"Sea captain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now decided to leave his anchorage, but the veteran seaman did not disguise from himself the risks which he ran: a greater sea captain than he once said "only numbers can annihilate," and it was at annihilation that both the Moslem and the Christian aimed: in this case, however, he knew that he could but hope for a hard-won victory, and only that if Allah and his Prophet were unusually favourable to his cause. He ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Grandfather, "is a Malay kris, such as the pirates in the East Indies carry. An old sea captain gave it to me. It once belonged to a Malay pirate. When he was captured, my friend secured it and gave it to me in return for a service I did ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... Mark Twain's Bermuda chapters entitled Idle Notes of an Idle Excursion he tells of an old sea captain, one Hurricane Jones, who explained biblical miracles in a practical, even if somewhat startling, fashion. In his story of the prophets of Baal, for instance, the old captain declared that the burning ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mr. Henty traces the adventures and brave deeds of an English boy in the household of the ablest man of his age—William the Silent. Edward Martin, the son of an English sea captain, enters the service of the Prince as a volunteer, and is employed by him in many dangerous and responsible missions, in the discharge of which he passes through the great sieges of the time. He ultimately settles ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... old sea captain, He neither paused nor stirred Till the king listened, and then Once more took up his pen And ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... fleet against the infidels; insomuch that even in his own country his name was used to frighten young children. This man, known by the name of Columbus the young, to distinguish him from another great sea captain of the same name, was a person of great prowess, and must have commanded a goodly fleet, as he captured at one time four Venetian galleys, of such size and strength as I could not have believed unless I had seen them fitted out. Of this Columbus junior, Marc Anthony Sabellicus, the Livy ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... paused, and looking between the branches she saw a tall, finely grown gentleman in the full military uniform of a colonel of the British army. By his side stood a man of smaller stature who wore the blue coat of a sea captain of that period. As the sunlight fell upon the bright scarlet uniform, the gold laced hat, the gold epaulets and the handsome scabbard which contained the colonel's sword, the child gazed in great ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... not at all of that matter. Now I can shift the whole credit of this victory to your shoulders, and then he will not believe that I am the born sea captain that he would ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea captain and thinks he's an original character. The truth is that he sees the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how to set this sea ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... happy memory of an old friend, now deceased: the late Lt.-Col. John Sewell, who had served in the 49th under General Brock, and whose birth was nearly contemporary with the visit of Nelson to our port in September, 1782. It was evident the chief biographers of the gifted sea captain ignored the details of his youthful attachment ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... terrible Sea of Darkness, they were terribly distressed. Nobody was willing to go. They would obey the commands of the king and queen and furnish the two ships, but as for sailing off with this crazy sea captain—that they ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... waste time or thought on commercial or mercenary craft. Here is not interest or adventure or much real return on the investment, unless your aim in life is to die merely a sea captain or a ship owner. Let us cruise where the currents are strong, where the rocks are dangerous: in the frozen North or in sight of coral island or low beach and palm trees, where there is an uncertainty of return in gold, but a wealth of interest ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... house on the outskirts of the town, her only income being that derived from the renting of the large house, in which she had once lived in comfort with her husband and son. The house was a double house; and for a few years Billy Jacobs's twin brother, a sea captain, had lived in the other half of it. But Mrs. Billy could not abide Mrs. John, and so with a big heart wrench the two brothers, who loved each other as only twin children can love, had separated. Captain John took his wife and went to sea again. The ship was never ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... By the 17th of January he was in the vicinity of the Sargasso Sea again, which this time had no terrors for him. From his journal the word "gold" suddenly disappears; the Viceroy and Governor-General steps off the stage; and in his place appears the sea captain, watching the frigate birds and pelicans, noting the golden gulf-weed in the sea, and smelling the breezes that are once more as sweet as the breezes of Seville in May. He had a good deal of trouble with his dead-reckoning at this time, owing to the changing winds ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... forts suffer severely from the fleet fire; French submarine is sunk in the Dardanelles; there is a lull in bombardment of Dardanelles and of Smyrna; German submarine sinks British steamer Glenartney in English Channel; Copenhagen report says a German sea Captain states that the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... denied, that ever I heard, that up to the time of Captain Brand's being commissioned against the South Sea pirates he had always been esteemed as honest, reputable a sea captain ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... slightly less beard than the average youth of his years; and, despite the fact that he had been exposed almost constantly to salty gales since his fourteenth birthday, he did not look his age. And of all the ridiculous sights ashore or afloat the most ridiculous is a sea captain with the body of a Hercules and the immature features ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... Such at least was the Spanish account as related by the journals. Observing the Spaniards to be in great glee at the idea of one of their nation having frightened away the Englishman, I exclaimed, "Gentlemen, all of you who suppose that an English sea captain has been deterred from attacking a Spaniard, from an apprehension of a superior force of four guns, remember, if you please, the fate of the Santissima Trinidad, and be pleased also not to forget that we are almost ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... found him and proved his innocence. He lived for years under another name and supported himself by translating foreign books into English. He had a dear friend, an old sea captain, who lived with him in a funny little house at Cape May. This friend had lots of money, so when Madge found her father he bought a yacht and took them for a trip ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... Devil, where he broke no ribs, because the hardness of the stairs could reach no bones; and, for my part, I do not wonder how he came to fall, for I have always known him heavy: the miracle is, how he got up again. I have heard of a sea captain as fat as he, who, to escape arrests, would lay himself flat upon the ground, and let the bailiffs carry him to prison, if they could. If a messenger or two, nay, we may put in three or four, should come, he has friendly advertisement how to escape them. But to leave him, who is not worth ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... entertain the beholder. The avalanche promised disaster to the participants in it. Tons upon tons of sand, undulating and sinuous in appearance, traveled faster and yet faster behind the old gray mare and the gray old sea captain. The smoke of the slide hid all that lay behind them, and these wreaths of sand dust threatened a higher wave that might, at any moment, entirely overwhelm both the equine and the human victim of ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... look luxurious, even if not princely. The parsonage was an old mansion which had once belonged to a wealthy but eccentric sea captain. He had built to please himself, something after the colonial fashion; and large square rooms, generous fireplaces with quaint mantels, and tiling, and hardwood floors gave the house an appearance of solid comfort that approached luxury. The church in Milton had purchased ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... called Betsy. This was he whose womanly care of me got him the name of a woman, who, with more than female attention, condescended to play the hand-maid to a little unaccompanied orphan, that fortune had cast upon the care of a rough sea captain, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... could be the author of such a serious work as "The Anxious Inquirer." But I have since discovered that many of the most solemn and impressive preachers were men of most cheery temperament who could laugh heartily themselves when they were not making other people weep. Mr. James looked like an old sea captain; but he was an admirable pilot of awakened souls, whom thousands will ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... arrangement continues at sea. That is, the discipline, routine, and supervision of the troops are in the hands of the military officers, as though in a garrison; but they can give no orders as to the management or movements of the ship to the sea captain who commands her. On board, the mode of life is fixed by regulation—subject, of course, to the changes and interruptions inseparable from sea conditions. The hours for rising, for meals, for drills, for bed, and all the usual incidents of ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... British ministry, and their more than brutish tyrants in America. This fleet consists of five sail, fitted out from Philadelphia, which are to be joined at the capes of Virginia by two ships more from Maryland, and is commanded by Admiral Hopkins, a most experienced and venerable sea captain. The admiral's ship is called the Columbus, after Christopher Columbus, thirty-six guns, 12 and 9-pounders, on two decks, forty swivels and five hundred men. The second ship is called the Cabot, after Sebastian Cabot, who completed the discoveries ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... sea captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To Alfred, lover of truth, Brought a snow-white walrus tooth, That he held ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... Nellie Dutton himself, and like most rich boys (his father was a retired sea captain and president of the Mapleton National Bank), could ill bear the deprivation of anything which his fancy craved. Therefore the thought that a poor fellow, like Fred Worthington, might come between him and the object of ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... up with pride and joy when they rested upon the young girl who answered to the name of Maddy. Their only daughter's only child, she had lived with them since her mother's death, for her father was a sea captain, who never returned from his last voyage to China, made two months before she was born. Very lonely and desolate would the home of Grandfather Markham have been without the presence of Madeline, but with her there, the old red ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... graver crisis in which his action requires some discussion. Messrs. Mason and Slidell were sent by the Confederate Government as their emissaries to England and France. They got to Havana and there took ship again on the British steamer Trent. A watchful Northern sea captain overhauled the Trent, took Mason and Slidell off her, and let her go. If he had taken the course, far more inconvenient to the Trent, of bringing her into a Northern harbour, where a Northern Prize Court ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... was the beloved wife of a sea captain, Mr. William Potter, and he owned a ship that sailed the Indian Ocean, and he was washed overboard one night while his wife, Mrs. Potter, was sick, and she did not know that he had a watery grave until the ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold
... A sea captain bought it from him for ten thousand dollars and sold it to a Jew for sixty thousand dollars. An Armenian named Shafras bought it from the Jew, and after a time Count Orloff paid $382,500 for this and a title ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... a fancy dress ball at the Astor House. You wore the costume of a Japanese merchant, I believe, thinking, a little fatuously, if you will permit me, that those garments were a disguise. A little later in the bar at the Palace Hotel, after you left Miss Vost, you met a sea captain, ex-first mate of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha steamer, the Sunyado Maru. He ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Hat Tyler and Mrs. Elmer Higgins sprang out of a chance laugh of Elmer's when he was making his first trip as cadet. Hat Tyler was a sea captain, and of a formidable type. She was master of the Susie P. Oliver, and her husband, Tyler, was mate. They were bound for New York with a load of paving stones when they collided with the coasting steamer Alfred de Vigny, in which Elmer was serving his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sea captain was surrounded at the tea party, to which his wife had dragged him, much against his will, by a group of women pestering him for a story from his adventures. Finally, at the end of ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... An apple tree was found by Labillardiere on the coast. They doubtless all perished. The Frenchman was greatly scandalised by the despotism which condemned men of science to initials, and gave a sea captain a monopoly ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... first voyage of Sebastian Cabot. A meager extract from an old Bristol record: "In the year 1497, June 24, on St. John's Day, was Newfoundland found by Bristol men in a ship called the Matthew"—a few dry statements such as might be found in the note-book of any intelligent sea captain—these are all the traces of the first English voyage which reached the New World. We read in an account, probably published under the eye of Cabot himself, that on June 24, at five o'clock in the morning, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... once a sea captain, who was walking on a beach with some of his men, when he spied one of these Cuttle-fish, travelling over the sand towards the water. He thought it would be a fine thing to capture such a strange fish, and he ran ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... seen a good deal of the man who shared his room—another sea captain, named Muller. He is a big, silent person, and it is not easy to get him to talk. As regards the death of Captain Gunner he can tell me nothing. It seems that on the night of the tragedy he was away at Portsmouth with some friends. All I have got from him is some information ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... sitting in Liverpool there was some talk of a sea captain. Phinuit, who was rather fond of nicknames, jocularly attached the epithet ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... perched like a monkey on a crossbeam in the attic, with all his nightcaps tied over his ears. He seeks a divorce, but is driven frantic by the loud arguments of a lawyer and a divine, who are no other than Cutbeard and a sea captain disguised. When Morose is past all hope the nephew offers to release him from his wife and her noisy friends if he will allow him five hundred pounds a year. Morose offers him anything, everything, to escape ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... evidence to substantiate them. An unsuccessful man is generally persuaded that somebody else has caused his failure. And the "somebody else," in the case of the colonists, was, by universal consent, the foreign sea captain who had deluded Spanish hidalgoes by his wild projects, and had become a grandee under false pretences. The Indians, too, who were glad to lay their miseries at the door of somebody, and who were told that Aguado was the new admiral, and had come to supplant the old one, were ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... of the garroter were quick, sure and silent. At Slaughter-house Point and its environs many a returned East India sea captain, whose vessel was moored to one of the docks at the foot of a contiguous street, has either strayed or been beguiled into this neighborhood, drugged and robbed. Others, whose business or chance brought them within the reach of this set of desperadoes, have fared similarly. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Vasco de Gama died on Christmas eve 1524, having been only three months viceroy. He was of middle stature, somewhat gross, and had a ruddy complexion. He had a natural boldness for any great undertaking, and was well fitted for every thing entrusted to him, as a sea captain, as discoverer, and as viceroy; being patient of fatigue, prompt in the execution of justice, and terrible ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... and easy route for sailing vessels from Europe to China, and fortunate indeed would be that nation whose sailors first discovered such a passage! Therefore, in the year 1607, the Muscovy Company tried to find some sea captain who would undertake a voyage of discovery to find a quicker way to the Far East than around the Cape of ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... had a ole parrot what had once 'longed ter her brother who wus a sea captain. Dat wus de cussingest thing I ever seed an' he'd cuss ever'body an' ever'thing. One day two neighborhood men wus passin' when dey heard somebody holler 'Wait a minute.' When dey turns 'roun' de ole parrot sez, 'Go on now, I jist wanted ter see how you looks, Great God what ugly men!' An' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... he settled himself to listen, "I must go back such a long, long way. Before I was born. Father was a sea captain then. First the captain of a whaler, afterward he bought a ship of his own and traded round the East Indies. He often used to talk of those days, not because he had any desire to tell me of them, but it seemed to relieve him when he was in a bad temper. ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... which the poor motherless girl, highly connected on one side, meanly connected on the other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal beings, good and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid, young orphan; a coarse sea captain; an ugly insolent fop, blazing in a superb court dress; another fop, as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow Hill, and tricked out in second-hand finery for the Hampstead ball; an old woman, all wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a miss of seventeen, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "'Cause my father's a sea captain, and he takes divers out on his boat and they go down after things that sink. The divers have air pumped to them, and they wear a big thing on their heads like a soap bubble, only it's called a helmet. This is pumped full of air for the diver ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... after the disappearance of her husband, while she was walking along the Rue aux Juifs, she stopped before the house of an old sea captain who had recently died and whose furniture was for sale. Just at that moment a parrot was at auction. He had green feathers and a blue head and was watching everybody with a displeased look. "Three francs!" cried the auctioneer. "A bird that can talk ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... severest sticklers for propriety, and the butlers of the old families rivalled each other in the loftiness of their standards. Jack, the butler of "the last of the Barons," was wide awake to the demands of his position, and when an old sea captain, an intimate friend of Mr. Huger, dining with the family, asked for rice when the fish was served he was first met with a chill silence. Thinking that he had not been heard, he repeated the request. Jack bent and whispered to him. With a burst of laughter, the captain said, "Judge, ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... friend of mine," Blowitz spoke quickly. "We were talking about the derelict brig. I was to meet a sea captain there, but he did not come. My friend had to leave in a hurry, and just then I heard the noise made by your boat, so I called to you. ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... organized the opposition in Congress and throughout the country very much as Van Buren, Calhoun, and Jackson had done in 1826-28. The President, they said, was no friend of the people; he had not so much as mentioned their case in his messages to Congress. He was likened to a sea captain who seizes the lifeboats on a distressed ship in midocean and, saving himself and crew, leaves the passengers to the mercies of the angry waves. Clay said the panic had been due entirely to the ungodly Jackson and his ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... had people bribed to swear against Robert Emmet, and the same men said after, they never saw him till he was in the dock. He might have got away but for his attention to that woman. She went away after with a sea captain. There are some say she gave information. Curran's daughter she was. But I don't know. He made one request, his letters that she wrote to him in the gaol not to be meddled with, but the Government opened them and took the presents she sent in them, and whatever was best of them they kept ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... he went to reside in Philadelphia, a sea captain by the name of Cox came to his uncle's on a visit. As the captain was one day passing through Norris Alley, he met a young colored man, named Joe, whose master he had known in Bermuda. He at once accused him of being a runaway ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... Years afterwards a Sea Captain came there on a visit. He told such big stories that the Poor Brother said, "Oh, I daresay you have seen wonderful things, but I don't believe you ever saw anything more wonderful than the Little Mill that stands behind ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... separate transmitter and receiver. You would talk into a funnel-shaped contrivance and then place it against your ear to get the returning message. In order to make yourself heard, you would have to shout like a Gloucester sea captain at the height of a storm. More than the speakers' voices would come over the wire. It seemed to have become the playground of a million devils; moanings, shriekings, mutterings, and noises of all kinds would constantly interrupt the flow of speech. To call up your "party" ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... the country. It has borne a good crop every year for thirty-five years, and in all that time has led a strenuous life. It was planted first in Portland from a nut supposed to have been brought from the Rhine in Germany by a German sea captain. It was broken down by stock when Amasa Brooks saw it, and with the consent of the owner transplanted it to its present site, on the side of a red hill a few rods above the house and about 100 feet above the level of the valley. There it was much abused by stock, ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... o' fire, and a scream o' murder, an' in half a meenit the hotel was as busy as gin it had been broad daylicht. Sandy forgot hoo mony stairs he had to clim', and he gaed bang in on an auld sea captain an' his wife, in the room below oors. It fair paralised baith o' them, when they saw Sandy comin' burst in on them wi' his black tile, his white goon, his umberell an' bag, an' ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... biography is one of the most interesting, one of the most picturesque, when compared with those of the many brilliant men of his time. His grandfather was a sea captain, and his father, who was also named Elizur, was a farmer in Canaan, Connecticut. His mother's name was Clarissa Richards, and he was born on the twelfth of February, 1804. In the spring of 1810 the family moved ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... a sea captain and was born at Provincetown, Mass., in 1874. His father's ship sailed from Boston nearly thirty years ago and was never heard from again. His mother died the next year, leaving the son with four other young children. When MacMillan ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... and instant success. The topsails of the Southern Belle had hardly more than appeared over the horizon, when people began to wake up and realize that stagnation had too long held them in its thrall. Satterlee was not at all the ordinary kind of sea captain, to which the Beach (as Apia always alluded to itself) was more than well acquainted. Gin had no attractions for Captain Satterlee, nor did he surround himself with dusky impropriety. He played a straight social game, and lived up to the rules, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne |
