"Merchantman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to come aboard and ask questions. Accordingly, he decided to stop at Valparaiso. He thought it likely that if he did not meet a vessel going into port which would lay to and take his letter, he might find some merchantman, anchored in the roadstead, to which he could send a boat, and on which he was sure to find some one who would ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... with her between five and six in the evening, September 26th; 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 Biddel 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, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... well treated on board the Bellona, expressed his wish also to join; Jack, at Tom's recommendation, took him as his steward. Dr Locock, expressing his gratitude for the kindness he had received, went on shore, intending to remain until he could join an American ship, either a man-of-war or a merchantman. ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... foundation stones brought from Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia. It may be said of Phoenicia herself that she built-up her advanced culture on ideas borrowed almost wholly from her customers. But control of the seas for trade involved control of the seas for war, and behind the merchantman stood the trireme. It is significant and appropriate that a Phoenician coin that has come down to us bears the relief of ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... was a wise man, and when he found his son bent on a sailor's life, determined to give him a taste-of it, in the hope that this would be enough. John was therefore taken from school at the age of thirteen, and sent in a merchantman to Lisbon. The Bay of Biscay, however, did not cure his enthusiasm; and so we next find John Franklin as a midshipman on board the Polyphemus, seventy-four guns. These were stirring times. In 1801 young Franklin's ship led the line in ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... carelessness and hardihood, recklessness and mockery; still, no base or wicked passion had yet stamped there its fatal impress. He was the perfect type of the Parisian, as the term is generally applied, whether in the army, in the provinces, on board a king's ship, or a merchantman. It is not a compliment, and yet it is far from being an insult; it is an epithet which partakes at once of blame, admiration, and fear; for if, in this sense, the Parisian is often idle and rebellious, he is also quick at his work, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the voyage, while waiting in the harbor of Havana for a crew, our vessel was anchored near the wharves, next to an English merchantman. One afternoon I heard a scream from the neighboring craft, and perceived a boy rush from the cabin with his face dyed in blood. He was instantly pursued by a burly seaman, inflicting blows with his fist. I implored the brute to desist, but my interference ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... 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 ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... far as a sail might fare Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre. There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore, And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore. He would not fly the Rovers' flag — the bloody or the black, But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack. He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew — ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... by the son 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
... mates. The sailor who accompanied him patted 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, ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... for. I was immediately ushered into the cabinet, as the superior went out, and I never saw my dear master more. Perhaps he could "bear no rival near the throne;" perhaps, in his preoccupation, he forgot to reclaim me. Be that as it may, he sailed that night, in a Portuguese merchantman, for Lisbon; and I became the property of the representative of his British Majesty. After the first few days of favouritism, I sensibly lost ground with his excellency; for he was too deeply occupied, and had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... time, relieving us of much spray and sloppy motion, but adding to discomforts of taste to me at the helm, for much of the oil blew over me and in my face. Said the captain to one of his mates (an old whaler by the way, and whalers for some unaccountable reason have never too much regard for a poor merchantman), "Mr. Smith." ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... hand or eye is on them! If it announce the coming of one loved and longed for, how we delight to look at it, to sit down on it, to caress it in our fancies, as a lone exile walking out on a windy pier yearns towards the merchantman lying alongside, with the colors of his own native land at her peak, and the name of the port he sailed from long ago upon her stern! But if it tell the near approach of the undesired, inevitable guest, what sound short of the muffled noises made by the undertakers as they ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... expedition of Commodore Perry, few efforts to intrude upon the Japanese had proceeded from the United States. An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1837, by an American merchantman, to return a party of Japanese who had been shipwrecked on our Western coast. In 1846, Commodore Biddle was deputed to open negotiations, and entered the Bay of Yedo with two ships of war. Receiving an unfavorable answer to his demands, he immediately sailed away. In 1849, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... leagues of the land. Signals were instantly made, and our eyes gladdened by the sight of a boat which was put off from the ship. In this we soon embarked, and, with a sensation of wild delight, found ourselves once more treading the deck of a good vessel. She was an English merchantman, bound for Canton. We made a quick passage to that port, where we found a vessel just ready to sail for Liverpool. In this I embarked, with my father, who still remained in the same sad state of mental derangement. No incident, worthy ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... Trebizond merchantman took on board his cargo of young and lovely Circassians, and navigated the Black Sea with a flowing sheet and a flag flying at his peak, which told his business and the commerce that he was engaged in; now the trade is contraband, and ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... even when stayed with alum and fortified with salt. All this made Mistress Windham's memory the more sad. A good reliable rose red was always wanting. Madder could be purchased, for it was raised in the Southern colonies, but the madder was a brown red. Finally some enterprising merchantman introduced cochineal, and the vacuum was filled. With a judicious addition of logwood, rose red, wine red and ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... Commerce. As already stated, it is the most useless of the large rivers of the world as a carrier of ships of commerce. No boat, carrying produce of field, mill or mart, has ever passed up or down its course. No whitewinged schooner or other merchantman has enlivened its course by proudly gliding on its bosom to waiting port, where cargoes are discharged and received. No thrilling fleet of battleships ever has seen its banks, or ever will, for it is useless, absolutely, irretrievably, God-ordainedly ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... other oceans, from the ends of the earth, carrying every kind of flag known to the nations. The whalesman, late harpooning "fish" in the Arctic ocean, with him who has been chasing "cachalot" in the Pacific or Indian; the merchantman standing towards Australia, China, or Japan the traders among the South Sea Islands; the coasters of Mexico, Chili, Peru; men-o'-war of every flag and fashion, frigates, corvettes, and double-deckers; even Chinese junks and Malayan prahus are seen setting into ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... eyes, To hoard all savings to the uttermost, To purchase his own boat, and make a home For Annie: and so prosper'd that at last A luckier or a bolder fisherman, A carefuller in peril, did not breathe For leagues along that breaker-beaten coast Than Enoch. Likewise had he served a year On board a merchantman, and made himself Full sailor; and he thrice had pluck'd a life From the dread sweep of the down-streaming seas: And all me look'd upon him favorably: And ere he touch'd his one-and-twentieth May He purchased his own boat, and made ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... poor old mother in Edinburgh—a lady, he insisted, gently born—who was in reduced circumstances, who had pinched herself to pay the lump sum to the ship-owners for his apprenticeship, whose sacrificing dream had been to see him a merchantman officer and a gentleman, and who was heartbroken because he had deserted his ship in Australia and joined another as a common sailor before the mast. And Scotty proved it. He drew her last sad letter from his pocket and wept over it as he read it aloud. The harpooner and I wept ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... it," answered Mr Thudicumb. "She is a merchantman, though probably bound round from Singapore to trade with some of these islands, and maybe to go to Sydney, or ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... see, in a Revenue sloop, And, off Cape Finisteere, 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 ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... said. 'You're breakin' 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
... Larissa. He did not enter the city although the Larissaeans invited him, because he feared that by so doing he might incur some blame. Bidding them make terms with the victor, he himself took provisions, embarked on the sea, and sailed away to Lesbos on a merchantman, to his wife Cornelia and his son Sextus. After taking charge of them he did not even enter Mitylene but started for Egypt, hoping to secure an alliance with Ptolemy, the king of that country. This was the son of that ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... Royal Navy. But this is a merchantman; you don't think he will presume to break into the monopoly of the superior branch. He will only swear by the wind and weather. Thunder and squalls! Donner and blitzen! Handspikes and halyards! these are the innocent ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... 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 pipe lay neglected ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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
... mostly they had. Was it the two pounds ten a month that sent them there? They didn't think their pay half good enough. No; it was something in them, something inborn and subtle and everlasting. I don't say positively that the crew of a French or German merchantman wouldn't have done it, but I doubt whether it would have been done in the same way. There was a completeness in it, something solid like a principle, and masterful like an instinct—a disclosure of something secret—of that hidden something, that gift, of good or evil ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... 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 lazy penguins that crowded on the rocks, among evergreens ...
— 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
... to the guardians of the traveller or of the home.[21] The most numerous and the most beautiful are those where, towards the end of life, dedications are made with thanksgiving for the past and prayer for what remains. The Mediterranean merchantman retires to his native town and offers prayer to the protector of the city to grant him a quiet age there, or dedicates his ship, to dance no more "like a feather on the sea," now that its master has set his weary feet on land.[22] ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... which purge the brain of dogmatic phrases, which force revolutionary jargon into the background and keep a man sensible and practical; and all the more because three of them, Jean Bon, former captain of a merchantman, Prieur and Carnot, engineering officers, are professional men and go to the front to put their shoulders to the wheel on the spot. Jean Bon, always visiting the coasts, goes on board a vessel of the fleet leaving Brest to save the great American ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... commission from the Prince of Conde. It was proved that in the summer of 1563 there were 400 English and Huguenot rovers in and about the Channel, and that they had taken 700 prizes between them. The Queen's own ships followed suit. Captain Cotton in the Phoenix captured an Antwerp merchantman in Flushing. The harbour-master protested. Cotton laughed, and sailed away with his prize. The Regent Margaret wrote in indignation to Elizabeth. Such insolence, she said, was not to be endured. She would have Captain Cotton chastised as an example to all others. Elizabeth measured the ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... extraordinary Germans say 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 ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... as to the writer's own knowledge of the career of the subject of his present work. In the year 1806, the editor, then a lad, fresh from Yale, and destined for the navy, made his first voyage in a merchantman, with a view to get some practical knowledge of his profession. This was the fashion of the day, though its utility, on the whole, may very well be questioned. The voyage was a long one, including some six or eight passages, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Doubling the Cape, they must visit every part of the affluent East and of the broad Pacific. With restless energy they must plough every sea and explore every water where the hope of honest gain may entice the busy merchantman. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... him our errand. "Tell your captain," said he, "that he has done good service to his government, and saved the capture of many a rich merchantman, if I mistake not. The ship you have destroyed was the 'Wilks' privateer, mounting twenty guns—six-pounders—commanded by as brave a man as ever stepped, Captain John Williams, and bound into the English channel on a six-months' cruise. If it is any satisfaction ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... down to the quay, to get a boat to take her out to the merchantman, she looked in at the post-office, where she found Marie Forstberg already up, and busy in the sitting-room in her morning dress. She was greatly astonished when Elizabeth told her ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... left the shop, he felt all that he had to do to follow his destiny was to go to sea. Now the star has led him up to a blank wall. The only promotion he can obtain on these merchantmen is to a captainship; and the captaincy on a small merchantman will mean pretty much a monotonous flying back and forward like a shuttle between the ports of Europe ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... as he recovered from his wounds, That he had come aboard a merchantman, Had reached the island on the very day The castle was destroyed,—took refuge there And fought the robber band with all his might Until he fell, faint with the loss of blood, Into the rocky cleft wherein I found him. And ever since we two have lived together; He built ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... Petey. I 'm bettin' me stump he 'd get lonesome up there 'cept fer us. (He points to the window to the right, where the lighthouse shows.) There 's ol' Petey, starin' at the ocean. Yer ain 't never seen a light at that t' other winder, has yer Joe? We waits fer a merchantman which he knows has gold aboard. Then we jest tips a hint ter Petey, and he douses his light. Then we sets up our lantern—ol' Flint's lantern—outside on the rocks, jest where she shows at t' other winder. The ship sticks her nose agin the ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... 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 ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... properly clapped the door 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 ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could 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
... a lad of spirit like you thinking of such a thing. If you have learned a lot you will, if you are steady, be sure to get on in time, and may very well become a petty officer. No lad of spirit would take to the life of a merchantman who could enter the navy. I don't say that some of the Indiamen are not fine ships, but you would find it very hard to get a berth on one of them. Our lieutenant will be over here in a day or two, and I have no doubt that if I speak to him for you he ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... advantages in point of wages are given to volunteer seamen in order to induce them to enter into his majesty's service[o]: and every foreign seaman, who during a war shall serve two years in any man of war, merchantman, or privateer, is naturalized ipso facto[p]. About the middle of king William's reign, a scheme was set on foot[q] for a register of seamen to the number of thirty thousand, for a constant and ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... him and the King is perfect. The speculation is only how long it is likely to last. His Royal Highness stoops as yet to very low game. In some respects it may be better. You will have heard of Captain Waldgrave's success with the two Dutch ships, and the French merchantman, if I am right. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... 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, where it ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... 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 paralyzed the Parley-voo, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... the sea, as will be seen in the chapter on Naval Operations. On September 4, 1914, an attempt was made by the Germans to wreck the British gunboat Dwarf, which with the cruiser Cumberland was watching German ships in the Cameroon estuary. The German merchantman Nachtigal tried later to ram the same gunboat and wrecked herself with a loss of 36 men. Further attempts to destroy the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... There was the grate, containing a few half-consumed embers; there was the compass, swinging between the stern-windows. A nice Brussels carpet was under my feet; and there were three doors on either side of the cabin, opening into the staterooms. The vessel appeared to have been a first-class merchantman, fitted to carry half a dozen passengers; and how such a vessel as this ever found its way into these northern seas was a mystery. I just glanced for a moment into these rooms, and saw there trunks and valises, and all the usual articles of the toilet, mirrors, beds, and bedding, and all other ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... substituted in the place of the rudder that had been 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 prepared ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... commander lost no time, ordered the captains, seamen and soldiers aboard, and was ready to sail at the time appointed. She embarked, and when the squadron was at sea, told the commander her intention. "Make all the sail you can," said she, "and chase the merchantman that sailed last night out of this port. If you capture it, I assign it to you as your property; but if you fail, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... far beneath their feet, was still partially veiled in a thin blue mist, pierced here and there by the tall mast of a King's ship or merchantman lying unseen at anchor; or, as the fog rolled slowly off, a swift canoe might be seen shooting out into a streak of sunshine, with the first news of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... commanded by men who had come into favor at the court of King Angus recently. The Black 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 ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... men trained in Royal Navy discipline and habits never 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, ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... a matter of this kind before the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was during the controversy with M. Genet, the French minister, as to his right to refit a captured English merchantman as a privateer at an American port, and then send her out for a cruise. By the advice of his Cabinet, the President asked the justices a series of questions comprehending all the subjects of difference as to the proper exposition of the provisions of our treaties ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... 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 or even enormous burden ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... 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 all that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... 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 of a thousand tons." ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... history of the Great War it suffices to say that such a proclamation constituted a precedent in naval history. The submarine had heretofore been an untried form of war craft. The rule had formerly been that a merchantman stopped by an enemy's warship was subject to search and seizure, and, if it offered no resistance, was taken to one of the enemy's ports as a prize. If it offered resistance it might be summarily sunk. But it was impossible for submarines ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... against vessels of every 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 sent to the bottom. But again and again no warning has been given, no escape even ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... a few blacks, and the officers, kept the deck. The same expedient was likewise adopted, in part, by Captain Price, of the Volcano; and in order to give to his ship a still greater resemblance than it already had to a merchantman, he displayed an old faded scarlet ensign, and drew up his fore and mainsail in what ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... 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 nickname ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Their usual average of children has 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 ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... heavily laden bark some distance ahead of us making toward the west. We changed our course so as to endeavor to head her off, but though we gained upon her considerably, could not overtake her before dark. On the 3d we saw a number of vessels, including one steamer, all, except one large merchantman, ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... saw off no legs," the bluff old man had blurted out when he heard of it. "He wants to git ready to take a ship 'round Cape Horn. If I had my way I'd send him some'er's where he could learn navigation, and that's in the fo'c's'le of a merchantman. Give him a year or two before the mast. I made that mistake with Bart—he loafed round here too long and when he did git a chance ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the