"Spanker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was now directed at the masts. A few ropes were cut away, but no serious damage was effected until a shot struck one of the halliard blocks of the spanker, and the sail at ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... of game cocks. Besides, we know that Childers, which was perhaps the best racer ever bred in this kingdom, had in his veins a consanguinity of blood; his pedigree informing us, that his great grandam was got by Spanker, the dam of which Mare was also the dam ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... progress real handsum now; that 'ere horse goes etarnal fast, he near about set my axle on fire twice. He's a spanker you may depend. I had him when he was a two-year-old, all legs and tail, like a devil's darnin' needle, and had him broke on purpose by father's old nigger, January Snow. He knows English real well, and can do near about anything but speak it. He helped me once to gin a Bluenose ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... are less, some greater; Some of them may secure a well-piled plateful, Others, though the necessity be hateful, Empty away must go. Won't there be grumblings, Waterings of mouths and hunger-gendered rumblings! But the great Surplus-Joint, although a spanker, Won't satiate all the appetites that hanker After a solid slice of it. Cook GOSCHEN Of careful carving has a neatish notion, Yet, though his skill be great, his judgment sound, He will not make that whopping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... her bottom, and to look after the upper works, thatch, and ringing. When I returned I found it nearly ready, and immediately began packing up and preparing for the voyage. Our mainsail had formed one side of our house, but the spanker and jib had been put away in the roof, and on opening them to see if any repairs were wanted, to our horror we found that some rats had made them their nest, and had gnawed through them in twenty places. We had therefore to buy matting ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... "Now you have him, lads. Hold on every inch of line, or he'll break away from you yet. Bear a hand here, one of you. Take the spanker-sheet and throw a running-bowline round the line, so's we can get it down over his fins. That's your sort, Ned; don't let him get it into his jaws. Cleverly done; haul taut. Now we have him safe. Lead the sheet for'ard, let all hands tail on to it, and we'll ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... human beings on board; but the deck appeared to be deserted; no gleam of light showed either forward or aft; and no sound broke the silence save the wash of the water along the bends, the choking gurgle of the scuppers, and the monotonous jerk-jerk of the spanker-boom at its sheet with the roll of the ship. Under these circumstances I considered that my companion might safely venture aboard, and I accordingly assisted her up the side and in on deck, afterwards dropping the boat astern and carefully securing her by her painter. This done, I conducted ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... and finally exploded, throwing up a cloud of spray, but doing no harm to the brig, which never loosened tack or sheet, but held gallantly on her way. A moment after the shrapnel exploded, her flag—the old flag—fluttered out from under the lee of her spanker, and little puffs of smoke arose from her port quarter. Some of her crew were firing at the privateer with rifles. Of course, the distance was so great that they never heard the whistle of the bullet, but it was an act of defiance that drove Captain Beardsley ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... was an entertainment announced at the 'Rooms,' and to pass away the time I looked in. It was an elocutionist one, entitled 'Merry-Making Moments, or, Spanker's Wallet of Varieties,' with a portrait of Spanker on the bills opening the wallet with an expression of delight or surprise. This was his 'Grand Competition Night,' when a 'magnificent goblet' was ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... execution; but they only retired to the next room, whence they could overhear the whole conversation. My wife artfully introduced it, by observing, that one of the Miss Flamboroughs was like to have a very good match of it in Mr. Spanker. To this the Squire assenting, she proceeded to remark, that they who had warm fortunes were always sure of getting good husbands: "But heaven help," continued she, "the girls that have none! What signifies beauty, Mr. Thornhill? or what ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... and deadeyes, I could not remember which, and, determined not to be ignored as an inexperienced landlubber, I gazed in a vague way into the rigging, and made a few very general observations upon the nature of deadeyes and spanker-booms. The captain, however, promptly annihilated me by demanding categorically whether I had ever seen the spanker-boom jammed with the foretopsailyard, with the wind abeam. I replied meekly that I believed such a catastrophe had never ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... execution; but they only retired to the next room, whence they could overhear the whole conversation: my wife artfully introduced it, by observing, that one of the Miss Flamboroughs was like to have a very good match of it in Mr. Spanker. To this the 'squire assenting, she proceeded to remark, that they who had warm fortunes were always sure of getting good husbands: "But heaven help," continued she, "the girls that have none. What signifies beauty, Mr. Thornhill? ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... by force, where persuasion failed, their outstanding loans, and in other cases borrowing additional supplies in the same genial manner. Among other booty, they secured a tin of pressed beef from Spanker, who had to be clouted on the head before he would "lend it," and some sardines from another boy, who was thankful to find any one to take them off his hands ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... both the cutter and the barge, in hoisting out, were stove, and immediately swamped, no less than thirty men perishing with them. Several of the crew had been killed by the falling of the masts, and others were severely injured. Two midshipmen were crushed to death between the spanker boom and the bulwarks. ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... surveying. The approaches to this tiny harbour (save the mark) were very forbidding. Ugly-looking rocks showed up here and there, the surf over them frequently blinding the whole entry. But we came along, in our usual leisurely fashion, under two topsails, spanker, and fore-topmast staysail, and took that ugly passage like a sailing barge entering the Medway. There was barely room to turn round when we got inside, but all sail had been taken off her except the spanker, so that her way was almost stopped by the time ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... which my eyes had ever rested; The wind was S. S. W., and when they let go the main-top bowline To square the after yards, our good ship stopped her rolling. Madame lay on the quarter-deck sewed up in part of an old spanker, And for this glorious sight of the ocean we had solely to thank her, For to have kept her lying in the cabin would have caused some of us to feel qualmish, And she could not have been kept on deck, as the weather was growing warmish; Therefore ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... one hand, and then hauled himself up under it, clinging tight to the main shrouds. Then he saw the second mate loose the jib halliards, while one of the sailors threw off the fore-staysail sheet, and the spanker slowly brought the brig's ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... the planks of the other vessel. But this was not to be: rising from the crouching posture she had taken, like a panther about to leap, the cutter dashed onward, and at the next instant she was glancing past the stern of her enemy, just clearing the end of her spanker-boom with ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... with the men of the larboard watch, went to work, and in a few minutes the ship was running along quietly under her three topsails, jib, and spanker. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... dressing up as a girl. I used to take the role of the leading lady, and I remember two of our most successful efforts were "London Assurance" and scenes from "Twelfth Night," in the former of which I took the part of Lady Gay Spanker ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... "Let us be reasonable," "one cannot, to take a parallel case, imagine the colonel commanding the garrison at a naval station going on board a battleship and ordering the crew to splice the jibboom spanker. It might be an admirable thing for the Empire that the jibboom spanker should be spliced at that particular juncture, but the crew would naturally decline to move in the matter until the order came from the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse |
