"Nautical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with such speed that the effects of collision may, and indeed must, as they formerly did, take the place of projectile weapons and annul the calculations of the skilful manoeuvrer. The ram will be favorable to speed, without destroying the nautical qualities of a ship. As soon as one power shall have adopted this terrible weapon, all others must accept it, under pain of evident inferiority, and thus combats will become combats of ram against ram." While forbearing the unconditional adhesion to the ram as the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... passengers, was in the larger boat, was aware that he was off the coast of Peru, but that was all he certainly knew of his position. The storm had struck the ship in the morning, before he had taken his daily observation, and his room, which was on deck, had been carried away, as well as every nautical instrument on board. He did not believe that the storm had taken him far out of his course, but of this he could not be sure. All that he knew with certainty was that to the eastward lay the land, and eastward, therefore, they pulled, a little compass attached to the captain's watch-guard ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... years of which we have records of their voyages, although the Dutch navigators' work, compared with that done by Cook and his successors, was of small account; yet, considering the state of nautical science, and that the ships were for the most part Dutch East Indiamen, the Dutch names which still sprinkle the north and the west coasts of the continent show that from Cape York in the extreme north, westward of the Great Australian Bight in the south, the ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... rode it out two days, though buffeted by a terrible sea; but, at nightfall of the third day, the tempest abating not, nay, waxing momently, they felt the ship open, being then not far off Majorca, but knowing not where they were neither availing to apprehend it either by nautical reckoning or by sight, for that the sky was altogether obscured by clouds and dark night; wherefore, seeing no other way of escape and having each himself in mind and not others, they lowered a shallop into the water, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... those romances was altogether unchildlike; but I did not take much of it in. It was the habit of running over pages and pages to get to the end of a story, the habit of reading without caring what I read, that I know to have been bad for my mind. To use a nautical expression, my brain was in danger of getting "water-logged." There are so many more books of fiction written nowadays, I do not see how the young people who try to read one tenth of them have any brains left for ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
|
