"Steerage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this time got up the fore-topgallant and royal-masts again and were once more under all plain sail; while, as for the two Indiamen, built as cargo-carriers rather than for speed, they appeared to scarcely have steerage-way, and seemed to maintain their luff only with the utmost difficulty—indeed, there were times when they fell so broad off as to present their full broadsides to us. But although their capture might now be regarded as practically certain, they were evidently not disposed to yield without making ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... "We must have steerage-way, or we can do nothing," I replied with quick tones, for we were within a few fathoms of the whirl of waters that were dashing through the crevasse. I felt the speed of the steamer increasing, and I firmly grasped the ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... his own coin. Now Blinks, for that was the steward's name, was a notorious cheat; he never gave the men their full rations. On the contrary, he often boasted that he cleared not less than a hundred pounds of provisions every day. He was the caterer of the steerage mess, and many a pound of flour and apples, which should have been given to the men, found its way to his table, in the shape of pies and puddings. Blinks always rose early, and as soon as he was dressed, the steerage steward, every morning, brought to his room a lunch, consisting of coffee and ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... Hobson's Bay, Port Philip on the morning of the 21st of February, having made our voyage in the short space of ninety-nine days, and the land within a quarter of an hour of the captain's reckoning. The events of the passage may be given paucis verbis. We had nine accouchements in the steerage amongst the emigrants, some of them premature from violent sea-sickness, and seven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... observed every thing, seized the decisive moment, beat to arms, and forty of his crew prepared to board, with pistols in their hands and daggers held between their teeth. As soon as they got on deck, they rushed upon the affrighted crowd, who retreated to the steerage, and endeavored to defend themselves there. Lafitte thereupon ordered a second division to board, which he headed himself; the captain of the Indiaman was killed, and all were swept away in a moment. ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... course by wild wind, wild tide, and steerage and non-steerage, these three years, has become weary of its own existence, sees all men weary of it; and wishes heartily to finish. To the last, it has to strive with contradictions: it is now getting fast ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... In the steerage we carried a mixed lot of emigrants from all sections of the world, among them being Chinamen, Hindoos, Turks, Cingalese, Italians and Germans, and to walk through their quarters and listen to the strange languages ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... Somerled; and as he was all alone in the world—his mother was dead, too, and had never seen his success—he resolved to make a reputation in another country. Of course that was very young of him. He sees that now. He crossed to New York in the steerage, and vowed he'd never set foot in Scotland again, or take back his name of MacDonald, until old Duncan not only openly claimed him as a cousin, but begged him as a personal ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... presiding and introducing the artists, and also delivering the Fourth of July oration. The celebration was so successful in the saloon that Mr. Daly had it repeated the next night in the second cabin, and the night after that in the steerage. The steerage did its best, and was clothed in the finest things which it was carrying back to astonish the old folks in the old country, and its enthusiasm was greater, if possible, than the welcome which had greeted the artists among the first and second ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... his deck chair for the first time and stood at the rail which overlooked the steerage with his eyes glued to the grim skies ahead. When Uncle John asked him what he saw ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... shudders, grows steady, and then with one lurch the ship swashes down and the bellowing vortex throws up huge spirts of boiling spray. A few stray swimmers are picked up, but the rest of the company will be seen nevermore. Fancy those women in that darkened steerage! Think of it, and then say what should be done to an owner who stints his officers in the matter of lamp-oil; or to a captain who does not use what the owner provides! The huddled victims wake from confused slumbers; some scream—some become insane on ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... clean and English by contrast with the mass of frowsy aliens. Beside them stood another official, presumably acting on behalf of the Dominion Government, though there were few restrictions imposed upon Canadian immigration then, nor for that matter did anybody trouble much about the comfort of the steerage passengers. Though they have altered all that latterly, each steamer, in a general way, carried as ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... its deck-wall forming a swell, in which were three broad windows which gave a view of the sea for a full half-circle of the horizon. It also overlooked the forward deck, the watchful lookout on the bridge, the busy sailors at their tasks, and gave glimpses of the steerage at long range. It was richly paneled in leather, with much gilding, the draperies were of crimson damask, and the seat which followed the window's swell was cushioned in crimson plush, all of which gave it a snug, shut-in look. A large table with a constant litter of maps, charts, sextants, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... space on to this little oasis of Englishmen. Then, suddenly, they are an ocean; and the Anglo-Indian world floats upon it like an Atlantic liner. It has its gymnasium, its swimming-bath, its card-rooms, its concert-room. It has its first and second class and steerage, well marked off. It dresses for dinner every night; it has an Anglican service on Sunday; it flirts mildly; it is bored; but above all it is safe. It has water-tight compartments. It is "unsinkable." The band is playing; and when the crash comes it will ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... five-and-twenty, and could hardly look on anything requiring agility or dexterity without attempting it, so I consented, with a renewal of the sensations I remembered when, as a child, I had danced with grown-up men, only with alarm at the responsibility of what Dermot called "the steerage of the Great Harry," since collision with such momentum as ours might soon be would be serious; but I soon found my anxiety groundless; he was too well made and elastic to be clumsy, and had perfect power over his own weight and strength, so that he could dance as lightly and safely as Dermot ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... common seaman. His dress and manner, too, militated fatally against any such proposal as the latter; and yet he was reduced to making it; for even if he could have contemplated the being set down in America totally without money, he had not enough left now for a steerage passage and the poorest provisions ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... anchor which Russ had rigged provided the necessary drag and steerage way, and the boat's head was kept to the waves. Her high bow, and covered fore-part, enabled her to ride seas that would have swamped another craft of like size. And her dory-build added to her ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... they rested on the long swell that bore them along, and everything in sea and sky bespoke the calm. No sailor trod the deck; no watch was stirring; the very tiller ropes were deserted; and as they traversed backwards and forwards with every roll of the vessel, told that we had no steerage-way, and lay a mere log ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... a.m., having sounded in thirty-three fathoms, we shoaled suddenly to fourteen, when the vessel's head was put to the southward, but the breeze was so very light, that she had hardly steerage way: by the light of the moon a line of breakers was seen two miles off, under our lee: we had now shoaled to nine fathoms on a rocky bottom, but its great irregularity prevented our dropping the anchor until the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... oxen champed and champed their food with a regular sound; I remembered the steerage in a liner, the noise of the sea and the regular screw, for this it exactly resembled. I considered in the darkness the noble aspect of these beasts as I had seen them in the lantern light, and I determined when ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... ahead of us. We are being carried west faster than the rowers can take us eastward, hence we are practically standing still, or rather going back, and they are now merely holding the boat so as to give us steerage way and prevent us from going into the troughs ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... the less drawn to the idea because of a face she could see down in the steerage: face of an immigrant girl who was also turning eager face, not to the land for which her forefathers had fought, but to that which would be the ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... hand as a countryman that you will not breathe a word of this, whatever you hear. Beenah and I have sold a few little trinkets which our children gave us, and we have reckoned that with six pounds more we shall be able to take steerage passages and just exist till ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... wonder what the land of the Mayflower and the nation of George Washington will be in three hundred years, when the descendants of each shipload of immigrants of to-day will have increased in like ratio. From a single steerage passenger cargo, of the Lusitania or Mauretania, let us say, we shall have twenty, thirty, or forty thousand Lusitanians or Mauretanians as descendants; and from a single year's immigration thirty millions. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself, for want of money to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail from the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... combatants swung to their broadsides, having taken the breath of the air away by the fury of their fire. All three were standing to the north-north-west, under easy sail, and on the starboard tack, but scarcely holding steerage-way, and taking little heed of it. Close quarters, closer and closer still, muzzle to muzzle, and beard to beard, clinched teeth, and hard pounding, were the order of the day, with the crash of shattered ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... trophy, eight yards square, that illuminates the east end of the north avenue of the Main Building, in opposition to the trophy at the other end of the same avenue illustrating the history of the American flag. But he will look in vain for selected specimens of the emigrant-runner, the luxuries of the steerage and Castle Garden, or for photographs of the well-fed post-trader and Indian agent, agricultural products from Captain Jack's lava-bed reservation and jars of semi-putrescent treaty-beef. He will alight, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... would rather have met him than faced my father. Soon I came to a wharf where a steamer was taking aboard passengers for California. At once my determination was made. I hurried to a pawnbroker's shop, and from my watch and what little jewelry I had I realized enough money to buy a steerage ticket, and in a few hours was on my way, ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... its sincere religious worship of money and financial success—I should put its intense self-consciousness as a class. The world is a steamer in which it is travelling saloon. Occasionally it goes to look over from the promenade deck at the steerage. Its feelings towards the steerage are kindly. But the tone in which it says "the steerage" cuts the steerage off from it more effectually than many bulkheads. You perceive also from that tone that it could never be surprised by anything that ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... long. Number of persons on board: 27 engaged on the vessel, including the Captain, two mates, two cooks, two stewards and a carpenter, with nine passengers, making, with 152 steerage ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... likely to be peeling potatoes in the galley," remarked the Captain. "I understand they are short-handed there. Or sweeping out bunks in the steerage. Ethics of the dust! What would you say ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... father had sailed for Central Africa I went out to Spain to visit my property there, and I took a sea-voyage to Lisbon for the benefit of my health. There was a young couple in the steerage of the boat going out to settle in Argentine. They were people of the working class and very poor, and before we reached Lisbon, on the night of a storm, the woman gave birth to a child and died, and the father ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... of the King of France, he seems to have two anchors dropped out, either of which might secure a throne in ordinary times. But times that are not ordinary may soon arise, and then he must cut both cables and trust to his own steerage. If coldness is prudence, and neutrality strength, he may weather the storm; but it would require ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... getting through the Barrier Reef "must not be one who throws his ship's head round in a hurry so soon as breakers are announced from aloft. If he do not feel his nerves strong enough to thread the needle, as it is called, amongst the reefs, while he directs the steerage from the masthead, I would strongly recommend him not to approach this part of the coast." Strong nerves and seamanship had pulled through in this case, with a few exciting phases; and the Investigator, in the open ocean, was headed ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... for it, and called it "Scum o' the Earth," an impromptu immigration pageant. A boy who had memorized Schauffler's poem stood off stage and recited it, while group after group of "immigrants" in the motley of the steerage passed slowly through the improvised Ellis Island sifting process. It was all make-believe, of course, all but one tense moment. Then Phil Khamis stepped on the platform, incarnating in his own proper person the poet's ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... of freight and cattle cars rudely fitted up, a part of them at least, with rough pine boards for seats. The men of the Twenty-Third Regiment having, up to this period of their existence, missed somehow the disciplining advantages of "traveling in the steerage," or as emigrants or cattle, cannot be expected to appreciate at sight the luxury of the style of conveyance to which they are thus suddenly introduced. But we tumble aboard and dispose ourselves for a miserable night. A few of us are ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... which he had saved from his slender earnings by the absolute denial to himself of every thing not essential to his existence. The way to America was now open, and he resolved to set out at once. For five guineas he bought a steerage passage in a ship bound for Baltimore, and reserving about five pounds sterling of the remainder of his capital in money, invested the rest in seven German flutes, which he bought of his brother, and embarked for the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... as it was dark enough, Captain Penman let his vessel drift landward with the tide, then running strong into the wide swallow of the Solway. The wind was light, and a jib was sufficient to give her steerage-way. It was intended that the passengers should be set on shore at a point nearly opposite to Julian Wemyss's house, where a spit of sand and the shoulder of cliff formed a neat little anchorage. The ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... meet with dangerous seas that way, too, but if it's the route you've decided on, that's all there is to it. What's going on with the three hundred Chinamen in the steerage?" ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... what he could have done had he been at liberty, he knew as little as I know. At last, long after it was useless to make any inquiry about Miss Lindsay, he was set at liberty. He could just pay for a steerage passage to London, whence he wrote to Dr. Anderson for a supply, and was in ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... breathed the fresh, briny air with much relish; the wonders of the sea furnished him with many instructive and pious thoughts; and the ship itself supplied him with an inexhaustible fund of interest. In particular, he paid frequent visits to the steerage, where large numbers of emigrants were bestowed. He spent many hours amongst these poor people; and, by entering into conversation with such of them as were disposed to talk, he became acquainted with many cases of necessity, which he was not slow to relieve. Nor did ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... led by Martin Flemming and three chiefs, were soon underway, and passing out through the narrow passage in the reef, went northward till they rounded the point, and saw the barque about five miles away. She had every stitch of canvas set, but was making little more than steerage way, for only the faintest air was ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... done for about seventy pounds, I think, if we went steerage; and it is quite comfortable for people who do not mind