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More "Merchantman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... on board of ships would always operate as an inducement to wretches who saw a long term of servitude before them to attempt their escape; but it certainly behoved every master of a merchantman bound from this port to be very vigilant and sedulous to prevent their succeeding, as the safety of the ship might be very much endangered by having numbers of such people on board mixing with their ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... three years Verres came back to Rome. The people of Messana, his only friends in the islands, had built a merchantman for him, and he loaded it with his spoils. He came back with a light heart. He knew indeed that the Sicilians would impeach him. His wrong-doings had been too gross, too insolent, for him to escape altogether. But he was confident that he had the means in his hands for securing an acquittal. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... 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 ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... another. But at last she won through, stout ship that she was, and her weary sailors found brief respite in the harbor of Valparaiso on March 14, 1813. Thence Porter headed up the coast, disguising the trim frigate so that she looked like a lubberly, high-pooped Spanish merchantman. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... a long story, I was the next day bundled, when about three sheets in the wind, on board a merchantman, with an empty chest, although it was winter, old Hardheart nabbing the whole of my advance; and for two or three days, Tom, I suffered awfully from the horrors. I thought I was already in the hell to which the wicked who don't repent must go. Awake, asleep, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... batteries that it was impossible to get at them in that position. We, one morning at daybreak, captured a row-boat with twenty-two men, armed with swivels and muskets. We had disguised the ship so much that she took us for a merchantman, and before she discovered her mistake was within pistol-shot. Three months had now expired, which had been passed much in the same manner as the last cruise, when a cutter came out to ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the rush of the pirate galley, with its naked slaves straining at the oar of their taskmasters, its fierce, reckless, beturbaned crew clustered on the "rambades" at the bow and stern. It might be that they would capture some hapless "round-ship," a merchantman lumbering slowly along the coast; or again they might meet with a galley of the terrible Knights of St. John or of the ever-redoubtable Doria. In either case the Sea-wolves were equal to their fortune, to plunder or to fight in the name of Allah ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... its uncoined millions. He must act. To be deep and subtle as a thieving Greek, to be cold and sneaking as an Apache, to be as murderous as a Malay creeping, creese in hand, over the bulwarks of a merchantman,—all that is to be only himself. Power ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... character of the persons sent in pressed men's rooms Admiralty thus had Trade on the hip, and Trade suffered much in consequence. More than one rich merchantman, rusty from long voyaging, strewed the coast with her cargo and timbers because all the able seamen had been taken out of her, and none better than old men and boys could be found to sail her. Few seaport towns were as wise as Sunderland, where they had a Society of Shipowners for mutual insurance ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... than this. Everything God provides for us is personal. There is always the personal touch and presence. Do you remember that during the earlier days of the recent war with Spain this occurrence frequently took place? In the Caribbean waters a Spanish merchantman would be overtaken by an American warship. A few shots were sent over the bows of the merchantman with a demand for surrender. And then the Spanish flag was seen to drop from the merchantman's masthead ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... beams of the morning sun, that looked aslant through the open window. He ran out to the cliff. The sturdy sea-breeze fanned his feverish cheeks and tossed the white caps of waves that beat in pleasant music on the beach below. A stately merchantman with snowy canvas was entering the Gate. The voices of sailors came cheerfully from a bark at anchor below the point. The muskets of the sentries gleamed brightly on Alcatraz, and the rolling of drums ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the English America, curiously in contrast with the law-abiding character of the Non-conformist colonizations. Along the seaboard wild pirates nestled, skimmers of the seas of the most daring type, worthy brethren of the Kidds, the Blackbeards, and the Teaches, terrors of the merchantman and the well-disposed emigrant. But in spite of the sternness of the law-abiding, and the savageness of the lawless portions of the English settlements, they contrasted favorably in every way with the settlements ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... for any meddlesome custom-house officers 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 willingly ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... Right of Search did not include the right to search a foreign man-of-war, though, unlike the modern 'right of search,' which is confined to cargoes, it did include the right to search a neutral merchantman on the high seas for any 'national' who was 'wanted.' Canning, however, distinctly stated that the men's nationality would affect the consideration of restoring them or not. Monroe now had a good case. But he ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... and finding at his return that his deceased wife had run him greatly in debt, clamours coming from every quarter, and several writs being issued out against him, he quitted the service in the man-of-war, and went immediately in a merchantman to Newfoundland. There by agreement he was discharged from the ship and entered himself for eighteen pounds per annum into the service of a planter in that country in order to serve him in fishing and furring, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... 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 morning from the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... but had recently obtained information that war had been declared between England and the States. She was now making her way to the west by a circuitous route to avoid the British squadron, and, at the same time, with a view to pick up an English merchantman ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... 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? She had fought her fight ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... of which illustrated precisely the business conception which attached to these enterprises in the minds of competent business men. This ship-rigged vessel of four hundred and seventy-three tons, built of course for a merchantman, was about eight years old when the war broke out, and had just returned from a voyage. Seeing that ordinary commerce was likely to be a very precarious undertaking, her owners spent the months of July and August in preparing her deliberately for her new occupation. ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Ship. — 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a Banbury man. "I had a cousin, sirs,—an honest fellow, with whom I had gone bird's-nesting when we were boys together! He was master of a merchantman—the Red Lion—that by foul treachery was taken by the Spaniards at Cales. The priests put forth their hands and clutched him, who was ever outspoken, ever held fast to his own opinion!... To die! that is easy; but ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... step had, in Villeneuve's eyes, actually happened. The admiral considered the fight of July 22nd la malheureuse affaire; his ships were encumbered with sick; they worked badly; on August 15th a north-east gale carried away the top-mast of a Spanish ship; and having heard from a Danish merchantman the news—false news, as it afterwards appeared—that Cornwallis with twenty-five ships was to the north, he turned and scudded before the wind. He could not divine the disastrous influence of his conduct on the plan of invasion. He did not know that ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... 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 ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... their cousin like two fussy little tugs with a fine merchantman, the children returned to the parlour, where Emil kissed all the women and shook hands with all the men except his uncle; him he embraced in the good old German style, to the great ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 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 useless for all purposes of commerce, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... merchantman, had been captured by a French frigate, and brought into the port of Philadelphia, where she was completely equipped as a privateer, and was just about to sail on a cruise under the name of le petit Democrat, when the secretary of the treasury communicated her situation to the secretaries ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the commander of the Dwarf, "that we put a prize crew aboard the German merchantman still in Duala, iron our prisoners, put them aboard her and send her home. We can make a thorough search of the town and destroy all arms and ammunition ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... lay but lightly on the water, while their hulls were carried up to a prodigious height; and it is not too much to say that the portion of the Swanne, above water, was fully as large as the hull which we see of a merchantman of four times her tonnage. Still, even so, it was but a tiny craft to cross the Atlantic, and former voyages had been generally ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... morning; a gentle breeze filled the sails. An unusual arrangement of the vessel attracted the attention of Albert. Soon he observed men at the guns, and Captain Templeton standing in a commanding position. The brig was bearing down upon a French merchantman. ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... I ain't a-pervertin' Scriptur' nor nuthin', but I can't help thinkin' of one passage, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and when he hath found one pearl of great price, for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that pearl.' Well, Mary, I've been and sold my brig last week," he said, folding his daughter's ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for several months with fair success, when in March, 1813, she gave chase to a sail off the Surinam River on the coast of South America. The stranger seemed to evince no great desire to escape; and the privateer soon gained sufficiently to discover that the supposed merchantman was a British sloop-of-war, whose long row of open ports showed that she carried twenty-seven guns. Champlin and his men found this a more ugly customer than they had expected; but it was too late to retreat, and to surrender was out of the question: so, calling the people to the guns, Champlin ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Romans would call it, of "old," it is well known to all my short-jacketed readers, that it seldom has, in "sea dic." or nautical language, any reference to antiquity on the part of the bearer thereof; but is merely a familiar or affectionate distinction; as the commander of a merchantman, although perhaps under twenty years of age, is invariably called the "old man," ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... 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 of "Poor Richard." The Bonhomme Richard ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... it was a tedious business—what with fogs, calms, and headwinds—working towards Copenhagen. We rounded the Scaw in a thick mist, saw the remains of four ships that had run aground upon it, and were nearly run into ourselves by a clumsy merchantman, whom we had the relief of being able to abuse in our native vernacular, and ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... sails, and I came up with her between five and six in the evening, September 26th; but my heart leaped within me to see her English colours. 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 ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... recognition for any normal palate, was always served to Aholibah. She loved "needles on her tongue," she asseverated if any one offered her weaker stuff. That July night she looked like a piratical craft that had captured a sleek merchantman for prize. She was all smoothness; Ambroise alone detected the retracted claws of the leopardess. She blazed in the electric illumination, and her large hat, with its swelling plumes, threw her dusky features into shadow—her ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... and said: "I am very sorry, captain, to have to correct your impression that this is part of our maneuvers. Japan is at war with the United States of America, and every merchantman flying the American flag is from now on a ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... little desert island of the Flat-Holme, in hopes of there meeting with the Irish fleet, which her sons, Edmund and Godwin, were bringing against the West of England. How the fleet had never come, and they had starved for many days; and how she had bribed a passing merchantman to take her and her wretched train to the land of Baldwin the Debonnaire, who might have pity on her for the sake of his daughter Judith, and Tosti her husband who ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... was one of great tumult and expectation in Bristol. The partisans of Monmouth knew that he was almost within sight of their city, and imagined that he would be among them before daybreak. About an hour after sunset a merchantman lying at the quay took fire. Such an occurrence, in a port crowded with shipping, could not but excite great alarm. The whole river was in commotion. The streets were crowded. Seditious cries were heard amidst the darkness and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sailor. "She is following him as a pirate follows a merchantman. Then, when she has lost sight of him, she will be in despair at not knowing who it is she is in love with, and whether he is a marquis or a shopkeeper. Really these young heads need an old fogy like me always ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... of England should be broken, and her honour betrayed, is not regarded by the best authorities as an objection or even as a relevant fact. In the more sacred name of uniformity Ireland is swamped in the Westminster Parliament like a fishing-smack in the wash of a great merchantman. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... rapid and deserved promotion. His 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 ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... and down the mighty river were ships of all nations, craft of every description, from the three-decker East India merchantman, going or returning from her distant voyage, to the little schooner-rigged fishermen trading up and down the coast. These were the sights. The songs of birds, the low of cattle, the hum of bees, and the murmur of the water as ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... only for speaking in behalf of the French: which my Lady wonders at, they having been formerly like sisters."—Diary, vol. i. p. 284.] and in four days we came to Caen, and myself, sister, and maid went from Mr. Fanborne's house, where my brother and all his family lodged, aboard a small merchantman that lay in the river; and upon the 30th of August, I arrived in the Cowes, near Southampton, to which place I went that night, and came to London two days after. This was the first time I had taken a journey without your father, and the first manage ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... Beyond doubt inducements were offered them at every American port to desert and ship under the Stars and Stripes. In the winter of 1801 every British ship visiting New York lost the greater part of its crew. At Norfolk the entire crew of a British merchantman deserted to an American sloop-of-war. A lively trade was done in forged papers of American citizenship, and the British naval officer who gave a boat-load of bluejackets shore leave at New York was liable to find them all Americans when their ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to the stern of the canoe, and he was about to question him, when the other, grasping his arm with an expressive touch, pointed to a dark object moving across the road. Gerald turned his head, and beheld the same figure that had so recently quitted the cabin of the merchantman. Following its movements, he saw it noiselessly enter into the grounds of a cottage, opposite an old tannery, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... afar Robin the brave was waging war, With other tarry desperadoes About the latitude of Barbadoes. He knew no touch of craven fear; His voice was thunder in the cheer; First, from the main-to'-gallan' high, The skulking merchantman to spy— The first to bound upon the deck, The last to leave the sinking wreck. His hand was steel, his word was law, His mates regarded him with awe. No pirate in the whole profession ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... developed and expanded as to include the following prescriptions: (1) In general all import and export trade must be conducted in ships built in England, in Ireland, or in the colonies, manned and commanded by British subjects. Thus, if a French or Dutch merchantman appeared in Massachusetts Bay, offering to sell at a great bargain his cargo of spices or silks, the shrewd merchants of Boston were legally bound not to buy of him. (2) Certain "enumerated" articles, such as sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and, later, rice and furs, could ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... 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 ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... immediately went down to Newton, acquainting him with the circumstance, which bore a very suspicious appearance. Newton hastened on deck; with his glass he could plainly distinguish that the stranger was a vessel of a low, raking description, evidently no merchantman, but built for sailing fast, and in all probability a privateer. The man at the mast-head reported that boats were constantly passing between the two vessels. Newton, who felt very anxious for the safety of his friends, accepted the offer of the second mate to take the gig, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... 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, sugar, porter, cold tongue, ham, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... bark ran alongside, and grappling-irons were tossed aboard the ill-fated merchantman. The Pirate Captain, standing in the stern of his vessel, ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... the owner's 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 ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... too 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 ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of canvas; and leaping through the sea with the pace of a dolphin, came up with the doomed merchantman hand over hand. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... solve. It was an established fact, however, that he never went out of that house. I cannot vouch so confidently for the cobwebby legend which wove itself about him. It was to this effect: He had formerly been the master of a large merchantman running between New York and Calcutta; while still in his prime he had abruptly retired from the quarter-deck, and seated himself at that window—where the outlook must have been the reverse of exhilarating, for not ten persons passed in the course of ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to 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 ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a huge three-master 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
... lads. We have punished them heavily enough; we have taken their ship, and sent half of them to Eternity. Let them take the tale back to Tunis how a British merchantman re-captured their ship. Now set to work to get some of the sail off both craft, and then, when we have got things snug, we will splice the main brace ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... de Clieu 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 than either. The supply of drinking water was well ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... 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, and extending to near ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the 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 Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... 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.
... privateer La Doutelle, one of the fastest little vessels on the coast. She has brought in more than one English merchantman as ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... on this coast. There is no American man-of-war here to obtain intelligence. What risk does she run of being searched? But suppose that there is a man-of-war in port. What is to secure the master of the merchantman against her [the man-of-war's commander's knowing all about his [the merchant-man's] intention, or suspecting it in time to be upon him [the merchant-man] before he shall have run a league on his way to Texas?" Consul Trist to Commander Spence: House Doc., ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Spirite had not come whole out of her struggle with the powers of the abyss. Timbers were sadly strained, a mast was gone, every man on board was weary and muscle-sore. And then a Levantine gale drove the crippled merchantman down on ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... from her own native grace and loveliness? Were her eyes less bright, or was her conversation less cheery, or were her attitudes less picturesque and pleasing, because old Captain Barkstead, instead of still sailing a fleet merchantman, now mopingly cleaned his reflectors, and, when strangers came, hid himself in the lantern? Moreover, had she not brought with her from her former home, wherever that might be, a wit, and intellect, and intelligence which might adorn any ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... "We had sold all of them about two months before to a British merchantman who had lost her boats in a cyclone. One of the things our captain wanted to get to St. Thomas for was to buy some more boats. He heard he could get ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge. At times, there ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... sinking of the steamer Falaba, by which an American citizen lost his life, the Government of the United States is surprised to find the Imperial German Government contending that an effort on the part of a merchantman to escape capture and secure assistance alters the obligation of the officer seeking to make the capture in respect of the safety of the lives of those on board the merchantman, although the vessel had ceased her attempt to escape when torpedoed. These are not new circumstances. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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 ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... shrift was accorded British vessels, whether Americans were on board them or not. About the same time the merchantman Eavestone was sunk by a submarine, which also shelled the crew as they took to the boats. The captain and three seamen—one an American—were killed by the gunfire. This action was debated as an ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the 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 ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... 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. ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... brawniest pirate. He who had been Jack Cockrell in mortal guise was quick to slide the cabin hatch closed and fasten it. For the moment they had captured the armed brig Royal James and as ferocious a crew of rascals as ever scuttled a merchantman. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... trade could go on without a fighting navy to protect it. So he built men-of-war; though he used these for trade as well. Men-of-war built specially for fighting were of course much better in a battle than any mere merchantman could be. But in those days, and for some time after, merchantmen went about well armed and often joined the king's ships of the Royal Navy during war, as many of them did against the ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... before nightfall by a trading vessel, were taken on board, and landed at Cartagena in Spain. Alfred never held up his head, and never once spoke to me of his own accord the whole time we were at sea in the merchantman. I observed, however, with alarm, that he talked often and incoherently to himself—constantly muttering the lines of the old prophecy—constantly referring to the fatal place that was empty in Wincot ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... 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
... glimpse could be had of her from the crest of some huge wave. At length she disappeared, entirely burned to the water's edge, and thus came the end of another brave ship. One more was added to the great ocean graveyard, already thick with the bones of many a gallant merchantman. ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... allowed their wages[n]: great 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 regular supply of the king's fleet; with great privileges ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... while by the side of the sea, and presently Tommy called out again: "I protest I was mistaken again; for it is not a vessel with one mast, as I thought a little while ago, but a fine large ship with three great masts, and all her sails before the wind. I believe she must either be a large merchantman or else ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... 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 of our polite friend. It occurred to me that possibly ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... summer of the year 18—, I was the only passenger on board the merchantman, Alceste, which was bound to the Brazils. One fine moonlight night, I stood on the deck, and gazed on the quiet ocean, on which the moon-beams danced. The wind was so still, that it scarcely agitated the sails, which were spread out to invite it. I looked round; it was the same on every side—a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... refreshment or advices; and against this the article provides. But the armed vessels of France have been also admitted to land and sell their prize-goods here for a consumption, in which case, it is as reasonable they should pay duties, as the goods of a merchantman landed and sold for consumption. They have however demanded, and as a matter of right, to sell them free of duty, a right, they say, given by this article of the treaty, though the article does not give the right to sell at all. Where a treaty does not give the principal right of selling, the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... hand in it. You stay around home, yelling for the Confederacy, and flinging your slurs at we uns who have been under the fire of a Yankee war ship, but you ain't got the pluck to go into the service yourself. We didn't see but one merchantman while we was gone and she was a brig; and as she carried three times the canvas we did she had the heels of us, and besides she wouldn't let us come within range. It was all we wanted to do to get into Hatteras, on account ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... Egyptian coast, and, 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 ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... a whaler, or maybe a sealer, or a merchantman from one of the provincial ports, or maybe a transport with British red-coats aboard; but, Mr Hurry, it requires a man with a longer sight than I've got to tell just now what she is," said the skipper, in the long drawling tone of a ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... A merchantman has no claim on the services of her crew after she is hopelessly wrecked. The last have a lien in law, on the ship and cargo, for their wages; and it is justly determined that when this security fails, the claim for services ends. It followed, of course, that as ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... fate of "Black Tarboe," and