work of MM. Correard and Savigny, this gentleman is made mention of in substance as follows. "On the evening of the 11th, they met with more of the natives, and an Irishman, captain of a merchantman, who, of his own accord, had left St Louis with the intention of assisting the sufferers. He spoke the language of the country, and was dressed in the Moorish costume. We are sorry we cannot recollect the name of this foreign officer, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... to tell, the Vulture, black sails spread, moved forward to head off the merchantman evidently ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... fact that he was always at first on the unpopular, and ultimately on the winning, side. Casting his rote for the diffusion of popular literature, a wide suffrage, a mild penal code, he yet endorsed the saying of an old American author, "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 that will never sink, but then your feet are always ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... kind of book is the Cathedral which towers above the building at its base and can be seen from afar, in which many generations shall find their peace and inspiration. While other books are like the humble craft which ply from place to place along the coast, this book is as a stately merchantman which compasses the great waters and returns with ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... desired him to reply that their ship had been wrecked, and that they wished to make their way to Mogador, or some other place whence they could get aboard an English merchantman ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... her slaves, and paying her with manufactured goods, would send her back to take in a fresh supply, and, of course, to run the chance of being captured. As, however, manufactured goods were not always to be procured, such fellows would not scruple to attack an outward-bound merchantman, and having taken out of her what they required, let her go free, pretty certain that she would not have the means of lodging a complaint against them on board a man-of-war till they were far beyond reach. Such was, undoubtedly, the character ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Kate," I heard Mr Falconer say one evening as he stood by Miss Kitty's side. "Instead of remaining at college, and taking advantage of the opportunities I possessed of rising in the world, I spent all my means, and then, to the grief of an excellent father, shipped on board a merchantman as a sailor before the mast. My knowledge of mathematics soon enabled me to become a better navigator than the captain himself, while I rapidly acquired a knowledge of seamanship, as from having been accustomed all my life to boating and yachting, I was at once perfectly at home. I soon became ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... had a great desire to become what might be called a marine Robin Hood. I would take from the rich and give to the poor; I would run my long, low, black craft by the side of the merchantman, and when I had loaded my vessel with the rich stuffs and golden ingots which composed her cargo, I would sail away to some poor village, and make its inhabitants prosperous and happy for the rest of their lives by a judicious ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... a long "spell" of fine weather, without any incident to break the monotony of our lives, there can be no better place to describe the duties, regulations, and customs of an American merchantman, of which ours ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... 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 ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... eighteenth year found him master of a vessel. Those were hazardous days upon the sea, and more than once his ship was subjected to indignity and outrage incident to seafaring of that period. But throughout a long career as master of a merchantman the Stars and Stripes was never lowered from the masthead nor sullied by defeat ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... some 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 ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... For fear my hated presence should be known, And take back our attendant to the ship. And then once more, should ye appear to waste The time unduly, I will send again This same man hither in disguise, transformed To the strange semblance of a merchantman; From dark suggestion of whose crafty tongue, Thou, O my son, shalt gather timely counsel. Now to my ship. This charge I leave to thee. May secret Hermes guide us to our end, And civic Pallas, named of victory, The sure protectress ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... President 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. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... planter, no dealer in horses and fat cattle, no grower of sugar-cane! Instead of that," he yelled, drawing his sword and flourishing it above his head, "instead of that I am pirate Bonnet, the new terror of the sea! You, my men, my brave men, you are not the crew of the good merchantman, the Sarah Williams, you are pirates all. You are the pirate crew of the pirate ship Revenge. That is now the name of this vessel on which you sail, and you are all pirates, who henceforth shall ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... table where Ishmael sat there was no one present except the old retired merchantman, Captain Mountz, who sat on the opposite side, directly under the port lights. And with the rolling of the ship these two diners, holding desperately onto the edge of the table, were tossed up and down like boys on ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... anxieties;— Soon maintenance grows the extreme reach of hope For those held in respect, as in a vice, By citizens of whom they are the pick. Of men the least bond is the roving seaman Who hires himself to merchantman or pirate For single voyages, stays where he may please, Lives his purse empty in a dozen ports, And ne'er obeys the ghost of what once was! His laugh chimes readily; his kiss, no symbol Of aught to come, but cordial, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... of the evening, and we afterwards learned that she belonged to a freebooter, who had more than thirty such vessels under his command. The smallness of our vessel encouraged the attack, and her strength being so much more than in proportion to her size, supposing her a merchantman, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... privateersman—a combination of all three—was the harpy of the rolling ocean, a vulture preying upon the merchant marine of the enemy to his country, attacking only those weaker than himself, scudding off at the advent of men-of-warsmen, and hovering where the guileless merchantman passed by. The privateersman was a gentleman adventurer, a protected pirate, a social highwayman of the waters. He throve, grew lusty, and prospered,—a robber legitimized by the laws of his ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... possesses; even what he bought and paid for but yesterday; even what everybody else would call absolutely the poor man's own, he throws it all back again upon God every day, and thus holds all he has as his instant purchase of the great Merchantman. The poor man's market is as far as possible from being a Vanity Fair, but the catalogues and the sale-lists of that fair may be taken as a specimen of the things that change hands continually in the poor man's market also. For ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... Devonshire (Eng.), and at an early period sent to sea; advanced to the station of a mate in a merchantman, he performed several voyages. It happened previous to the peace of Ryswick, when there existed an alliance between Spain, England, Holland, and other powers, against France, that the French in Martinique carried on a smuggling ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... N. ship, vessel, sail; craft, bottom. navy, marine, fleet, flotilla; shipping. man of war &c. (combatant) 726; transport, tender, storeship[obs3]; merchant ship, merchantman; packet, liner; whaler, slaver, collier, coaster, lighter; fishing boat, pilot boat; trawler, hulk; yacht; baggala[obs3]; floating hotel, floating palace; ocean greyhound. ship, bark, barque, brig, snow, hermaphrodite brig; brigantine, barkantine[obs3]; schooner; topsail schooner, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... that, he fled secretly by night in a little boat, and finding a merchantman after two days, sailed for Cyprus. Between Maleae and Cythera {121} they were met by pirates, who had left their vessels under the shore, and came up in two large galleys, worked not with sails, but oars. As the rowers swept the billows, all on board began to tremble, weep, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... 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
... leaves. Terrace after terrace, the green 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 the pungent spices of the Orient have ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... apprenticed to a 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 ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... German submarine has sunk a British merchantman and left her crew to perish we have been told that she was performing a legitimate act of war. But when a British merchantman has mounted a gun in order to defend herself, she has been said to violate the law of nations. When British battleships have blockaded German ports they have been ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... night-glass of many a mystified merchantman searched the murk for those coruscations with which the crescent of forts had constellated the Atlantic, the mariner's sea-rent waiting ready, with his ship's-papers, in his cash box: but no galaxy ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... eyes? Are they not alike the support of tyranny and oppression of innocence, carrying with them desolation and ruin wherever their masters please to send them? This is indeed too true; and however the ship of war may, in its bulk and equipment, exceed the honest merchantman, I heartily wish there was no necessity for it; for, though I must own the superior beauty of the object on one side, I am more pleased with the superior excellence of the idea which I can raise ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... a large merchantman, off the coast of Spain, and engaged it in a terrible conflict. The merchantman carried twice as many people and heavier guns than the Sea Rover; but by the skilful management of his ship Captain Lane continued to rake her fore and aft until she was forced ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... indeed, had he been able to send a larger craft, it would not have been so well suited for the purpose, for the pirates would hardly have ventured to attack her. We shall, after we have put out to sea, disguise the brig and rig her as a merchantman in order to tempt them out. We shall not do it until we are well away, for the pirates may have friends here who might send them information. We shall head for the south, and shall give out that we are to rejoin our commander off Alexandria, ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... this year an eighteen-gun ship from Cambridge, Mass., fell in with a Barbary pirate of twenty guns, and was hard put to it to escape. And, as the seventeenth century drew near its close, these pests of the sea so increased, that evil was sure to befall the peaceful merchantman that put to sea without due preparation for a fight or two with the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... 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 face, and hailed his conclusion as one who hoped everything from change ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... 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