roughing it, and as we have not been used to any sort of luxury, of course we shall not ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... moment only, and find ourselves in an apartment about fifteen feet square. We can touch the ceiling on tiptoe, yet there are three tiers of bunks placed with head boards to the wall, and each bunk just broad enough for two occupants. It is like the steerage in an emigrant vessel, eminently shipshape. Every bunk is filled; some of the smokers have had their dream and lie in grotesque attitudes, insensible, ashen-pale, having the look of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... and required to remain all night on deck. On the next morning all hands were called and placed on the forecastle, booms and gangways, excepting the officers and such part of the crew in whom Captain Barry confided, who, armed strongly, guarded the quarterdeck, the steerage and the main deck to keep the remainder of the crew together on the forecastle and boom. The three designated men were brought out of their irons on the quarterdeck, and being stripped and hoisted by the thumbs to the mizzen-stay, underwent a very severe whipping before ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... who were old voyagers, lost no time in making themselves at home—the former with the captain, mates, and cabin passengers; the latter with the seamen and his companions in the steerage. ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... cover the case. Careful analysis supersedes it by a whole group of geographic factors working directly and indirectly. The first of these was the dividing ocean which, prior to the introduction of cheap ocean transportation and bustling steerage agents, made a basis of artificial selection. Then it was the man of abundant energy who, cramped by the narrow environment of a Norwegian farm or Irish bog, came over to America to take up a quarter-section of prairie land or rise to the eminence ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt came to New Amsterdam as a "settler"—the euphemistic name for an immigrant who came over in the steerage of a sailing ship in the seventeenth century instead of the steerage of a steamer in the nineteenth century. From that time for the next seven generations from father to son every one of us was born on ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... attracted her attention, and turning round, she saw that a steamer was arriving, and that the sailors were busy catching the thick cables and fastening the vessel to the wharf. The gangway was thrown across, and a few passengers stepped on shore. They had evidently travelled steerage—two or three women, with babies and bundles, and a party of Irish labourers come over for the harvest, with their belongings tied in red pocket-handkerchiefs; but after them strode a tall figure, with ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... encountered no difficulty; we steamed on just fast enough to give the vessel steerage way, while the boats went on, the leads were heaved, and the result was always the same; plenty of water, and so soft and muddy a bottom, that even if we had gone aground, all that would have happened would have been a little delay while we waited for the tide to ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... had just enough presence of mind to say "Steerage, please," which threw him off the scent entirely, so that he cried, in quite ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the steerage forward nearly every day. There was an unmistakable lady so unfortunate as to be a passenger there. She appreciated our visits, and eventually confided the story of her life to my wife, and what a story it was of woman's love ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... spent about half as many days on sea, between Leith Roads and the Sutors of Cromarty, as the Cunard steamers now spend in crossing the Atlantic. I had taken a cabin passage, not caring to subject my weakened lungs to the exposure of a steerage one; but during the seven days of thick, foggy mornings, clear moonlight nights, and almost unbroken calms, both night and morning, in which we tided our slow way north, I was much in the forecastle with the men, seeing how sailors ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... long voyage was a merchant ship, sailing for Melbourne, under a captain who had been an early friend of his own, and who knew the reason for his leaving England. No other cabin passengers had taken berths on board her, though there were a few emigrants in the steerage. Captain Scott, himself a water-drinker, had arranged that no intoxicating beverages, in any form, should appear in the saloon. The steward was strictly forbidden to supply them to any person except Mr. Chantrey himself. This ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... he would close by casting a glimpse at the latest human migration of all, that which takes place or took place up to 1914, at the rate of a million a year from the Old World into the United States. He would take the reader to Ellis Island in New York harbour, where the immigrants emerge from the steerage to face the ordeal of the Immigration Officer. He would show how the same causes, hunger, fear, persecution, restlessness, ambition, love of liberty, which set the great westward procession in motion in the early days of tribal migration, are still alive and at work to-day ...
— Progress and History • Various
... seriousness was great. He sent her to school in Germany. During the early years of her schooldays Betty had observed that America appeared upon the whole to be regarded by her schoolfellows principally as a place to which the more unfortunate among the peasantry emigrated as steerage passengers when things could become no worse for them in their own country. The United States was not mentally detached from any other portion of the huge Western Continent. Quite well-educated persons spoke casually ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... down stream in the upper reaches of a river is even more exciting and pleasurable. The crew paddles sufficiently to keep good steerage way on the boat, as it glides swiftly between the rocks and shallows; as it shoots over the rapids, the steersman stands up to choose his path, the water splashes and gurgles and leaps over the gunwale, and the men break out into song. The smaller waterfalls ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... day that we made up our mind to try what luck there was in store for us in Australia, we were on board of a clipper ship, and with some two dozen other steerage passengers (for Fred and myself were determined to be economical) we were passing through the Golden Gate on our way to a strange land, where we did not possess a friend or acquaintance ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... say, master? What do ye make it out the gentleman says, Peter?" For Fenwick, hauled on board the cobble with the help of a man from the other boat, who returns to his oar, is alive and conscious, but not much more. A brandy-flask comes from somewhere in the steerage, where a mop and a tin pot and a boathook live, and its effect is good. The half-drowned man becomes articulate enough to justify the report. "It's his daughter he's asking for—overboard, too!" and then the man who spoke first says: "You be easy in your mind, master; we'll ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... a little rest, they would strike out for Havre or Boulogne, and take passage across on the first boat that could give them any sort of accommodations; for in the rush of American tourists to get home people were even willing to sleep in the steerage in order to quit the inhospitable shores of Europe ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... room, and heard the rest from his own lips. He gathered together all his small savings, and made his journey in the cheapest possible way,—in the steerage of the vessel, and in third-class carriages,—so that he might have some trifle ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... emigrants. You know Langhetti's extraordinary pluck, and his queer way of devoting himself for others. Well, what did he do but this: as soon as the ship- fever broke out he left the cabin and took up his abode in the steerage with the sick emigrants. He is very quiet about this, and merely says that he helped to nurse the sick. I know ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... he ran down to the great cabin for orders, and found the captain asleep; whereupon he waked him, which put him in a main high passion, and he swore woundily at the lieutenant, and called him lousy Scotch son of a whore (for, I being then sentinel in the steerage, heard all), and swab, and lubber, whereby the lieutenant returned the salute, and they jawed together fore and aft a good spell, till at last the captain turned out, and, laying hold of a rattan, came athwart Mr. Bowling's quarter: whereby ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... thorough-going democrat I always travel steerage; I'd sooner eat my Sunday hat Than take a nasty Peerage; Such sops the snobbish crowd may soothe, But not yours ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... is obliged to furnish the authorities at Ellis Island with lists of these passengers, and full information about them. The steerage passengers are landed at Ellis Island, the lists are given to the clerks, and the immigrants have to pass before these clerks, and answer all their questions before they are ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 19, March 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... larger on the journey. Fuchs said he "got on fine with the kids," and liked the mother, though she played a sorry trick on him. In mid-ocean she proceeded to have not one baby, but three! This event made Fuchs the object of undeserved notoriety, since he was traveling with her. The steerage stewardess was indignant with him, the doctor regarded him with suspicion. The first-cabin passengers, who made up a purse for the woman, took an embarrassing interest in Otto, and often inquired of him about his charge. When the triplets were taken ashore at New York, he had, as he said, "to ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... We traveled steerage to Castle Garden. Having passed the immigrant tests, we found ourselves set out on the dock, free to go where we pleased. But our baggage had disappeared. Some one had made off ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... all. About a week after, I was wanting the steward one morning to fetch me something out of the lazarette; so I called him over and over again. He came at last, but so tipsy that I could make nothing of him; and I had to start him off to the steerage, and take on another man in his place. He'd been helping himself to the spirits. It was very vexing, you'll allow; for he was quite a handy chap, and I got on very poorly afterwards without him. I don't know how you manage, but you seem always ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... reckoning, and after we were all abed, Mrs. Hanson returned to give us the newest of her news. It was like a scene in a ship's steerage: all of us abed in our different tiers, the single candle struggling with the darkness, and this plump, handsome woman, seated on an upturned valise beside the bunks, talking and showing her fine teeth, and laughing till the rafters rang. Any ship, to be sure, with ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all those stationed in the tops, and those appointed to attend to the rigging, sails, steerage, and signals. The Master is to be stationed on the quarter-deck, and to be assisted by the Boatswain, whose station will be on the forecastle. The Boatswain will be charged with all his divisional duties in the event of his death or ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... fine ship, of about a thousand tons, with a poop-deck, beneath which were the cabins for the first-class passengers. Below their cabins were those for the second-class passengers, while the between-decks was devoted to the use of the steerage passengers. Thus there were three ranks of people on board; indeed, including the officers and crow, the good ship presented a little world of itself. Old Captain Westerway was the sovereign—a mild despot, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... which I had no sooner entered than they led me between the decks to some other boys whom they had kidnapped in like manner. Not understanding what a fate was in store for me, I passed the time in childish amusement with the other lads in the steerage, for we were never allowed to go on deck while the vessel stayed in the harbor, which it did till they had imprisoned as many luckless boys as ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... unusually long stories descriptive of the scenes on the pier. Staff chuckled over them. The necklace had, in fact, made no end of trouble for several hundred putatively innocent and guileless passengers. The customs examination had been thorough beyond parallel. Not even the steerage and second-cabin passengers had escaped; everybody's belongings had been combed fine by a corps of inspectors whose dutiful curiosity had been abnormally stimulated by the prospect of a ten-thousand-dollar reward. Not a few ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... himself:—"Wandering over almost every part in which our language extends, I have gone about like a mendicant; showing against my will the wound with which fortune has smitten me, and which is often falsely imputed to the demerit of him by whom it is endured. I have been, indeed, a vessel without sail or steerage, carried about to divers ports, and roads, and shores, by the dry wind that springs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... prayer-meeting she always mentioned her "cross" and everybody knew that the cross was Luther. She carried him, but it is no more than fair to say that she didn't provide him with cushions. She never let him forget that he was a steerage passenger. However, Lute was well upholstered with philosophy, of a kind, and, so long as he didn't have to work his passage, was happy, even if the voyage was a ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... put the boat's head direct for the landing-place. By this time we had got so far out of the run of the current that we kept steerage way even at our necessarily gentle rate of rowing, and I could keep her steady for the goal. But the worst of it was, that with the course I now held, we turned our broadside instead of our stern to the Hispaniola, and offered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... giving them to the sea, let them down to the strangers.[180] But we unsparing [of the toil,] when we beheld the crafty stratagem, laid hold of the female stranger and of the cables, and tried to drag the rudders from the fair-prowed ship from the steerage-place. But words ensued: "On what plea do ye take to the sea, stealing from this land the images and priestess? Whose son art thou, who thyself, who art carrying this woman from the land?" But he replied, "Orestes, her brother, that you may know, the son of Agamemnon, I, having taken ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... wireless cabin, which was situated aft on the turn of the promenade deck, and commanding a not entirely inspiring view of the cargo well and the steerage. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... gets a dollar extra for doing the washing. And when she goes to Europe for the summer on the same ship with the Astors and the Vanderbilts, it sounds more magnificent than it really is. She is on the same ship, but about eleven decks down, in a corner of the steerage close to the stern, where the smells are rich and undisturbed. And she doesn't visit ruins and art galleries in Europe, but a huge circle of loving relatives, who pass her around from farm to farm for months, while she does ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... the grocery and their little home, Hansche not without some tears; but she dried them quickly at the thought of the good times that were waiting. With these ever before them they bore the hardships of the steerage, and in good season reached Hester Street and the longed-for haven, only to find—this. A rear basement, dark and damp and unwholesome, for which the landlord, along with the privilege of keeping a stand in the street, which was not his to ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... to punish them for having invented gunpowder. He laughs at Cope's inventions. He says his people set the fashion, and then wisely stopped when they found that such inventions did more harm than good. I think they have a right to complain of us. Why, there's one of our soldiers in the steerage with seventeen of their pigtails with the scalps still fastened to them as trophies! Old Chung says our ribbons and decorations are the equivalent of the scalps dangling at a savage's belt. I didn't tell him we had the genuine article. ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... that he expected to be in the Gulf Stream by twelve o'clock. In a few minutes eight bells were struck, the watch called, and we went below. I now began to feel the first discomforts of a sailor's life. The steerage, in which I lived, was filled with coils of rigging, spare sails, old junk, and ship stores, which had not been stowed away. Moreover, there had been no berths put up for us to sleep in, and we were not allowed to drive nails to hang our clothes upon. The sea, too, had risen, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... woman with a child by her side. She had made her way from the steerage. She was being deported, for she suffered from trachoma. She had been refused permission to land and join her husband who had stood outside the "pen" and gazed at her and the child. Quincy placed the woman in the boat beside ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Archie's ear, "when we get abreast of Islay, for we shall then be sheltered from the sea from the west, and can run more boldly with only a following sea; but till we get out of this cross tumble we must not carry on, we only want steerage way to ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... face, but once again he had a sharp misgiving about letting her go away alone. It seemed dangerous to turn her, practically an anchorite, loose among so many people. He wished, now, that he had let her brave the freezings of the saloon rather than the thawings of the steerage. But she seemed so confident, so eager, that he could say nothing to damp her spirits, only he was very glad, on going with her to look at her cabin, to find that she was to have it to herself. That, at any ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... captain and the crew, at the time they were making these preparations to receive the lieutenant, had rather have seen him gone to the bottom of the sea, than come on board their vessel. At length the man-of-war's boat came along side of the ship, when Mr. Carew went down into the steerage with his belly full of hot water, and the lieutenant came on board. Sir, you are welcome on board, says the captain; or, rather, that little part of the captain called the tongue; for the heart, mind, and every other particle, of the captain wished him at ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... pound and a quarter of salt beef or one of pork, per day, and half a pint of souchong tea, with sugar, per man. The pork and beef were served alternately: rice and beans, each once a week; corn-meal pudding with molasses, ditto; on Sundays the steerage passengers were allowed a bottle of Teneriffe wine. All except the four partners, Mr. Lewis, acting as captain's clerk, and Mr. T. M'Kay, were in the steerage; the cabin containing but six berths, besides the captain's and ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... rag of canvas set, including studding-sails alow and aloft, rolled and pitched gracefully on the long swells of the German Ocean. The wind was very light from the north-west, and there was hardly enough of it to give the ship steerage-way. A mile off, on her starboard bow, was the Josephine, beclouded in the quantity of sail she carried, but hardly leaving a wake in the blue waters behind her. The hummocks and the low land of the shores of Holland ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... till he knew how to behave himself, which was safe enough, and came to the same thing, seeing that they didn't believe he'd ever learn. He didn't believe it himself, and would have sworn to anything. So they scraped together ten pounds for his passage, intermediate. He went steerage and drank the difference. They'd sent on five pounds capital to start him when he landed, and thought themselves very clever. The first thing he did was to collar that capital and drink it too. Then he went and worked in the store where he'd bought the drink, for the sake of being ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... for the reason that not one person in a thousand has any; and birth does not count for much. Of course, it is quite true that all of our remote ancestors came over with William the Conqueror—I have sometimes thought that the number of steerage passengers his ships would accommodate must have been little short of marvellous—but it is equally true that the grandfathers of most of our leisure class were either deserving or dishonest persons—who either started life on a farm, and studied Euclid by the firelight and did all ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... no tramp in America. This is the house of my fathers. They helped hew it out of the Virginia wilderness. They helped put Old Glory in the heavens, and to keep it there for more than a hundred years, still it appears that I have no rights in this country which a foreigner with the smell of the steerage still upon him is bound to respect, if he chances ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... stars, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels; and expire the term Of a despised life, clos'd in my breast, By some vile forfeit of untimely death: But He that hath the steerage of my course ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to have heard some indistinct rumor buzzed about the packet on the day preceding, that a gentleman, and some even spoke of him by name as a Colonel ——, for some unknown purpose, was concealed in the steerage of the packet. And other appearances indicated that the affair was not entirely a secret even amongst the lady's servants. To both of us the story proclaimed a moral already sufficiently current, viz., that women of the highest and the very lowest rank are alike thrown too ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... served with RODNEY and his crew Against the French in 'Eighty-two, (That gained the peerage). He gave him fifty pounds a year, His rum, his baccy, and his beer; And had a comfortable den Rigged up in what, by merchantmen, Is called the steerage. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... time after her arrival in this country the ill effects of her steerage voyage had left her too miserable to work. She then obtained employment as a finisher in a skirt factory, where her best wage was $7. But her earnings in this place had been so fluctuating that she was uncertain what ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... and trimmers left to man a single watch," said the captain. "The cholera hit the stoke-hold first. The fellows who are working there now have stood three watches on end, and they are hardly making enough steam to give her steerage way." ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... "In yonder steerage are a thousand emigrants. The easy-going, purse-proud cabin passengers do not know it; they do not visit them or give much thought to them: but there are the men and women whose children will one day sway the empire that will wear ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... said again. "I've had a beastly time. By God! I came steerage. I've got nothing but what I stand ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... air of composure carried her unchallenged up a gangway and into the great ship. A gold-braided junior officer, on duty at the gangway-head, asked politely if he could be of service to her. She answered that she had come to seek a steerage passenger—a ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in town was at supper, an' didn't see us when we clumb aboard the Lass. When it was pitch-black we cast off the lines, an' she drifted out on the ebb tide, which just there runs easy a knot an' a half. Then we got up our headsails so as to get steerage-way on her, and bless my soul if the blocks made a creak! Might have been pullin' silk thread through a fur mitten, for all ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... thousand miles of those seas between me and home, was already a dismal foreboding. The shipping posters of New York, showing stately liners too lofty even to notice the Atlantic, were arguments good enough for steerage passengers, who do, I know, reckon a steamer's worth by the number of its funnels; but the pictures did nothing to lessen my regard for that dark outer world I knew. And having no experience of ships installed with racquet courts, Parisian cafes, swimming baths, and pergolas, I was naturally puzzled ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... and the decks began to strain as the engine increased its labor. "Get your passengers out and stand by the boats," he ordered. "Take it easy and don't alarm the women. Have them dress warmly, and don't allow any crowding by the men. Mr. Tomlinson, you hold the steerage gang in check. Take your revolver with you." He turned to his silent friend, in whose presence he seemed to feel a cheering sympathy, "I knew it would come sooner or later, Murray," he said. "But—magnificent mummies! To touch on a clear night with the sea like glass!" He sighed ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... the engine-throbs beat through me like the beating of a heart, and that far below, among the dim lights that came up from the emigrants in the steerage, there was a tinkling music as I prayed and a man's voice singing a plaintive air in ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... time that if he were provided with a sufficient Stock of leading Papers, he should find Friends ready enough to carry on the Work. Having by this means got his Vessel launched and set afloat, he hath committed the Steerage of it, from time to time, to such as he ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Era—went down near Deal: three hundred emigrants drowned. The captain had nailed down the hatches on them. Oh, that's generally done," he added, seeing the look of horror on our faces: "in a storm the steerage can't be managed otherwise." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... heart—a humpback laddie from Aberdeen. His parents had gone down with the steerage of a great ocean liner, and society had cared for him until the first horror of the tragedy had passed; then some one fortunately had mentioned Saint Margaret's, and society was relieved of its burden. In the year he had spent here his Aberdonian burr had softened somewhat ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... in the landing department that every man should use his greatest exertions in giving to the boats sufficient velocity to preserve their steerage way in entering the respective creeks at the rock, that the contending seas might not overpower them at places where the free use of the oars could not be had on account of the surrounding rocks or the masses of seaweed with which the water was everywhere encumbered ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... other persons, whom he supposes to have been commis of the Fermes, who seized his vessel, carried her to the pier, and confined the crew to the vessel and half the pier, putting centinels over them. They brought a guager, who measured only her hold and part of her steerage, allowing nothing for the cockpit, cabin, forecastle, and above one half of the steerage, which is almost half the vessel, and thus made her contents (if that had been of any importance) much below the truth. The tobacco was weighed, and found to be six thousand four hundred and eighty-seven pounds,* ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of Mr. Lindsay himself I took steerage passages for them. He shrewdly remarked, "They will be there as soon and as safely as the cabin-passengers, and their money will be saved." This sounded so like an axiom in practical economy that my dear boy never attempted to argue the question. Having obtained ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... afternoon the Saronia slipped smoothly away from a Liverpool dock. Twenty-five hundred Americans—about twice the number the boat could comfortably carry—stood on her decks and cheered. Some of those in that crowd who had millions of money were booked for the steerage. All of them were destined to experience during that crossing hunger, annoyance, discomfort. They were to be stepped on, sat on, crowded and jostled. They suspected as much when the boat left the ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... cried Betty, who was hobbling the wheel over as hard as she could, hoping the tug of the current would carry the Gem out of danger. But the craft hardly had steerage ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... The engines'll keep on turning, maybe and perhaps, until we make the shelter o' yon reef. There's no knowing what a cherry-red bearing will do. I can give ye maybe fifteen knots; maybe a leetle more for just five minutes, for steerage way and luck, and ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... I want to speak of? It is a man, a German, coming to the United States to escape military service in Prussia. He came in the steerage; was poor and ignorant. He could speak no English, not one word of your language and mine. His fellows were all Irish, so I offered to be an interpreter for him. I visited the steerage quarters, and returned with a heavy heart. Such ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... with their minds divided between thoughts of the land and the people they had left, and the present duties on board ship; while the captain strove hard to procure some kind of order by hasty commands given in a loud, impatient voice, to right and left, starboard and larboard, cabin and steerage. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... off. There is no mistaking this. Nineteen or twenty years old, homely as a mud fence; ungraceful, doltish, she sits staring out of the window and her eyes blink at the rain. A peasant from southeastern Europe, a field hand who fell into the steerage of a transatlantic liner and fell out again. Now she has a day off and she goes riding into the country ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... I went down to the berth, and I received the spy-glass as a present in due form. I then led him to my chest in the steerage, and in a low, confidential ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... capstan-bars in their places, accommodation-ladder below; and in glorious spirits, we sat down to dinner. In the ward-room, the lieutenants were passing round their oldest port, and pledging their friends; in the steerage, the middies were busy raising loans to liquidate the demands of their laundress, or else—in the navy phrase—preparing to pay their creditors with a flying fore-topsail. On the poop, the captain was looking to windward; and ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... out, and there came a spell of pleasant weather, with the Karluk gliding along, logging a fair rate where a less well-designed vessel would barely have found steerage way, riding on an almost even keel. Simms was still confined to his cabin, though now his daughter took him in ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... degree, depend on the tonnage which it is considered most proper to adopt. The utmost quantity of coals which any of them will require to carry, will be (Fayal to Barbadoes, and Fayal to Pernambuco) 300 tons. Airy accommodation for from fifty to sixty cabin passengers, and twenty-five to thirty steerage ditto, with the crew, will be all that is requisite, leaving a room for specie and the mails, and space for from forty to one hundred tons of goods. Since the present calculation was made, the price of machinery ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... embarkation is over, and we are at sea. I am so glad it is done. It was dreadful to see poor Uncle William and Uncle Henry and Cousin Willie and Cousin Ferdinand of Bulgaria, coming up the gang-plank into the steerage, with their boxes on their backs. They looked so different in their rough clothes. Uncle William is wearing an old blue shirt and a red handkerchief round his neck, and his hair looks thin and unkempt, ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... sight-seeing, Mr. and Mrs. Mott started homeward. He had spoken less frequently than his wife, but always had been listened to with deep interest. Her heart was moved toward a large number of Irish emigrants in the steerage, and she desired to hold a religious meeting among them. When asked about it, they said they would not hear a woman preacher, for women priests were not allowed in their church. Then she asked that they would come together and consider whether they would have a meeting. This ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... the Souls (Waini-yalo) is what mortals now call the Ndravo River. When the ghosts arrived on the bank, they hailed the ferryman and he paddled his canoe over to receive them. But before he would take them on board they had to state whether they proposed to ship as steerage or as cabin passengers, and he gave them their berths accordingly; for there was no mixing up of the classes in the ferry-boat; the ghosts of chiefs kept strictly to themselves at one end of the canoe, and the ghosts of commoners huddled together at the other end.[774] The natives of Kandavu, in ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... board. The four cabin places were taken by Count B—, myself, and two young people who hoped to make their fortune sooner in the Brazils than in Europe. The price of a passage in the first cabin was 100 dollars (20 pounds 16s. 8d.), and in the steerage 50 dollars ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... to the boat. Jack's belongings, his bag of tricks; Jack all over, the same inexhaustible Jack! It was delightful to our traveller to find Jack Senhouse thus verifying himself at every turn. He was for the steerage, it appears—and of course he was!—where depressed foreigners share with bicycles, motor cars, and newly boiled pigs the amenities of economical travel. In this malodorous and slippery well his interested friend ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... persons who wished to emigrate to Canada from Ireland. This aid consisted of a free ocean passage. Many who could not convince the Government of their desirability and yet could raise the money, came with them, paying their regular steerage rate of $15. These were alike to the outside world, but not to themselves. Those who paid their way were "passengers," and were, in their own opinion, many social worlds above the assisted ones, who were called ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... immigration to these shores arises from the determined opposition of the foreign steamship lines who have no interest whatever in the matter save to increase the returns on their capital by carrying masses of immigrants hither in the steerage quarters of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and then enjoyed hugely the novelty of the first meal on shipboard. After this, the young people went aft to look down upon the steerage passengers, and forward to the bow of the noble ship, while Mrs. Douglas ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... now," he commanded, when they had gone half a mile. "Just keep up enough to give us steerage way. A shark thinks a boat's disabled when it isn't moving much, and his instinct teaches him that the occupants are probably in trouble and his chance of finally getting ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... man. You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... will be plenty of women in the steerage of any emigrant vessel, who for the sake of a few dollars would gladly render me ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... which the pressure from the foot is made to bear directly upon the main axle, and so transmitted without loss to the driving wheels on each side, the position of the rider being arranged so that just sufficient load is allowed to fall on the back wheel as to obtain certainty in steerage. The weight of this machine is much less than when gearing is used, and the friction is also considerably reduced, trials with the dynamometer having shown that on a level, smooth road, a pull of 1 lb. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... the professor quietly. "A ship, once fairly entangled in the grass or sea weed, seldom gets out. If it is a sailing ship the weed clings to the rudder, making steerage impossible, and even in a strong wind the ship cannot get free of the mass. The grass winds about the propellers of steamships, and holds them as ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... good deal of sickness on board and plenty for Gudrid to do. The wind blew gaps in the fog, and as it stiffened tore it into flying shreds and rags. The ship heaved and lurched in water now inky-black. They got steerage way, and ran before a gale which they judged came from the south-west; they held this course for many days, hoping to get a sight of land. And land was nearer than they thought, for one morning Thorstan saw a darkening in the fog, a kind of shape, and then, quick as the thought, he ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... was out, Charlie had an ambition to see the world; and, by working for a month or two as journeyman in the Candlemaker-row at Edinburgh, he raked as much together as took him up to London in the steerage of a Leith smack. For several years nothing was heard of him, except an occasional present of a shawl, or so on, to the widow, who had been so kind to him in his helpless years; and at length a farewell present of some little money came to her, with his blessing ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... himself to Los Angeles. But there had not been money enough for him to go any farther, and his chief had wired him peremptorily to return and arrest the leaders of the Alliance and all connected with it. So he had bought a steerage ticket for Helen May and put her aboard the boat, where she must herd with a lot of leering Chinamen. He had stood on the pier and watched the boat swing out and nose its way to the open sea, and a submarine had torpedoed it when it had sailed beyond the three-mile limit off the coast, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... piece of paper, protected from the weather, was written in Spanish—"Will the finder kindly favour me by forwarding this tablet to the United States Consul, at the first point he touches at?" This affair originated with, and was executed by, the steerage officers.] ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... berths, and careened the ship over so far that it seemed to take her last pound of strength to right herself up again. There was a slamming of doors, a rush of crockery, and a screaming of women, heard above the general din and confusion, while the steerage passengers thought their last hour had come. The vessel before us encountered this giant wave during a storm in mid-ocean, and was completely buried beneath it; one of the officers was swept over board, the engines suddenly stopped, and there was a terrible moment during which it seemed ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... basket at his feet, stood looking down at the passengers,—those belonging to the cabins comfortably established, those of the steerage seated on their slender luggage. Where were they going? What wild fancy took them away? What cold and stern reality awaited them on their landing? One couple interested him especially: it was a mother and a child ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Newfoundland banks were in danger from icebergs. Nearly all the party were more or less sea-sick, including Father Hecker. This did not prevent his attempting the conversion of the boatswain, who seemed the only hopeful subject in the ship's company. There were a hundred and thirty steerage passengers, emigrants for the most part from Protestant countries, though a party of Garibaldian refugees and a few equally wild Frenchmen enlivened the monotony of sea-life by some bloody fights. There were but two cabin passengers besides the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... interrupted the woman I had heard called Clayton by her mistress. "He had not time to do more than inquire about you, I suppose, there are so many ill in the steerage; but he has been very ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... presumably acting on behalf of the Dominion Government, though there were few restrictions imposed upon Canadian immigration then, nor, for that matter, did anybody trouble much about the comfort of the steerage passengers. Each steamer carried as ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... I threaded my way at a snail's pace through the dense crowd of waiting passengers, swarthy-faced sons of Italy, apparently bound for the steerage. The great gray bulk of the Re d'Italia loomed before me, floating proudly at her stern the green, white, and red flag blazoned ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... rested upon the waters. Canvas was spread on all the ships, but flapped idly against the yards. Not the slightest motion could be discerned, and none of the ships had steerage-way. The enemy had evidently determined to fight; for before the sun rose red and glowing from beneath the horizon, sweeps were seen protruding from the sides of the two ships, and they gradually began to lessen the distance between them and the American ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... got my allowance, and unluckily I changed my bicycle, and the rascals put a lot more on the new one, and I haven't got above seven pounds left, and I must keep some for the rail from New York and for getting home, for I can't take the kid home in the steerage. The bicycle's worth something, and so is my watch, if I put them in pawn; so I think I can do it that way, and I'm quite seaman enough to get employment, only I don't want to lose time ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Buffum, a prominent abolitionist of Lynn, Massachusetts. On the same steamer were the Hutchinson family, who lent their sweet songs to the anti-slavery crusade. Douglass's color rendered him ineligible for cabin passage, and he was relegated to the steerage. Nevertheless, he became quite the lion of the vessel, made the steerage fashionable, was given the freedom of the ship, and invited to lecture on slavery. This he did to the satisfaction of all the passengers except a few young men from New Orleans and Georgia, ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... "There are some long fingers, I doubt, in the steerage yonder. Miss Graeme, my dear, we would need to be carefu'. If I'm no' mistaken, I saw one o' Norman's spotted handkerchiefs about the neck o' yon lang Johnny Heeman, and yon little Irish lassie ga'ed past me the day, with a pinafore very like one o' ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... young according to the standards of mankind to be a midshipman on the great steel monster keeping the leaden deep. It was the first time he had ever been away from home on Christmas day, too. The youngsters had all laughed and joked about it in the steerage mess. They had promised themselves some kind of a celebration in the morning, but in his own cot with no one to see, a few tears which he fondly deemed unmanly would come. He had the midnight watch and he knew that he must get some sleep, but it was a long time before he closed his ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... which was reported for the first time at our annual meeting last year, is one of unique and especial interest. Two years ago the steamship Kaiser Wilhelm arrived in New York with one hundred and sixty-six Waldenses among her steerage passengers. These people came from the Piedmont valley and mountain regions of Italy. Their purpose in coming to America was to establish for themselves homes in our own mountain region of the South. This little company that came down from the deck of the Kaiser Wilhelm ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... services. We wished for our trunks, and it was soon arranged that there should be an immediate examination. Within an hour we were summoned to the store-house, where an officer attended on behalf of the customs. Everything was done in a very expeditious and civil manner, not only for us, but for a few steerage passengers, and this, too, without the least necessity for a douceur, the usual passe-partout of England. America sends no manufactures to Europe; and, a little smuggling in tobacco excepted, there is probably less of the contraband in our commercial connexion with England, than ever ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wharf there—take that stern fast out to the last ringbolt. Mr. Second Mate... get your fenders aboard." The wind increased in a violence tipped with stinging rain. "Give her the jib and stay-sail." She heeled slightly and gathered steerage way. Roger Brevard involuntarily waved a parting salutation. An extraordinary emotion swept over him: a ship bound to the East always stirred his imagination and sense of beauty, but the departure of the Nautilus had a special significance. ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... has to slide into their stivy bunks to save themselves from its rising wrath. A fortnight of such unutterable misery is quite supportable, however, if one continues to cherish the Paradise already mentioned. But in this dark, dingy smelling hole of the steerage, even the poets cease to dream. The boatmen of Beirut and the sharpers of Marseilles we could forget; but in this grave among a hundred and more of its kind, set over and across each other, neither the lute nor the little that remained ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... for idle hands to do," and he must have his hands full on board an emigrant ship. Look into the steerage at any time, and you will find boredom inexpressible on every face. The men have nothing to do, and an incident of no more importance than the appearance of a sail upon the distant horizon is an event which makes the whole ship talk. I do not see why this should ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Bishi office, where they demanded and copied my passport; for snatching a morsel of fish at a restaurant where "foreign food" was represented by a very dirty table-cloth; and for running down to the grey beach, where I was carried into a large sampan crowded with Japanese steerage passengers. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... lessons he wanted to learn now from "the People" could only be learned by becoming as far as possible one of them. The story of his struggles to do so in his life in Bermondsey, and of his journey to Australia in the steerage of a German liner and of his roughing it there, always with the same object in view, cannot be told here. The first outcome of it all was the writing of his book, The Lord of All Good Life. Of this book he says, in a letter to his ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... the steerage, passengers and listened to the story of the lost man who, it seems, had been one of those unfortunate ones who had failed to pass the health inspector at New York and had therefore been sent back to his native land, Ireland. He was known as Mike, what else, no one could tell. ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... steam power it might be advisable to give such ships, and that you would wish to steam the Vanguard or the Queen at the rate of ten miles an hour. My wishes are much more humble, and I should be perfectly satisfied with an amount of power sufficient to give steerage way under all circumstances, to carry the ship into or out of action, and to afford her some assistance in clearing off a lee-shore—something about equivalent to five knots—an amount of power that might probably be obtained, together with some fuel for occasional ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... Abe interrupted, "did we come over here paying first-class fares for practically steerage accommodations to discuss life insurance, or did we come over here to buy model garments and get through with it, because believe me, it is no pleasure for me to stick around a country where you couldn't get no sugar or butter ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... picnicked in the shade. Their clothes were old and greasy; they carried big shapeless bundles and looked tired and worn. Lister could not guess their nationality, but imagined they had known poverty and oppression in Eastern Europe. It was obvious they had recently disembarked from a crowded steerage and waited for an emigrant train. They were going West, to the land of promise, and Lister wished them luck. He and they were birds of passage and, with all old landmarks left behind, rested for a few hours ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... over, she was without a home. She wished to find another situation; Louis would not hear of it. She contemplated a visit to her father and brother in America. In response to a letter, her brother sent her the exact amount of the steerage fare, and, ready to accept it, she was astounded at Louis' fury against her brother and at the accent with which he had spit out the word "steerage." Her brother and father had gone steerage. However, she ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... some few of our unfortunate comrades, to whom the motion of the sea was more novel than gratifying, we descended into the steerage, (for our births in the cabin were completely occupied by females). As we were going down the ladder, the appearance of so many recumbent persons, faintly distinguishable by the light of a solitary taper, reminded us of a floating catacomb; ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... want to know—and I am ashamed to tell it. I would gladly do as you say, and come to you as a housekeeper, but I have not the money even for a steerage passage. James, do you want me badly enough—do you pity me enough to send it? I could manage to subsist in London upon the proceeds of my sale for another month or six weeks. Will you send it to the same address at the post-office? But how do ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... forecastle, making sinnet; two more on the larboard side of the main-deck, running shot in the armorer's forge; the cooper was making tubs; the cook, and captain's steward in the galley, at their duty; and all hands, as usual, employed on the ship's duty; the armorer was in the steerage, and the boatswain in the cabin; Captain Porter, Mr. Ratstraw, his clerk, and Mr. Lyman Plummer, (nephew of Theodore Lyman, Esq. of Boston, ship owner,) were standing on the larboard side of the quarter-deck, abreast of the ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... move today along the great trade routes of the modern world, exchanging both the people and their products. The holds of the ships are filled with coal and grain and manufactured implements and commodities of every description, while their steerage space is crowded with modern Marco Polos and Magellans going forth to see the world. The Hindoo walks the streets of Cape Town, London, Sydney, New York, San Francisco, and Valparaiso; the Russian Jew is found in all ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... yet as he went in and out of his cabin by me, I could hear him softly to himself say, several times, "Lord be merciful to us! we shall be all lost! we shall be all undone!" and the like. During these first hurries I was stupid, lying still in my cabin, which was in the steerage, and cannot describe my temper: I could ill resume the first penitence which I had so apparently trampled upon and hardened myself against: I thought the bitterness of death had been past, and that ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... was a French merchant ship of three-hundred tons, home-bound from Quebec. The master gave us a long account of the distress of his ship; how the fire began in the steerage by the negligence of the steersman, which, on his crying out for help, was, as everybody thought, entirely put out; but they soon found that some sparks of the first fire had got into some part of the ship so ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... political writers of great power; the former as a reporter for the New York Times, and the latter for the New York Herald. Mrs. Barnard, during Grant's administration, was sent as commissioner of immigration to Liverpool, visiting England, Ireland and Scotland. Returning in the steerage of an ocean steamer, she gave one of the finest reports ever made upon this question. This resulted in the passage by the legislature of New York of a bill for the better protection of emigrants on shipboard, and the appointment by the United States government of an inspector ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various |