officers of the garrison and idle ladies gossiped at the Citadel and at Murray Bay of the freebooting gentlemen, whose Ninety-Nine had furnished forth many a table in the great walled city. But Black Tarboe himself was down at Anticosti, waiting for a certain merchantman. Passing vessels saw the Ninety-Nine anchored in an open bay, flying its flag flippantly before the world—a rag of black sheepskin, with the wool on, in profane keeping with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The storm abating, he made for the first port, to repair the ship's damages, intending to return to Jamaica, to deliver her up to her captain; but, from a vessel they spoke at sea, he learned that Jemmison was gone to England in a merchantman. To England then Walsingham ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... not a Frenchman, although I write 'monsieur' before my name. Still less am I either a German or an Italian. Neither am I a genuine Russian, although I look to Russia as my native country. In brief, my father was a Russian, my mother was a Frenchwoman, and I was born on board a merchantman during a gale of wind ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... for three years Verres came back to Rome. The people of Messana, his only friends in the islands, had built a merchantman for him, and he loaded it with his spoils. He came back with a light heart. He knew indeed that the Sicilians would impeach him. His wrong-doings had been too gross, too insolent, for him to escape ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... another vital change! When he 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 ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... approach, this appearance was modified, and the true character of the vessel was plain—a Spanish merchantman of the first class, carrying negro slaves, amongst other valuable freight, from one colonial port to another. A very large, and, in its time, a very fine vessel, such as in those days were at intervals encountered along that main; sometimes superseded Acapulco ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... all but five of the crew died of yellow fever, and the ship was taken by Paul into Whitehaven. For this he received a share in the cargo, and in 1768, when he was twenty-one years old, the owners of the John (a merchantman sailing from the same port) gave him command, and in her he made several voyages to America. Life on a merchantman is rough enough to-day, and was still rougher at that time. To maintain discipline at sea requires a strong hand and a not too gentle tongue, and Jones was fully ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... 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 ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... form of deceptive paint-work that a special camouflage section of the naval service, with an eminent artist as its director, was formed, and all kinds of grotesque designs were painted on the broadsides and superstructures of almost every British merchantman operating ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... there was a truce for the time between England and Scotland; and they were under no apprehension of meeting with any vessels, save those of the former nation. Notwithstanding this, the ship which carried the Prince was captured by an armed merchantman, and carried to London, where Henry IV., the usurping Bolingbroke, utterly regardless of treaties, committed him and his attendants to ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... mighty river were ships of all nations, craft of every description, from the three-decker East India merchantman, going or returning from her distant voyage, to the little schooner-rigged fishermen trading up and down the coast. These were the sights. The songs of birds, the low of cattle, the hum of bees, and the murmur of the water as it washed the sands—these ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... five and six in the evening, September twenty-sixth; but my heart leaped within me to see her English colors. I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English merchantman returning from Japan by the North and South Seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddle, of Deptford, a very civil man and an excellent sailor. We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south. There were about fifty men in the ship; and here I met an ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... hostile port, another that it is only necessary to show that the ultimate destination of the goods is hostile. The latter rule was declared to apply in the American case of the Springbok, an English merchantman conveying goods in 1863 from a neutral port to a neutral port, but, it was alleged, with the evident intention that the goods should reach by a later stage of the same voyage the belligerent forces of the Southern Confederacy, then at war with the United States.[4] In this ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... spoke, there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and having closed the door, and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... 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 useless for all purposes ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... war between the United States and Spain. The Spaniard was not inclined to stop, and it required another shot before she would stop her engines. The Nashville sent an officer in a boat to inform the steamer that she was a prize to the United States. She was found to be a Spanish merchantman, the Buena Ventura, and was sent in charge of a prize-crew to Key West. During the next thirty days, many other Spanish ships, with cargoes worth millions of dollars, were captured by different vessels of the navy. A few were released, but the ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... 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 ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... 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 captain of the pirate took a fancy ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 see ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Revolution he was a mate of a merchantman, but when most of the officers of the former royal navy had emigrated or perished, he was, in 1793, made a captain of the republican navy, and in 1796 an admiral. During the battle of Aboukir he was the chief of the staff, under Admiral Brueys, and saved himself ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... The Missing Merchantman. By Harry Collingwood. With 8 full-page Illustrations by W.H. Overend. Crown 8vo, cloth ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... most unexpected sights assailed us. It seemed to me as if a miraculous change had taken place on everybody and everything during the night. The ship when she had set sail was as untidy and lumbered about the decks as a merchantman usually is on quitting port. Now everything was clean, in its place, snugly fastened, and in order. The sails appeared to have undergone some modification. I fancied, too, that the masts raked aft a good deal more than ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... retire, 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
... 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 ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... 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 execrations of the merchant ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... a-pervertin' Scriptur' nor nuthin', but I can't help thinkin' of one passage, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and when he hath found one pearl of great price, for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that pearl.' Well, Mary, I've been and sold my brig last week," he said, folding his daughter's little quiet head under his coat, "'cause ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that they were seen there was a general rush for telescopes on the part of all the officers on deck; and after a protracted scrutiny of them the general consensus of opinion was that they were a French privateer and a British merchantman which she had captured. Coming down toward us, end-on as they were, it was not easy at first to determine their rig, but both were large ships, one of them being of about six hundred tons, while ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... up 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, one Peter Williams, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... an hour later that the vessel, which those in the little boats some time before had made out to be a British merchantman, sighted them. Immediately small boats were lowered over the side and made toward ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... vessel hove to, which we took it for granted was a merchantman, which the pirate had been plundering, the captain ordered one of the cutters to be lowered down with a midshipman and boat's crew to take possession of her. The men were all in the boat, but the midshipman had gone down for his ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... crossed to many foreign lands and islands, filling the whole sea and the whole earth with our name and power, nothing good has been our lot. In the first place we disputed in cliques at home and within our walls, and later we exported this plague to the camps. Therefore our city, like a great merchantman full of a crowd of every race borne without a pilot these many years through rough water, rolls and shoots hither and thither because it is without ballast. Do not, then, allow her to be longer exposed to the tempest; for you see that she is waterlogged. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... 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, and extending ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... At length she disappeared, entirely burned to the water's edge, and thus came the end of another brave ship. One more was added to the great ocean graveyard, already thick with the bones of many a gallant merchantman. ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... invention of his. In a pamphlet, entitled "Remarks upon the Navy," 1700, the term is declared to have been the name of a certain nautical personage who had lived in the lifetime of the writer. "There was, sir, in our time, one Captain Fudge, commander of a merchantman, who upon his return from a voyage, how ill-fraught soever his ship was, always brought home his owners a good cargo of lies; so much that now, aboard ship, the sailors, when they hear a great lie told, cry out, 'You fudge ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... usual amount of bustle on board a merchantman the canvas was at length set, the yards braced in the manner necessary for casting the ship, and the men returned to the windlass—Williams walking aft and standing by the wheel, whilst Rogers and Martin remained on the forecastle to superintend the operation of getting the anchor. Williams ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... 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, rendered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... this morning for Venice," Browning wrote to a friend on Good Friday, 1838. He voyaged as sole passenger on a merchantman, and soon was on friendliest terms with the rough kindly captain. For the first fortnight the sea was stormy and Browning suffered much; as they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, Captain Davidson aided him to reach the deck, and a pulsing of home-pride—not home-sickness—gave ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... adventure on the canal—an alternative between that and the deck of a Lake Erie schooner—was a farmer boy's device for earning money, just as the New England lad begins a possibly great career by sailing before the mast on a coasting vessel, or on a merchantman bound to the farther India or to ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Very different would be the fate of an unarmed vessel, for the explosion of a torpedo would probably blow such a large hole in the thin steel plates that she would go to the bottom like a stone. To torpedo a merchantman simply means the cold-blooded murder of the crew, for their chances of escape would be almost negligible, whilst it is impossible to find words to describe the attempts which have been made to sink hospital ships. About the last there is a degree of callous ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... craft resembling the lugger had been in that part of the Bay. The vessel's head was now laid to the southward and westward, in waiting for the zephyr, which might soon be expected. The gallant frigate, seen from the impending rocks, looked like a light merchantman, in all but her symmetry and warlike guise; nature being moulded on so grand a scale all along that coast, as to render objects of human art unusually diminutive to the eye. On the other hand, the country-houses, churches, hermitages, convents, and villages, clustered all ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sailed into the harbor as if she had been an ordinary merchantman, and managed to drift down close to the fine frigate which the Tripolitans had snatched from their blundering enemy. The crew on board the "Philadelphia" did not suspect the character of the little vessel which came so close to them, until she was made fast, and more than eighty men sprang up from ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... succeeded beyond his expectations. In Venice there were constantly bargains to be purchased from ships returning laden with the spoils of some captured Genoese merchantman, or taken in the sack of some Eastern seaport. The prices, too, asked by the traders with the towns of Syria or the Black Sea, were but a fraction of those charged when these goods arrived in London. It was true that occasionally some of his cargoes were lost on the homeward voyage, captured either ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... to wrench away. 'Easy now,' a voice 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? She had fought her ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... soon as we go away, they'll come out and attack the first merchantman that comes ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... her weary sailors found brief respite in the harbor of Valparaiso on March 14, 1813. Thence Porter headed up the coast, disguising the trim frigate so that she looked like a lubberly, high-pooped Spanish merchantman. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... that all was very well with the garrison. Captain Norman, who had remained in charge, under oath to keep the "bloody flag," or red pirates' banner, flying, "had sent forth to sea two boats, to exercise piracy." These had hoisted Spanish colours, and set to sea, meeting with a fine Spanish merchantman that very same day. They chased this ship into the Chagres River, where "the poor Spaniards" were caught in a snare under the guns of the fort. Her cargo "consisted in victuals and provisions, that were all eatable things," unlike the victuals given ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... shore. Our captain and five officers, the master and surgeon of an English merchantman, and the captain of the French schooner, were of the party. It was a pleasant dinner. The conversation turned principally upon the trade and customs of the coast. The slave-trade was freely discussed; and the subject had ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... 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. ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... 1660, 1663, 1672, and 1696.] were so developed and expanded as to include the following prescriptions: (1) In general all import and export trade must be conducted in ships built in England, in Ireland, or in the colonies, manned and commanded by British subjects. Thus, if a French or Dutch merchantman appeared in Massachusetts Bay, offering to sell at a great bargain his cargo of spices or silks, the shrewd merchants of Boston were legally bound not to buy of him. (2) Certain "enumerated" articles, such as sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and, later, rice and furs, could be exported only to England. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... quarrels between Langara and Hood at Toulon, the despatches from Madrid to London were full of complaints. Now it was the detention of Danish vessels carrying naval stores, ostensibly for Cadiz, but in reality, as we asserted, for Rochefort. Now it was the seizure and condemnation of a Spanish merchantman, the "Sant' Iago," on a somewhat similar charge. England had equal cause for annoyance. The embers of the quarrel of 1790 were once more fanned to a flame by Spanish officials. Captain Vancouver, of H.M.S. "Discovery," while on a voyage to survey the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... stole gently from the bow to the stern of the canoe, and he was about to question him, when the other, grasping his arm with an expressive touch, pointed to a dark object moving across the road. Gerald turned his head, and beheld the same figure that had so recently quitted the cabin of the merchantman. Following its movements, he saw it noiselessly enter into the grounds of a cottage, opposite an old ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... ships, the fisherman's sloop, the king's corvette, and the merchantman, all lay anchored in the basin and harbor, their prows boring into the gale, their crude hulls rising and falling, tossing and plunging, tugging like living things at their hempen cables. The snow fell upon ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... port of New York, manned by George Harbo, thirty-one years of age, captain of a merchantman, and Frank Samuelson, twenty-six years of age, left New York for Havre on the 6th of June. Ten days later the boat was met by the German trans-atlantic steamer Frst Bismarck proceeding from Cherbourg to New York. On the 8th, 9th and 10th of July, the Fox was cast by a tempest ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... everywhere. Rare as he is at present, he has led us to both poles, from the uttermost recesses of the Pacific to Behring's Strait, and the infinite wastes of the Antarctic waters. There is even an enormous region that no vessel, whether war-ship or merchantman, ever traverses, at a few degrees beyond the southern points of America and Africa. No one visits that ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... stood in, the English flag was seen flying at her peak, and from her appearance the boatswain pronounced her to be a merchantman, probably an Australian emigrant ship, and that if so she would probably have numerous ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... English colours and uniform. In beating up to Pernambuco, we spoke with vessels every day, but they were all Portuguese. When near to St. Salvadore, we were in great danger of being captured by a British frigate, which we mistook for a large merchantman, until she came within half musket shot of us; but, luckily for us, it died away calm, when we out with our oars, which seamen call sweeps, and in spite of their round and grape shot, we got clear of her ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... 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. ...
— 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
... superiority stepped in) at the very outset if, for instance, we had sent several Dreadnoughts to catch the Emden. It was strongly suspected, mind you, that there were German armed vessels on the trade routes. As one merchantman after another was sunk there could no longer be any doubt about it. What if, in panic, we had suddenly dispersed our naval force to every part of the globe? What then? But we didn't. What again if it had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... 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
... never have it out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if it had been a child—as indeed it was the nearest thing to a child she was to know. Yves de Cornault was much pleased with his purchase. The dog had been brought to him by a sailor from an East India merchantman, and the sailor had bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at Jaffa, who had stolen it from a nobleman's wife in China: a perfectly permissible thing to do, since the pilgrim was a Christian and the nobleman a heathen ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 a ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... background to haunt British thought was the growing American navy. John Paul was a Scots sailor, who had been a slave trader and subsequently master of a West India merchantman, and on going to America had assumed the name of Jones. He was a man of boundless ambition, vanity, and vigor, and when he commanded American privateers he became a terror to the maritime people from whom he sprang. In ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... he had as usual gone up to the lookout and scanned the sea view far and near, he at last came down to the breakfast-room with his face quite speaking with inward satisfaction. He had seen a sail, evidently a large merchantman, and begged Don Leonardo to go up and see if together they could not make the stranger out more fully. Charles, himself, thought that she was heavy and evidently steering for the small bay on which the factory stood. But their curiosity was soon to be satisfied, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... was hurrying to meet came smoothly on until the pirate craft was well in range, when ports flew open along the stranger's sides, guns were run out, and a heavy broadside splintered through the planks of the robber galley. It was a man-of-war, not a merchantman, that had run Blackbeard down. The war-ship closed and grappled with the corsair, but while the sailors were standing at the chains ready to leap aboard and complete the subjugation of the outlaws a mass of flame burst from the pirate ship, both vessels were hurled in fragments through ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... a merchantman, which arrived last night from St. Pierre," said the sailor, respectfully removing ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... essential details is much the same in all ships, whether naval, merchant, or whaling vessels. But while in the ordinary merchantman there are decidedly "no more cats than can catch mice," hardly, indeed, sufficient for all the mousing that should be done, in men-of-war and whaleships the number of hands carried, being far more than ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... too, just now disturbed her peace of mind, and she was in fear of some complication; for in the course of the winter, while her boys were finishing their studies, each in his own line, she had made the acquaintance of a neighbor, Mme. Rosemilly, the widow of a captain of a merchantman who had died at sea two years before. The young widow—quite young, only three-and-twenty—a woman of strong intellect who knew life by instinct as the free animals do, as though she had seen, gone through, understood, and weighed every ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... manner, on a fine March morning, we steered our course to the English coast, to take an active part in the commercial war. Gently the waves splashed around the prow and glided over the lower deck. Our duty was to examine every merchantman we met with the object of destroying those of the enemy. The essential thing was to ascertain the nationality of the ships we stopped. On the following morning, we were given several opportunities to fulfill ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... pull down the black flag and turn myself into an honest merchantman, with children in the hold and a wife at the helm. You would remind me that grey hairs begin to show, that health falls into rags, that high spirits split like canvas, and that in the end the bright buccaneer ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the First was taken sick. There was a fight, early one morning when the air was very damp, between the 'Angel' and a rich merchantman. The pirate captain got rather over-heated, during his usual duel with the captain of the merchantman, and then he foolishly sat down in a draft while he ate his breakfast. He had a bad attack of rheumatism, and it made it very hard for him to scramble ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... hopes of there meeting with the Irish fleet, which her sons, Edmund and Godwin, were bringing against the West of England. How the fleet had never come, and they had starved for many days; and how she had bribed a passing merchantman to take her and her wretched train to the land of Baldwin the Debonnaire, who might have pity on her for the sake of his daughter Judith, and Tosti her husband who died in ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the top to bear up a dish; which indeed is one of the neatest pieces of plate that ever I saw, and the case is very pretty also. [A salt-sellar answering this description is preserved at the Tower.] This evening come a merchantman in the harbour, which we hired at London to carry horses to Portugall; but Lord! what running, here was to the seaside to hear what news, thinking it ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... pictures by Turner, The Garden of the Hesperides, and The Meuse: Orange-Merchantman going ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... the Barbary States, of all hues and countries, and marked solely by the common stamp of a wild-beast ferocity. Rasping up on either side, with oars trailing to save them from snapping, they poured in a living torrent with horrid yell and shrill whoop upon the defenceless merchantman. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... effectual reparation' if Berkeley had been wrong. Berkeley was wrong. The Right of Search did not include the right to search a foreign man-of-war, though, unlike the modern 'right of search,' which is confined to cargoes, it did include the right to search a neutral merchantman on the high seas for any 'national' who was 'wanted.' Canning, however, distinctly stated that the men's nationality would affect the consideration of restoring them or not. Monroe now had a good case. But he made the fatal ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... some of his exploits was William Bainbridge, as handsome, impetuous and daring a sailor as ever trod a deck. Bainbridge, who was five years younger than Decatur, began his seafaring career at the age of sixteen, and three years later was in command of a merchantman. He entered the navy at its reorganization in 1798, and two years later was appointed to command the George Washington, a ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Alden seems 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 a trial, and was imprisoned fifteen weeks without being allowed bail. [Footnote: History of ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... me 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; ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... the cruise of the good old whaling barque CACHALOT, as far as whaling is concerned, comes to an end. For all practical purposes she becomes a humdrum merchantman in haste to reach her final port of discharge, and get rid of her cargo. No more will she loiter and pry around anything and everything, from an island to a balk of drift-wood, that comes in her way, knowing not the meaning of "waste of time." The "crow's-nests" are dismantled, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... 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 ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 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 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 vigorously upon a violin, while a dozen other men stood ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... deck to watch the approach of a boat 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
... then proceeded.) "This vessel now came alongside of us, and hailed us, having perceived that on which we were aboard to be of her own country; they begged us not to put into Dunkirk, but to accompany them in their pursuit of a large English merchantman, whom we should easily overtake, and both together as easily conquer. Our captain immediately consented to this proposition, and ordered all his sail to be crowded. This was most unwelcome news to me; however, he comforted me all he could by assuring me I had nothing to fear, that ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... cruisers, apparently the Seydlitz, Moltke, and Von der Tann, one four-funnelled cruiser, probably the Roon, two old light cruisers of the Frauenlob and Bremen classes, ten destroyers, one large two-funnelled merchantman or liner, and three ships which appeared to be colliers. Anti-aircraft guns, firing shrapnel, were used against the seaplane and very nearly scored a direct hit. On issuing from the Roads the officers in the seaplane saw a large number of ships in the northern part of the fairway ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... 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, the stutter ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... "America," the equipment and operations of which illustrated precisely the business conception which attached to these enterprises in the minds of competent business men. This ship-rigged vessel of four hundred and seventy-three tons, built of course for a merchantman, was about eight years old when the war broke out, and had just returned from a voyage. Seeing that ordinary commerce was likely to be a very precarious undertaking, her owners spent the months of July and August in preparing her ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... good word and work, and was the humble teller of his own humbling story. He had been a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and having found the pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it; and the retired earthly merchant ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... 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
... the 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 of lights ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... rowed for, which carried every body up the Thames. and afterwards there was a great ball at Carlton house. There have two good events happened at that court: the town was alarmed t'other morning by the firing of guns, which proved to be only from a large merchantman come into the river. The city construed it into the King's return, and the peace broke; but Chancellor Bootle and the Bishop of Oxford, who loves a tabour next to promoting the cause of it, concluded the Princess was brought to bed, and went ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... evil which the Colonial Fleet is specially designed to check, and it used to be very bad at one time before the Ballinese War of 1845. In the year before this, a Dutch merchantman, the Overyssel, stranded on the coast of Bally, and the crew were massacred, and ship and cargo looted by the Ballinese. This led to three expeditions; one in 1845, another, which was undertaken with an insufficient force and ended in disaster ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... I thought that Germany would approach the resumption of ruthless submarine war via the armed merchantman issue. ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... willing to fit out armed vessels to prey upon our commerce. The first one that attracted any attention was the Savannah, which ran out of Charleston on the 2d of June, and was shortly afterward captured by a ship of war that she mistook for a merchantman; but she was not the first privateer to operate in Southern waters. As early as May 7, several light-draught steamers, mounting two or three guns each, were hastily fitted out at New Orleans, and brought in prizes that were taken off the mouths ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... isolated vessel, whether a merchantman or a man-of-war, is at the mercy of a submarine, which hunts the seas for this kind of target. It has only to lie in wait on the trade routes until its prey appears, submerging in case of danger. Then a torpedo sent home and a valuable piece of property goes to the bottom of the sea. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... went 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 of ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... the Sub-Almoner of History; Queen Mab's Register; one whom, by the same figure that a North-country pedler is a merchantman, you may style an author. The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of the hopes of his house, did not slander his compliment with worse application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... His 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 ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice, and humanity, which all modern opinion regards as imperative. It is practically impossible for the officers of a submarine to visit a merchantman at sea and examine her papers and cargo. It is practically impossible for them to make a prize of her; and, if they cannot put a prize crew on board of her, they cannot sink her without leaving her crew and all on board of her to the mercy of the sea ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... 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
... during the last war between England and America, he had, with several others, been "impressed" upon the high seas, out of a New England merchantman. The ship that impressed him was an English frigate, the Macedonian, afterward taken by the Neversink, the ship in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... St. Lawrence, 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 morning from ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... up and looked the man in the eye. "You've had your space papers suspended twice, Mr. Winters. Once for smuggling, and once for insubordination on a deep-space merchantman. Your application to ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... advantageous bargain. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls; who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it."[4] Alas! the inconveniences of this plan were not long in making themselves felt. A treasurer was wanted. They chose for ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... now 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 translator's port of entry into German, French, Armenian, Turkish, and perhaps some ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... they 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, except the Retaliation. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... two infirm or ignorant sailors; sometimes such vessels were never heard of more. The men thus pressed were taken from the near grasp of parents or wives, and were often deprived of the hard earnings of years, which remained in the hands of the masters of the merchantman in which they had served, subject to all the chances of honesty or dishonesty, life or death. Now all this tyranny (for I can use no other word) is marvellous to us; we cannot imagine how it is that a nation ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ideal of all perfectness. The understanding needs one ultimate Cause on which it can rest amid the dance of fleeting phenomena; the heart cannot pour out its love to be shared among many. No string of goodly pearls will ever give the merchantman assurance that his quest is complete. Only when human nature finds all in One, and that One a living Person, the Lover and Friend of all souls, does it fold its wings and rest as a bird after ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... accidentally foundered, and being chained to the privateer, had, in sinking, like to have lost that too. Two or three of the hands got on shore, and came to The Hague; but how terribly I was alarmed any one may judge, when I heard the ship the privateer had was the Newfoundland merchantman, as I had bought two shares in out of four. About two months after news was current about The Hague of a privateer or merchantman, one of them of the town, though not known which, having an engagement in the Mediterranean, in which action ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... ships and boats and victims hurrying onward to their doom. Here, a stately barque, with disordered topsails almost bursting from the yards as she hurries her hapless crew—all ignorant, perchance, of its proximity—towards the dread lee-shore. Elsewhere, looming through the murk, a ponderous merchantman, her mainmast and mizzen gone, and just enough of the foremast left to support the bellying foresail ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... obviously not do to rely on such a mere chance as that. Another idea was to get into the open water southward of the Isle of Pines, and look out for either an English frigate—one of which would be pretty certain to be cruising in that direction—or an eastward-bound merchantman ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... as to give to his journey the character of a triumphal progress. Meanwhile, L'Ambuscade, the French frigate which had brought Genet to Charleston, was proceeding to Philadelphia, taking prizes on her way and sending them to American ports. In Delaware Bay she captured the Grange, an English merchantman lying there at anchor, and took this vessel with her to Philadelphia as a prize. As Genet neared Philadelphia on May 16, L'Ambuscade gave notice by firing three guns, at which signal a procession was formed to meet ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... Senate hurried a bill through all its stages in a single day; and the House, by nearly two to one, accepted it. No foreign merchant vessel could leave an American port, except in ballast, or with a cargo then on board; no American merchantman could leave for a foreign port on ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... priceless floating depots. Imbros, here, lies quite open to submarine attacks, and in a northerly gale, becomes a mere roadstead. The Admiral, who regards soldiers as wayward water babes, has insisted on lashing a merchantman to each side of the Arcadian to serve as torpedo buffers. There are, it seems, at least two German submarines prowling about at the present moment between Gaba Tepe and Cape Helles. After torpedoing ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... He said that he did not think you would object to a quarter of the money being put into a speculative venture, and that they were both good craft, well armed and well commanded, with strong crews; and would, if successful, earn as much in a year as a merchantman would in ten." ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... shorten a long story, I was the next day bundled, when about three sheets in the wind, on board a merchantman, with an empty chest, although it was winter, old Hardheart nabbing the whole of my advance; and for two or three days, Tom, I suffered awfully from the horrors. I thought I was already in the hell to which the wicked who don't repent must go. Awake, asleep, at ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... to the sinking of the steamer Falaba, by which an American citizen lost his life, the Government of the United States is surprised to find the Imperial German Government contending that an effort on the part of a merchantman to escape capture and secure assistance alters the obligation of the officer seeking to make the capture in respect of the safety of the lives of those on board the merchantman, although the vessel had ceased her attempt to escape when ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... on both sides. Only three days before, Captain Dacres had entered on the log of a merchantman a challenge to any American frigate to meet him off Sandy Hook. Not only had the Guerriere for a long time been extremely offensive to every seafaring American, but the mistake which caused the Little Belt to suffer so seriously for the misfortune of being taken for the Guerriere had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the fight of July 22nd la malheureuse affaire; his ships were encumbered with sick; they worked badly; on August 15th a north-east gale carried away the top-mast of a Spanish ship; and having heard from a Danish merchantman the news—false news, as it afterwards appeared—that Cornwallis with twenty-five ships was to the north, he turned and scudded before the wind. He could not divine the disastrous influence of his conduct on the plan of invasion. He did not know ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... beneath a crimson sunset and between misty purple shores. On one hand lay Africa, on the other the Moorish country, both shrouded in a soft haze and edged with snowy foam. Down below the soldiers of Italy were singing. A merchantman of belligerent nationality, our ship proudly flew its flag again. Indeed, had it failed to do so, the British patrol-boats would long since have known the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Mediterranean. 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
... soon pulled alongside the strange sail, and the pirate-vessel was brought round with her broadside to bear by means of long oars or sweeps. In a short time the boats returned with the mortifying intelligence that the papers were all right, and that the vessel, being in truth a British merchantman, was not a legitimate prize. The corsair therefore sailed away under the influence of a light breeze ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... seventh of June, the owners of the merchantman Deliverance received news that the ship had touched at Plymouth to land passengers, and had then continued her homeward voyage to the Port of London. Five days later, the vessel was in the river, and was towed into ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... them exterminated. He himself could not protect his own trade. But the neutrality of the island must be respected. Skinner, the Zebra's captain, sailed away towards the Boca, and found, to his grim delight, that the privateers had mistaken him for a certain English merchantman whom they had blockaded in Port of Spain, and were giving him chase. He let them come up and try to board; and what followed may be easily guessed. In three-quarters of an hour they were all burnt, sunk, or driven on shore; the remnant of their crews escaped to Port of Spain, to join the French Republicans ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... had now 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 was ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... especially feared intervention had been suffering from an attack of panic as a result of Wilson's recent decision to support the preparedness movement. They were further terrified by the possibility that some American citizen traveling on an armed merchantman might lose his life and that the demand for entrance into the war might thus become irresistible. Bryanites, pro-German propagandists, and Irish combined against the President, and were reinforced by all the discontented elements who hoped to break ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... between Germany and Russia the Porte ordered the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles closed to every kind of shipping, at the same time barring the entrances of these channels with rows of mines. The first boat to suffer from this measure was a British merchantman, which was sunk outside the Bosphorus, while another had a narrow escape in the Dardanelles. A large number of steamers of every nationality are waiting outside the straits for the special pilot boats of the Turkish Government, in order to pass in safety through the dangerous mine field. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
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