... of clumsy build; her elaborately ornamented prow, the shape of her decks, and her rigging all marked her as an old-fashioned merchantman. ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... 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 merchantmen and on occasion fight small cruisers. For instance, ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart
... end of the year the Chamber of Commerce examines the boys, and an exhibition drill is given. The graduates are usually fitted to ship in a merchantman as "ordinary," and are aided in their efforts to find a good ship and a good captain by many of New York's most prominent merchants and ship-owners, who take a deep interest in the school. The instruction on board the St. Mary's is so thorough that graduates have very little trouble, ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... White-winged yachts glide through the blue space between these and Ryde. Osborne basks in the sunshine with the "sailor Prince's" pleasure-boat by the shore. If there be a gap or two in the horizon it is soon filled up by some rich laden merchantman, with sails swelling full in the light, and gay signal flags flowing out bright colours; and all the scene is woven together, as it were, by swift steamers flitting to and fro like shuttles strung with a thread of foam across a ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... is a merchantman, which arrived last night from St. Pierre," said the sailor, respectfully ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... had to take a new 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
... poor to own a name! But he was cook's boy on board a merchantman, and they called him 'Galley Vick.' I never knew him by any other name. Did you ever ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... At last the Captain decided things had gone too far. He himself apparently remained to watch over the linen; but at five o'clock on the Sunday morning, Aunt Anna, Fleeming, and his mother were rowed in a pour of rain on board an English merchantman, to suffer "nine mortal hours of agonising suspense." With the end of that time peace was restored. On Tuesday morning officers with white flags appeared on the bastions; then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched in, two hundred men sleeping ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glasses to Robert's eyes. The other ship, suddenly came near to them, and grew fourfold in size. Every detail of her stood out sharp and vivid in the moonlight, a stout craft with all sails set to catch the good wind, a fine merchantman by every token, nearing the end of a profitable voyage. Discipline was not to say somewhat relaxed, but at least kindly, the visible evidence of it an old sailor sitting with his back against the mast playing ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hope, only a superficial meaning. But be that as it may, it detracts from the dignity of an officer occupying, as he did, a distinguished position to use language and phrases such as are common in the forecastle or on the quarterdeck of a sailing merchantman in the early days before the introduction of steamers. Here are a few quite amusing outbursts which do not produce the impression of coming from a person known to fame as the Duke of Thunder:—On the 1st October, 1801, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... of economy, they took passage in a merchantman from Leghorn, the Elizabeth, the expense being one-half what a return by way of France would have been. The remonstrances of her acquaintance, founded on the fatigues of a two months' voyage—the comparative ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... 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 of wind in ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... determined them, spite of many misgivings, to take passage in a merchantman from Leghorn. "I am suffering," she writes, "as never before, from the horrors of indecision. Happy the fowls of the air, who do not have to think so much about their arrangements! The barque Elizabeth will take us, and is said to be an uncommonly good vessel, nearly new, and well kept. We ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Landsmen, whose ideas of a sailor's sleeping-place are taken from the snow-white hammocks and exquisitely clean berth-deck of a man of war, or from the rough, but substantial comfort of a well-appointed merchantman, can form no conception of the surpassing and countless abominations of a South-Sea whaler. The "Little Jule," as her crew affectionately styled her, was a craft of two hundred tons or thereabouts; she had sailed with thirty-two hands, whom desertion had reduced to twenty, but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... one o' pirates makin' the crew of a merchantman walk the plank," remarked John Williams, as he assisted to ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... to 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 ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... of miseries. Of the wailing of Mirza Abu-Talib we have already given a specimen: and the Persian princes, even in the luxurious comfort of an English Mediterranean steamer, seem to have fared but little better, in their own estimation at least, than the Mirza in his dirty and disorderly Danish merchantman. "Our bones cried, 'Alas! for this evil there is no remedy.' We were vomiting all the time, and thus afflicted with incurable evils, in the midst of a sea which appears without end, the state of my health bad, the sufferings of my brothers very great, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Royal Navy in the modern sense of the term. When the King went to war his fleet was recruited from three different sources. The warship was a merchantman, on board of which a number of fighting-men, knights, men-at-arms, archers and billmen were embarked. These were more numerous than the crew of sailors which navigated the ship, for the largest vessels of the time were not of more than two to three hundred tons, ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... and sorely stripped and rivelled by adverse blasts, gallantly struggling towards the shore. The vessel was not of English build, and resembled in its bulk and fashion those employed by the Easterlings in their trade, half merchantman, half war-ship. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... altogether unique; for now and then a pressed man by some lucky chance "got his foot on the ladder," as Nelson put it, and succeeded in bettering himself. Admiral Sir David Mitchell, pressed as the master of a merchantman, is a notable example. Admiral Campbell, "Hawke's right hand at Quiberon," who entered the service as a substitute for a pressed man, is another; and James Clephen, pressed as a sea-going apprentice, became master's-mate of the Doris, and taking part in the cutting out of the Chevrette, a corvette ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... 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 ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... persistence he besieged the court of James II for a whole year, this rough-and-ready New England shipmaster, until he was given a royal frigate for his purpose. He failed to fish up more silver from the sands but, nothing daunted, he persuaded other patrons to outfit him with a small merchantman, the James and Mary, in which he sailed for the coast of Hispaniola. This time he found his galleon and thirty-two tons of silver. "Besides that incredible treasure of plate, thus fetched up from seven or eight fathoms under water, there were vast riches of ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... alarmed at the echoes of his own voice. Lord Aberdeen and his son, Lord Haddo—an amiable but weak and eccentric man, father of the young earl who dropped his title and was drowned whilst working as mate of a merchantman—did not get on well together, and saw very little of each other for some years. At length a reconciliation was effected, and the son was invited to Haddo. Anxious to be pleasant and conciliatory, he faltered out admiringly, "The place looks nice, the trees are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... light passed through some broken surface where it is all refracted and shivered into fragments; there is no clear vision, there is no perfect light. If a man is to be blessed, he must have one source to which he can go. The merchantman that seeks for many goodly pearls, may find the many; but until he has bartered them all for the one, there is something lacking. Not only does the understanding require to pass through the manifold, up ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thinking of his share of prize-money. And he had to support existence with such mean mechanical employment as came in his way, till an opportunity was offered of engaging himself as seaman, again from sheer necessity, on a homeward-bound merchantman—an opportunity which he seized, if not eagerly, for there was no eagerness left in him, yet under the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... this remark, and easily pardoned its familiarity for its truth. In these sealers the discipline is by no means of that distant and military or naval character that is found in even an ordinary merchantman. As every seaman has an interest in the result of the voyage, some excuse was made for this departure from the more general usage; and this familiarity itself never exceeded the bounds that were necessary to the observance ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... flag," observed Tom, who had taken the glass; "that is French, though she's an English merchantman, if I ever saw one. The people on board her recognise this ship as one of their own cruisers, and ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... At last the captain decided things had gone too far. He himself apparently remained to watch over the linen; but at five o'clock on the Sunday morning, Aunt Anna, Fleeming, and his mother were rowed in a pour of rain on board an English merchantman, to suffer 'nine mortal hours of agonising suspense.' With the end of that time, peace was restored. On Tuesday morning officers with white flags appeared on the bastions; then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched in, two hundred men sleeping on the ground floor of the Jenkins' house, thirty ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a merchantman, and many were the trials that beset passengers and crew. Narrowly escaping capture by a corsair of Tunis, menaced by a violent tempest that threatened to annihilate them, they finally encountered a calm that proved more appalling ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Traders, and that if they attempted any such thing they should never come on 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. All which Captain ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... merchantman," said Paradise. "Look at her colors. A Company ship, probably, bound for Virginia, with a cargo of servants, gentlemen out at elbows, felons, children for apprentices, traders, French vignerons, glasswork Italians, returning Councilors and heads of hundreds, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... copy of the Vinaya-pitaka of the Mahisasakah 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 a favorable wind, they proceeded ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... which they were sending off in our direction. The distance was about five miles, and the men had a hard pull in the broiling heat. When they came on board, you should have seen how we all clustered about them. The ship was a merchantman from Bristol, bound to New York; she had been out eleven weeks, her provisions were beginning to run short, and the crew was on allowance. Our captain, who is a gentleman, furnished them with flour, tea, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... 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 ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon |
