"Middle watch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when off Cape Horn bound to Valparaiso in a barque belonging to a South Wales port. The vessel had been tossed about for days with nothing set but close reefed topsails, amid the angry storming and churning of liquid mountains. One midnight, when eight bells had been struck to call the middle watch, there suddenly appeared on the poop the commander, who was known to be a man of God. He gave the order to hard up the helm and make sail. When she came before the wind the crew were puzzled to know the cause of this strange proceeding, and their captain ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... intention of driving him into the river. On his rising up they halted, and when he advanced they made way for his passage down to the tents. He had his gun in his hand but forbore to fire lest there should be Esquimaux in the neighbourhood. During Mr. Wentzel's middle watch the wolves appeared repeatedly on the summit of the hill, and at one time they succeeded in driving a deer over the precipice. The animal was stunned by the fall but, recovering itself, swam across the stream and escaped up the river. I may remark here that at midnight it was ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... Boston; and then you could see ships handled and run the way they want to be. But that's all past and gone, and nowadays the only thing that flies in an American ship is a belaying-pin. You don't know, you haven't a guess. How would you like to go on deck for your middle watch, fourteen months on end, with all your duty to do, and every one's life depending on you, and expect to get a knife ripped into you as you come out of your state-room, or be sand-bagged as you pass the boat, or get tripped into ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be the case. It was a flat calm, it is true; but the widow felt oppressed with responsibility and the novelty of her situation. Time and again had she said, and even imagined, she should be delighted to fill the very station she then occupied, or to be in charge of a deck, in a "middle watch." In this instance, however, as in so many others, reality did not equal anticipation. She wished to be doing everything, but did not know how to do anything. As for Biddy, she was even worse off than her mistress. A month's experience, or for that matter a twelvemonth's, could not unravel ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... be seen, not even a hog wallowing in the kennel nor a buzzard about the butcher-stalls. Yet there were no traces of fire and sword, the houses had suffered no violence, and stood there barred and shuttered as though it were still the middle watch of ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
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