in Massachusetts Bay, offering to sell at a great bargain his cargo of spices or silks, the shrewd merchants of Boston were legally bound not to buy of him. (2) Certain "enumerated" articles, such ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... he was a mate of a merchantman, but when most of the officers of the former royal navy had emigrated or perished, he was, in 1793, made a captain of the republican navy, and in 1796 an admiral. During the battle of Aboukir he was the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... be but the captain, followed by several men carrying vast lumps of gold, that had been paid him by the King of Barbary for the ship's cargo. They then told the story of the cat, and showed the rich present that the King had sent to Dick for her; upon which the merchantman ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... that I can. But she's no frigate, sir. Devil knows what she is. She looks like a big merchantman to me, such as I've seed in the Injy trade, with a high poop in the old style. And her piercin's be not like a frigate." He said this with a readiness to startle me, and little enough superstition I had. A light was on his seared face, and his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their tables. And yet their servants have their ordinary diet assigned, beside such as is left at their master's boards, and not appointed to be brought thither the second time, which nevertheless is often seen, generally in venison, lamb, or some especial dish, whereon the merchantman himself liketh to feed when it is cold, or peradventure for sundry causes incident to the feeder is better so than if it were warm or hot. To be short, at such times as the merchants do make their ordinary or voluntary feasts, it is a world to see ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... walk down to the Piraeus and see if any merchantman has come in from Ephesus. It worries me to have my son dilly-dallying there so long ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... Waldo Emerson, says "that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in the water." Yes, that is comfortable; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... board the Gally again, nor have the Boat, or Small-Armes, for he had no Commission to take any but the King's Enemies, and Pirates, and that he would attack them with the Gally and drive them into Bombay; the other being a Merchantman and having no Guns, might easily have done it with a few hands, and with all the arguments and menaces he could use could scarce restraine them from their unlawful Designe, but at last prevailed, and with much ado got him cleare, and let him go about his business. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... him on the back, and spoke cheeringly to him in a foreign language; and he was soon between decks with the crew. Several of these could speak English, and Will found that he was on board a Dutch merchantman, bound with ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... that no craft resembling the lugger had been in that part of the Bay. The vessel's head was now laid to the southward and westward, in waiting for the zephyr, which might soon be expected. The gallant frigate, seen from the impending rocks, looked like a light merchantman, in all but her symmetry and warlike guise; nature being moulded on so grand a scale all along that coast, as to render objects of human art unusually diminutive to the eye. On the other hand, the country-houses, churches, hermitages, convents, and villages, clustered all along the mountain-sides, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... morning; a gentle breeze filled the sails. An unusual arrangement of the vessel attracted the attention of Albert. Soon he observed men at the guns, and Captain Templeton standing in a commanding position. The brig was bearing down upon a French merchantman. ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... thinking them none of their business. So, what between hard-hearted people, thoughtless people, busy people, humble people, and cheerfully minded people,—giddiness of youth, and preoccupations of age,—philosophies of faith, and cruelties of folly,—priest and Levite, masquer and merchantman, all agreeing to keep their own side of the way,—the evil that God sends to warn us gets to be forgotten, and the evil that He sends to be mended by us gets left unmended. And then, because people shut their eyes to the dark indisputableness of the facts in front of them, their Faith, such as it ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... great tumult and expectation in Bristol. The partisans of Monmouth knew that he was almost within sight of their city, and imagined that he would be among them before daybreak. About an hour after sunset a merchantman lying at the quay took fire. Such an occurrence, in a port crowded with shipping, could not but excite great alarm. The whole river was in commotion. The streets were crowded. Seditious cries were heard amidst the darkness and confusion. It was afterwards ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were British trawlers. There were four British and one French merchantman in the list. The others were ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... great work. I cruised over there on one of our destroyers. She was five years old, yet one day during an 85-mile run to answer an S O S call she exceeded her builder's trial by half a knot. Incidentally, she saved a merchantman which had been shelled for four hours by a U-boat and her $3,000,000 cargo; also she ran the U-boat under—one of the new big U-boats with two 5.9 deck guns. On the same day two other destroyers of our group took ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... in 1626 was only 40 feet "over all." The Dutch seem to have built larger vessels. Winthrop records that as they came down the Channel, on their way to New England (1630), they passed the wreck of "a great Dutch merchantman ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... us to a ramshackle building reminiscent of the days when the street bristled with bowsprits of ships from all over the world, an age when the American merchantman flew our flag on the uttermost of the seven-seas. On the ground floor was an apparently innocent junk dealer's shop, in reality the meeting-place of the junta. By an outside stairway the lofts above were reached, hiding their secrets behind ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... native grace and loveliness? Were her eyes less bright, or was her conversation less cheery, or were her attitudes less picturesque and pleasing, because old Captain Barkstead, instead of still sailing a fleet merchantman, now mopingly cleaned his reflectors, and, when strangers came, hid himself in the lantern? Moreover, had she not brought with her from her former home, wherever that might be, a wit, and intellect, and intelligence which might adorn any position? What more could ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... Moors from the Barbary States, of all hues and countries, and marked solely by the common stamp of a wild-beast ferocity. Rasping up on either side, with oars trailing to save them from snapping, they poured in a living torrent with horrid yell and shrill whoop upon the defenceless merchantman. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nationality and bound upon every sort of errand. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutral ownership bound from neutral port to neutral port, have been destroyed along with vessels of belligerent ownership in constantly increasing numbers. Sometimes the merchantman attacked has been warned and summoned to surrender before being fired on or torpedoed; sometimes passengers or crews have been vouchsafed the poor security of being allowed to take to the ship's boats before she was ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... house—that in which you now sit—and sought about for a teacher to help me. Long before that time poor Ned Grove had been drowned at sea. Your old friend Natty there had become the first mate to a merchantman, and helped to support his grandmother. Nellie, whose education I had begun, as you know, when you were a boy, had grown into a remarkably clever and pretty girl, as, no doubt, you will admit. She had become a daily governess in the family of a gentleman who had come to live in the neighbourhood. ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... strange sail, and the pirate-vessel was brought round with her broadside to bear by means of long oars or sweeps. In a short time the boats returned with the mortifying intelligence that the papers were all right, and that the vessel, being in truth a British merchantman, was not a legitimate prize. The corsair therefore sailed away under the influence of a ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... ports for refreshment or advices; and against this the article provides. But the armed vessels of France have been also admitted to land and sell their prize-goods here for a consumption, in which case, it is as reasonable they should pay duties, as the goods of a merchantman landed and sold for consumption. They have however demanded, and as a matter of right, to sell them free of duty, a right, they say, given by this article of the treaty, though the article does not ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... attempted a landing at Washington. He knew no better than to suppose that the capital of this nation, on one of our finest rivers, possessing all its days a navy-yard, would permit itself to be approached by a merchantman. He stuck in the mud within a hundred yards of the wharf. There he spent three or four days in anxiety and chagrin, and finally got a tug to pull him back into navigable water. He swung about, made haste down the river and took his vessel to another port, uttering some natural oaths, no doubt, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... suppose, as soon as we go away, they'll come out and attack the first merchantman that ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... boat No. 96 collided with another vessel near Gibraltar on November 2, 1915, and sank before all of her crew could escape, eleven men being drowned. The fifth of the month witnessed a successful attack by an enemy submarine upon the armed merchantman Tara of the British navy. She was a vessel of 6,322 tons and carried from four to five hundred men, of whom thirty-four lost their lives. The sinking of the Tara, coupled with numerous attacks on merchant ships, proved ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... been half a score, and from their numerous progeny and great longevity, we may judge what vigor was in the race. One of them, William, son of Nathaniel, son of James, cruised over many seas, as commander of a merchantman, and becoming interested in a Boston maiden, Ann Holmes, settled about 1720 in the provincial capital, where among other offices he filled with credit to himself and his name was that for many years of warden of Trinity Church. He died before the Revolution, leaving many children; most ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... what strikes me as the finest and most accurate arrangement of goods and furniture it was ever my fortune to set eyes on; when I went as a sightseer on board the great Phoenician merchantman, [15] and beheld an endless quantity of goods and gear of all sorts, all separately packed and stowed away within the smallest compass. [16] I need scarce remind you (he said, continuing his narrative) what a vast amount of wooden spars and cables [17] ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... against a ferryboat, and wreck it, the master of the ship that was wrecked shall seek justice before God; the master of the merchantman, which wrecked the ferryboat, must compensate the owner for the boat and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... broken, and her honour betrayed, is not regarded by the best authorities as an objection or even as a relevant fact. In the more sacred name of uniformity Ireland is swamped in the Westminster Parliament like a fishing-smack in the wash of a great merchantman. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened, Excellency; no, not I. Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without a ducat in my pocket or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board of a Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected; but luckily we were attacked by a pirate,—half the crew were butchered, the rest captured. I was one of the last: always in luck, you see, signor,—monks' sons have a knack that way! The captain of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Berkeley was wrong. The Right of Search did not include the right to search a foreign man-of-war, though, unlike the modern 'right of search,' which is confined to cargoes, it did include the right to search a neutral merchantman on the high seas for any 'national' who was 'wanted.' Canning, however, distinctly stated that the men's nationality would affect the consideration of restoring them or not. Monroe now had a good case. But he made the fatal mistake of writing officially ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... narrating a number of astounding stories of plunderings and burnings on the high seas. He dwelt upon them with peculiar relish, heightening the frightful particulars in proportion to their effect on his peaceful auditors. He gave a swaggering detail of the capture of a Spanish merchantman. She was lying becalmed during a long summer's day, just off from the island which was one of the lurking places of the pirates. They had reconnoitered her with their spyglasses from the shore, and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... recognition for any normal palate, was always served to Aholibah. She loved "needles on her tongue," she asseverated if any one offered her weaker stuff. That July night she looked like a piratical craft that had captured a sleek merchantman for prize. She was all smoothness; Ambroise alone detected the retracted claws of the leopardess. She blazed in the electric illumination, and her large hat, with its swelling plumes, threw her dusky features into shadow—her eyes seemed far away ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Cochrane and his two children, he went first from Rye to Boulogne, and there, on the 15th of August, 1818, embarked in the Rose, a merchantman which had formerly been a warsloop. The long voyage was uninteresting until Cape Horn was reached. There, and in passing along the rugged coast-line of Tierra del Fuego, Lord Cochrane was struck by its wild scenery. He watched ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... something here finer yet by far than this. Everything God provides for us is personal. There is always the personal touch and presence. Do you remember that during the earlier days of the recent war with Spain this occurrence frequently took place? In the Caribbean waters a Spanish merchantman would be overtaken by an American warship. A few shots were sent over the bows of the merchantman with a demand for surrender. And then the Spanish flag was seen to drop from the merchantman's masthead in token ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... I ask," added Desmond, with a slight gesture to Bulger to restrain himself—he too had recognized the newcomers—"since when the Nawab has taken into his service the crew of an interloping English merchantman?" ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... informed Congress of certain captures and outrages committed by a French privateer within the limits of the United States, including the burning of an English merchantman in the harbor of Charleston. On March 19, in a further special message, he communicated dispatches from the American envoys in France, and also informed Congress that he should withdraw his order forbidding merchant vessels to sail in an armed condition. A collision might, therefore, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... and so Frank's letter has made you very happy, but you are afraid he would not have patience to stay for the Haarlem which you wish him to have done as being safer than the merchantman. Poor fellow! to wait from the middle of November to the end of December, and perhaps even longer, it must be sad work; especially in a place where the ink is so abominably pale. What a surprise to him it must have been on October 20, to be visited, collared, and thrust out of the Peterel by Captain ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... years since this little story was set afloat on the sea of books. It is not a man-of-war, nor even a high-sided merchantman; only a small, peaceful sailing-vessel. Yet it has had rather an adventurous voyage. Twice it has fallen into the hands of pirates. The tides have carried it to far countries. It has been passed through the translator's port of entry into German, French, Armenian, Turkish, and perhaps ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... for three years Verres came back to Rome. The people of Messana, his only friends in the islands, had built a merchantman for him, and he loaded it with his spoils. He came back with a light heart. He knew indeed that the Sicilians would impeach him. His wrong-doings had been too gross, too insolent, for him to escape altogether. But he was confident ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... contrast with the law-abiding character of the Non-conformist colonizations. Along the seaboard wild pirates nestled, skimmers of the seas of the most daring type, worthy brethren of the Kidds, the Blackbeards, and the Teaches, terrors of the merchantman and the well-disposed emigrant. But in spite of the sternness of the law-abiding, and the savageness of the lawless portions of the English settlements, they contrasted favorably in every way with the settlements which were nominally ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Salem a large privateer called the "America," the equipment and operations of which illustrated precisely the business conception which attached to these enterprises in the minds of competent business men. This ship-rigged vessel of four hundred and seventy-three tons, built of course for a merchantman, was about eight years old when the war broke out, and had just returned from a voyage. Seeing that ordinary commerce was likely to be a very precarious undertaking, her owners spent the months of July and August in preparing her deliberately ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... other ships and boats and victims hurrying onward to their doom. Here, a stately barque, with disordered topsails almost bursting from the yards as she hurries her hapless crew—all ignorant, perchance, of its proximity—towards the dread lee-shore. Elsewhere, looming through the murk, a ponderous merchantman, her mainmast and mizzen gone, and just enough of the foremast left to support the bellying foresail that ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... was hurrying to meet came smoothly on until the pirate craft was well in range, when ports flew open along the stranger's sides, guns were run out, and a heavy broadside splintered through the planks of the robber galley. It was a man-of-war, not a merchantman, that had run Blackbeard down. The war-ship closed and grappled with the corsair, but while the sailors were standing at the chains ready to leap aboard and complete the subjugation of the outlaws a mass of flame burst from the pirate ship, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... before I left Seacombe, Tony was telling us how upset and miserable he was, how he cried, when his two elder brothers left home to join the Navy. Also he told us what I knew nothing of before—his own one attempt to go to sea aboard a merchantman. When he was at Cloade's he looked on fishing as a refuge from groceries, and when he had given up groceries for fishing, he looked on a ship's fo'c'stle as a refuge from that. Fishing was very bad one summer. He and Dick Yeo agreed ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... were seen there was a general rush for telescopes on the part of all the officers on deck; and after a protracted scrutiny of them the general consensus of opinion was that they were a French privateer and a British merchantman which she had captured. Coming down toward us, end-on as they were, it was not easy at first to determine their rig, but both were large ships, one of them being of about six hundred tons, while the other appeared to be fully as big as ourselves. That their eyes were as sharp as our own very soon ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... I ain't a-pervertin' Scriptur' nor nuthin', but I can't help thinkin' of one passage, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and when he hath found one pearl of great price, for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that pearl.' Well, Mary, I've been and sold my brig last week," he said, folding ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... copy of Monteith's Geography, I remember a picture of a half-dozen pirate prahus attacking a merchantman off a jungle-bordered shore. A blazing sun hung high in the heavens above the fated ship, and, to my youthful imagination, seemed to beat down on the tropical scene with a fierce, remorseless intensity. The wedge-shaped ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... slackened her sails, and I came up with her, between five and six in the evening, September twenty-sixth; but my heart leaped within me to see her English colors. I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English merchantman returning from Japan by the North and South Seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddle, of Deptford, a very civil man and an excellent sailor. We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south. There were about fifty men in the ship; and here I met an old comrade of mine, one Peter Williams, who gave ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... to tell, the Vulture, black sails spread, moved forward to head off the merchantman evidently homeward ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... stars and launched it and floated far away on the current, unknowing whither Destiny was directing us. On the third day we espied a vessel making us, whereat we rejoiced with joy excessive, deeming her to be some merchantman coming to our aidance. No sooner had it lain alongside, however, than up there sprang five or six pirates,[FN244] each brandishing a naked brand in hand, and boarding us tied our arms behind us and carried us to their craft. They then tare the veil from my face and forthwith ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton |
