"Roadstead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crags, and made small darker spots Upon their wrinkled sides; the jaded horse Stumbled upon loose, rattling, fallen stones, Amidst the gathering dusk, and blindly fared Through the weird, perilous pass. As darkness waxed, And an oppressive mystery enwrapped The roadstead and the rocks, Sir Tannhauser Fancied he saw upon the mountain-side The fluttering of white raiment. With a sense Of wild joy and horror, he gave pause, For his sagacious horse that reeked of sweat, Trembling in every limb, confirmed his thought, That nothing human scaled that haunted ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... to the high seas. As Philip's ships were all snug in port, and could well remain there as long as Drake's stores allowed him to keep the sea, it was a complete triumph for Spain. But when the messenger dashed into Plymouth with the fatal packet he found the roadstead empty. Drake was gone. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Accra were the next places of general interest at which we stopped. The former looks well from the roadstead, and as if it had very recently been white-washed. It is surrounded by low, heavily-forested hills, which rise almost from the seashore, and the fine mass of its old castle does not display its ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the yacht was off the Palestine coast, and Joppa, seated on her cliffs, appeared over a foaming roadstead. But when a landing was effected, they were to hear that there had been a collision on the Jerusalem-Joppa railway, the line blocked, travel suspended; so, as the filthy town was congested, the Royal party took refuge in a great restaurant-tent, set up by a Polish Jew ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... back, wherever a stealthy form comes climbing up the rock to hurl spear or lance! Presently, a well-directed fusillade drives the savages off! While night still hid {95} them, the four fugitives scrambled down the side of the rock farthest from the savages, and ran for the roadstead where ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the Filipinas begin at the large island of Burnei, not far from Malaca, which serves as a roadstead for the Portuguese who sail for Maluco. This island extends from the first or second degree on the south of the equinoctial line to about the eighth degree on the north side. The Mahometan king of this island, although he retained his own religion, rendered obedience as a vassal of the crown of Castilla ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... there; still farther on the broad uplands frame buildings with a red and white flag floating to the wind could be seen. Back of all this he could make out a broad expanse of water and a few ungainly craft, lazily moving to the current in the Yorktown roadstead. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... am the captain of a little trading schooner, the Nell Gwynn, which anchors in the roadstead till I have laid some private business before your excellency and can get on to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... All foreigners paid double. And since, in addition to ships putting in from abroad, it sometimes happened that two hundred sail of coasters would be driven by easterly gales to shelter in St. Lide's Harbour, or roadstead, or in Cromwell's Sound, you may guess that this made a very pleasant addition ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... harbour nor roadstead, but only a small bay or cove, appropriately called Gulfe de la Napoul; and it is indeed worthy of its name, being a miniature Bay of Naples,—but without its Vesuvius. It is, however, so shallow that the coasting ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... gliding on past three or four vessels at anchor in the roadstead—one, a man-of-war just furling her sails—came nigh Falmouth town, Israel, from his perch, saw crowds in violent commotion on the shore, while the adjacent roofs were covered with sightseers. A large man-of-war cutter was just landing ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Guayra under the Spanish flag. No one could possibly take the Almirante Recalde for anything but a Spanish ship. There was no reason for suspecting the presence of an enemy, for Spain had none in these seas. If there were other ships in the roadstead, for the harbor of La Guayra was really nothing more than an open road, the buccaneer could easily dispose of them in their unprepared condition. Indeed, Morgan rather hoped that there might be others, for, after he captured them, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the run in twenty-four hours, and as the falucha let go in the roadstead I tore up my memorandum of instructions (which I had carefully committed to memory) and threw the fragments ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... of the roadstead, about ten or twelve miles distant from the main, is a chain of islands, of which Rottnest is the most northern. Then come some large rocks, called the Stragglers, leaving a passage out from the roadstead by the south of Rottnest; after these is Carnac, an island abounding with rabbits and ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Patapilly, the governor sent us a caul, or licence to land, which we did accordingly, and agreed with him for three per cent[377] custom, and sent goods on shore, it being determined that Mr Lucas and Mr Brown should remain there, while I went on with the ship to Masulipatam, the roadstead of which place was better. We got there on the 31st, when Zaldechar Khan sent us a licence. We agreed to send a present to Mir Sumela, a great officer under the king at Condapoli, and farmer of his revenues, that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... death, Being held in much disfavour for it, stood As helpless. Long ere Drake or human power, They thought, could put to sea, a courier sped To Plymouth bidding Drake forbear to strike At Spain, but keep to the high seas, and lo, The roadstead glittered empty. Drake ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... and reorganized crews, Paul Jones was ready to sail from the roadstead of Isle de Groaix, in the early part of August, 1779, bound upon his cruise around the British Islands. There were four ships in this squadron: the Good Richard; the Alliance, under Pierre Landais (a depraved and dishonest ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... be that situated about the borders of the three counties of Surrey, Hants, and Sussex; and almost immediately afterwards the lights on the forts in progress of construction at Spithead came into view, together with the anchor-lights of two or three men-o'-war in the roadstead, and they knew that the first part of their journey ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... East India Merchant, agreed to sail in company for mutual protection. The Sidney, being the faster sailer, reached Johanna in advance of her consorts, and found the Adventure at anchor in the roadstead. As the Sidney came to anchor, Kidd sent a boat to Captain Gyfford, ordering him to strike his colours, and threatening to board him if he refused. Gyfford prepared to defend himself. Two days later the East India Merchant and the Madras ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... Milner and St. Aubyn were to sleep that night at a hotel and start for Damascus next morning by diligence. I returned to the ship alone, and I found myself twelve hours later looking at Cyprus from the open roadstead of Larnaca. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... I was very much surprised to find that Blackhead proved to be an island, with a good passage, at least a mile and a half wide, between it and the main. There appears excellent anchorage and shelter under it, and indeed it seems a far better and more convenient roadstead than Port Stephens, being safe from all winds, with a passage either from north or south. The relative positions of the points and islands on this part of the coast, by no means correspond with, nor does the longitude of Port Stephens ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... in the morning, after having visited the Marine Arsenal and all the docks, the weather being very fine, the First Consul embarked in a little barge, and remained in the roadstead for several hours, escorted by a large number of barges filled with men and elegantly dressed women, and musicians playing the favorite airs of the First Consul. Then a few hours were again passed in the reception of merchants, the First Consul assuring ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... was hot and the sea glittered under an intense sun. The rollers from the roadstead broke upon the reef. The outer ocean was a very wonderful tropic blue; inside the reefs the water was calmer, greener, more unlike anything that can be seen in northern latitudes. A little island inside the lagoon glared with red rock ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... they afforded. Table Bay, with its docks, wharves and store-houses, took rank among the great commercial harbours of the world. Port Elizabeth, 430 miles eastward, had no true harbour. Its open roadstead, although frequented by the mercantile marine, was exposed to the dangerous south-east gales prevalent on that coast. At East London, 140 miles yet further eastwards, there was a small although excellent harbour. Its deep basin allowed ocean steamers ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... which the Delphic oracle had declared to be her hope in the Persian invasion. The victory at Salamis had confirmed the wisdom of the prediction, and given to Athens an imperishable glory. Themistocles persuaded his countrymen that the open roadstead of Phalerum was insecure, and induced them to inclose the more spacious harbors of Peireus and Munychia, by a wall as long as that which encircled Athens itself,—so thick and high that all assault should be hopeless, while within its fortifications the combined fleets ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of the Pharsalia, had followed Pompey, but had failed to catch him. When he came upon the scene in the roadstead at Alexandria, the murder had been effected. He then disembarked, and there, as circumstances turned out, was doomed to fight another campaign in which he nearly lost his life. It is not a part of my plan to write the life of Caesar, nor to meddle with it further than I am driven to do in ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... that sixty ships belonged to Fowey at that period. The twin forts of Fowey were erected in the reign of Edward IV to protect the roadstead from the ravages of the French. Standing something like those below Dartmouth, on each side of the water, a thick boom or chain stretched across the mouth of the river would be sufficient protection against vessels propelled by sails. The last gallant action performed by these ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... nearest to the earl's. But when they came to the south, to More, they met Skopte the earl's brother-in-law, with a well-manned ship; and as they rowed towards the fleet, Skopte called out that Thorleif should move out of the harbour to make room for him, and should go to the roadstead. Eirik in haste took up the matter, and ordered Skopte to go himself to the roadstead. When Earl Hakon heard that his son thought himself too great to give place to Skopte, he called to them immediately ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... the man of bronze, as he broke off rocks from the hard cliff, stayed them from fastening hawsers to the shore, when they came to the roadstead of Dicte's haven. He was of the stock of bronze, of the men sprung from ash-trees, the last left among the sons of the gods; and the son of Cronos gave him to Europa to be the warder of Crete and to stride round the island thrice ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... fruit-trees growing in the dry moat, and a slip from the weeping-willow which hung over the grave in St. Helena flourishing in its garden, where the Warden of the Cinque Ports could look across the roadstead of the Downs and count the ships' masts like trees in a forest, and watch the waves breaking twenty feet high on the Goodwin Sands. "The cut-throat town of Deal" which poor Lucy Hutchinson so abhorred, pranked its quaint red houses for so illustrious and dainty a visitor. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... to reach the Tagus against contrary winds, with disabled ships, Jervis decided to take his fleet into Lagos Bay, an open roadstead on the southern coast of Portugal, and there to refit sufficiently to make the passage to Lisbon. While lying at Lagos Nelson became a Rear-Admiral of the Blue, by a flag-promotion dated on the 20th of February, although his flag ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... is north of the town. In channel between Sulu roadstead and Marongas is a pearl-oyster bed, which employs many boats. This is an important industry, pearls and pearl-shells being the chief articles in the export trade of the island. (U. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... that the court of Naples should be compelled to act under the influence of France, and that the Barbary powers were unfriendly to us, either in consequence of French intrigues or from their own caprice and insolence, there would not be a single port, harbour, bay, creek, or roadstead in the whole Mediterranean, from which our men-of-war could obtain a single ox or a hogshead of fresh water, unless Great Britain retained possession of Malta. The noble speaker seems not to have been ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... cargo of spirits, Cawley to be paid his twelve shillings for every cask they were able to bring across. So, as soon as the bowsprit was repaired and set in its place, the Lyme Packet cast off her warps and ran out of Weymouth harbour. She made direct for Cherbourg, where they anchored in the roadstead. Rattenbury now went ashore and returned accompanied by 227 casks of spirits made up in half-ankers. These were put on board and the voyage back to England commenced, the intention being to make for West Bay and land ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... for the purpose of preventing a corvette from putting to sea, which, according to information received by the British Government, was to carry proposals from Buonaparte to the West India Colonies, to declare in his favour. I had likewise orders to reconnoitre the Roadstead of Rochefort, and report to the Admiral the number and state of the ships of war lying there. Accordingly, on the 31st of May, I ran into Basque Roads, and found at anchor, under Isle d'Aix, two large frigates, a ship corvette, and a large brig, all ready for sea, which I afterwards ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... the roadstead of St. Valery, at the mouth of the Somme. But the winds were long hostile, and the rains ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little movement of the lips, and glanced at her slowly, holding his lip between his teeth as he was wont to hold it during the moments of suspense before letting go the anchors in a crowded roadstead as he stood at his post on the forecastle-head awaiting the captain's signal. She was the first to divine what the ship had been to him. Her eyes were waiting for his. They were alight with a gentle glow, which he took to be pity. She spoke calmly, and her voice was always low and ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... officers. All these differences were concentred in the gloomy streets of a town in those days choked up within its narrow girdle of fortifications. The most peculiar feature about this small dark town is, that it lies exactly between two broad seas of light, between the marvellous mirror of its roadstead and its glorious amphitheatre of mountains, baldheaded, of a dazzling grey, that blinds you in the noonday sun. All the gloomier look the streets themselves. Such as do not lead straight to the harbour and ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... fleet entered the roadstead at Gibraltar, and anchored in the shadow of the famous rock. Here the Americans found two of the most rapacious of the Tripolitan corsairs lying at anchor; one a ship of twenty-six guns under the command of the Tripolitan admiral, and the other a brig of sixteen ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... ashore for sand. Lending him what little clothing they could spare among them as a slight protection against the rapidly cooling air, they agreed to land him in the morning; and without further delay, for it was growing late, they made again towards the roadstead ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Spain might never have been involved in the Armada fight, and if she had, it is scarcely likely that so appalling a disaster could have come to her. Apart from any fighting, the fact of having no better sea knowledge or judgment than to anchor the Spanish ships in an open roadstead like Calais was courting the loss of the whole Spanish fleet. One of the fundamental precautions of seamanship is never to anchor on a lee shore or in an open roadstead, without a means of escape. The dunderheaded Spanish commanders made their extermination much more easy for the highly trained ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... of importance, and only became so in connexion with a system of fortifications which are now to be razed. No doubt, in connexion with a line of strongholds, Varna formed a part of a system of defence; but of itself Varna is not a place of importance. Of itself it is only a roadstead, and those who dwell upon the importance of Varna and consider that it was a great error on the part of the Congress not to have secured it for Turkey, quite forget that between the Bosphorus and Varna, upon the coast of the Black Sea, the Congress has allotted to Turkey a much more important point ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... the sea by a channel 650 yds. long. It consists of two parts, an outer and tidal harbour 17-1/2 acres in extent, and an inner basin 15 acres in extent, with a depth on sill at ordinary spring tide of 25 ft. Outside these harbours is the triangular bay, which forms the roadstead of Cherbourg. The bay is admirably sheltered by the land on every side but the north. On that side it is sheltered by a huge breakwater, over 2 m. in length, with a width of 650 ft. at its base and 30 ft. at its summit, which is protected ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... Palestine,'' on account of its commanding position on the shore of the broad plain that joins the inland plain of Esdraelon, and so affords the easiest entrance to the interior of the country. But trade is now passing over to Haifa, at the south side of the bay, as its harbour offers a safer roadstead, and is a regular calling.place for steamers. Business, rapidly declining, is still carried on in wheat, maize, oil, sesame, &c., in the town market. There are few buildings of interest, owing to the frequent destructions the town has undergone. The wall, which is now ruinous and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is suitable, and neither too deep, shallow, or exposed for ships to ride in safety upon; also the set of anchors belonging to a ship; also a royal duty levied from vessels coming to a port or roadstead for the use of its advantages. It is generally marked on the charts by an anchor, and described according to its attributes of good, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... elsewhere. A large number of wise heads, who are anxious about the future of this port and our national interests, have devoted themselves to finding a means of enlarging it, not by dredging new basins, which would prove ruinous to the budget and useless in twenty years, but by installing a true roadstead at the entrance to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... where it is sold to agents of foreign importing houses. Mocha, once the principal exporting city for coffee, was abandoned as a coffee port early in the nineteenth century, chiefly because of the difficulty of keeping the roadstead of the harbor ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of the private roadstead of the royal harbour, where they had assembled, was furnished with regal magnificence; for it was a favourite resort of the Queen. The spacious apartment lacked no requisite of comfort, and most of those who were waiting used the well-cushioned ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... roadstead; but as they drew near in order to cast anchor, a little cutter, looking like a coastguard formidably armed, approached the merchant vessel and dropped into the sea a boat which directed its course to the ladder. This boat contained ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... St. Miguel, when Raleigh was left to watch the roadstead, while Essex pushed inland. While Raleigh lay here, a great Indian carrack of sixteen hundred tons, laden with spices, knowing nothing of the English invasion, blundered into the middle of what she took to be a friendly Spanish fleet. She perceived her mistake ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... toward the north-western extremity of the island, and the other—of nearly the same area as the Basin—on the northern shore; but they considered both these harbours to be inferior to the Basin, from the fact that the one on the north-west coast was practically an open roadstead, exposed to westerly winds, while the other, although pretty well sheltered from all except north-westerly winds—which seldom blew in that latitude—was shallow, the fringing reef entirely filling it. They described the island as abundantly watered, having encountered ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... embankment, road, row, lane, alley, court, quadrangle, quad, wynd[Scot], close, yard, passage, rents, buildings, mews. square, polygon, circus, crescent, mall, piazza, arcade, colonnade, peristyle, cloister; gardens, grove, residences; block of buildings, market place, place, plaza. anchorage, roadstead, roads; dock, basin, wharf, quay, port, harbor. quarter, parish &c. (region) 181. assembly room, meetinghouse, pump room, spa, watering place; inn; hostel, hostelry; hotel, tavern, caravansary, dak bungalow[obs3], khan, hospice; public house, pub, pot house, mug house; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... which continued for many days, came upon them; the promised bark was driven to sea; the open roadstead, where the larger ships were compelled to anchor, made Roanoke an undesirable location, and as the time had long expired when the promised reinforcements should have arrived from England, this disappointment, together ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Seattle. Then Port Townsend, with its beautiful harbor and gently sloping bluffs, "the city of destiny," beyond all doubt, of any of the towns on the Sound. Favored by nature in many ways, Townsend has the finest roadstead and the best anchorage ground in these waters, and this must tell in the end, when advantages for sea trade are considered. Victoria, B.C., is reached in the evening, and we sleep that night in Her Majesty's dominions. The next day may be spent very pleasantly in driving and ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... her the world was gloomy and desolate, her sister but recently buried in far away Arequipa and the mother now in the sea. With a fortitude beyond her years the Christian girl bore bravely her deep sorrows, trusting in Him "who doeth all things well." When the ship reached the open roadstead of Port Harford, and she again landed on the shores of her native California, she went to her former home—a vine-clad cottage ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... Buonaparte suggested a better. He remarked: "All that you want is to force the English to evacuate Toulon. Instead of attacking them in the town, which must involve a long series of operations, try and establish batteries which shall sweep the harbour and the roadstead. If you can only drive away the ships, the troops will not remain." Buonaparte contrived to conduct the works according to his own plan, and his genius decided the fate of Toulon. After a series of operations, Lord Hood was compelled ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that first moment. He remembered thinking what a fine little man the Captain was; that their sailing together was done.... A sympathetic disorder was brewing deep down on the ocean floor; the water now had a charged appearance, and was foul as the roadstead along the mouths of the Godivari—a thick, whipped, yeasty look. The changes were very rapid. Every few seconds, Bedient glanced at the Captain, and as often followed his gaze into the churning, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... a brawl with a steamer with a yellow funnel, blue top and black band, lying at a pier among dhows. The shore took a hand in the game with small guns and rifles, and, as E14 manoeuvred about the roadstead "as requisite" there was a sudden unaccountable explosion which strained her very badly. "I think," she muses, "I must have caught the moorings of a mine with my tail as I was turning, and exploded it. It is possible that it might ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... have a situation without natural advantages, and unfit to shelter ships from storms, it is obvious that we must proceed as follows. If there is no river in the neighbourhood, but if there can be a roadstead on one side, then, let the advances be made from the other side by means of walls or embankments, and let the enclosing harbour be thus formed. Walls which are to be under water should be constructed as follows. Take the powder which comes from the country extending ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... experienced; and, being well handled by our commander, who was a sailor every inch of him, we ran before the gale round the easternmost end of the Isle of Wight and snugly brought up under the lee of Saint Helens, where we dropped both our anchors, remaining in this sheltered roadstead until the weather broke, when we ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... commands a wide view over the English Channel in front of it, including the popular Royal watering-place, with the Isle of Slingers and its roadstead, where men-of-war and frigates are anchored. The hour is ten in the morning, and the July sun glows upon a large military encampment round about the foreground, and warms the stone field-walls that take the place ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... upon mountain and meadow, Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge shadows together. Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village, Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that lay in the roadstead. Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr. Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting, Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... by a delicate purple, rolled up from the jungle plain. Ahead of them the turquoise waters were dotted by islets whose heights were densely overgrown, while sands of coral whiteness ringed their shore lines. Here and there a fleet of fishing-boats drifted. Far out in the roadstead lay two cruisers, slate-gray and grim. The waters over-side purled soothingly, the heavens beamed, the breeze was like a gentle caress. The excursionists lost themselves ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... constructed, I was landed at Port Elizabeth (after three days' knocking about at sea) on the 18th, being let down, like St. Paul, in a basket, from the deck of the Anglian to the tug, which took me to the pier in the open roadstead. Right glad was I to get ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... seemed to glide toward me swiftly. The whole great roadstead to the right was just a mere flicker of blue, and the dim cool hall swallowed me up out of the heat and glare of which I had not been aware till the very moment I ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... roadstead, and far-falling tides of the Mersey, proved an advantage to Liverpool; by driving the inhabitants to commence the construction of Docks before any other port in the kingdom, and thus obtain a certain name and position in the mercantile world, from having set an example which cities provided ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... of two small ships, two brigs, fifty prows large and small, and about one thousand men. There is water on the bar to admit vessels drawing nine feet water. The roadstead, with seven fathoms water on it, lies seven miles from the river's mouth. Care must be taken not to mistake the Pongole river seen from the offing, and which lies ten miles farther southward. The only stock procurable here were hogs at ten dollars the picul, and water shipped off ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... lake. No anchor was let go, but the vessel continued to set off from the land, until her dark hull was seen resting on the glossy surface of the lake, full a quarter of a mile beyond the low bluff which formed the eastern extremity of what might be called the outer harbor or roadstead. Here the influence of the river current ceased, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... my approach In middle Asia, Thirst and his grisly band Of plagues, should with their brigand fingers stop His message in my mouth. Therefore I said, If India is the place where I must preach, I am to go by ship, not overland. And here my ship is berthed. But worse, far worse Than Baghdad, is this roadstead, the brown sails, All the enginery of going on sea, The tackle and the rigging, tholes and sweeps, The prows built to put by the waves, the masts Stayed for a hurricane; and lo, that line Of gilded water there! the sun ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... glanced past the rocks, as if to keep myself from a fall. The French gave a loud and general shout just as the boat issued out of this race-way into a wide capacious bay, within the group of islands, which had the appearance of forming a roadstead of some note. There was a battery on the end of the last island, a light-house and a cluster of fishermen's huts; all indicating that the place was one ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead—I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... accompanied by such insolent taunts that the blood of the Venetian sailors was so stirred that Pisani could no longer restrain them. After obtaining leave from the doge to go out and give battle, he sailed into the roadstead on the 25th. The two fleets drew up in line of battle, facing each other. Just as the combat was about to commence a strange panic seized the Genoese, and, without exchanging a blow or firing a shot, they fled hastily. Pisani pursued them for some miles, ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... of some twenty miles. These points are just sufficient to give it the name of a bay, while at the same time it is so large and so much exposed to the southeast and northwest winds, that it is little better than an open roadstead; and the whole swell of the Pacific Ocean rolls in here before a southeaster, and breaks with so heavy a surf in the shallow waters, that it is highly dangerous to lie near in to the shore during the southeaster season, that is, between the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the mouth of the Port River is very low, a continuous ridge of sandy dunes fringing a beautiful sea beach from which the waters recede far at low tide. The mail boats anchored in the open roadstead; passengers landed at the Semaphore jetty, cargo being placed in barges and towed up the river to Port Adelaide. It was a most unsatisfactory arrangement, and many have been the times that I got wet through when meeting the steamers. In particularly rough weather ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... evening, an armed schooner was lying at anchor in the roadstead of Buffalo, at the southern extremity of Lake Erie, and within a mile of the American shore. It was past midnight—and although the lake was calm and unbroken as the face of a mirror, a dense fog had arisen which prevented objects at the head of the vessel from being ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... one afternoon, the children were taken up on the hurricane deck to see the islands of Charleston Harbor ahead. Many warships, and of all sizes, lay in the roadstead, but they did not see much of these vessels save their lights ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... until the Revenge approached the landmarks familiar to Blackbeard and found a channel which led to the wide mouth of Cherokee Inlet. It was a quiet roadstead sheltered from seaward by several small islands. The unpeopled swamp and forest fringed the shores but a green meadow and a margin of white sand offered a favorable place for landing. As the Revenge slowly rounded the last wooded point, the tall mast of a sloop ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... roadstead; anchorage is north of the town. In channel between Sulu roadstead and Marongas is a pearl-oyster bed, which employs many boats. This is an important industry, pearls and pearl-shells being the chief articles in the export trade of the island. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... all hands gathered to the cathedral, where sins were confessed, the archbishop's blessing received, and Cartier given a Godspeed to the music of full choirs chanting invocation. Three days later anchors were hoisted. Cannon boomed. Sails swung out; and the vessels sheered away from the roadstead while ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... to report four days hence at Rochefort, on board the frigate "Conquest," which was lying in the roadstead waiting for two battalions of marines to ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... Scoras and Scrivia great geographical and linguistical resemblances,—to say nothing of the probability, amounting almost to certainty, that the Carthaginian fleet was moored in the Gulf of Spezzia or the roadstead of Genoa. I could understand these patient researches if there were any doubt as to the battle of Canna; but inasmuch as the results of that great battle are known, why blacken paper with all these suppositions (which are, as it were, the arabesques of hypothesis) while ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... harbor on the Gulf of Mexico to Aguas Calientes is a trifle over four hundred miles. With the improvements already under way, it will be rendered the best seaport on the Gulf, infinitely superior, especially in point of safe anchorage, to the open roadstead of Vera Cruz. Every ton of freight is now landed at the latter port by lighters, and must continue to be so from the nature of the coast; while in a couple of years at farthest Tampico will have a most excellent harbor, perfectly sheltered, where the largest steamships ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... With extreme joy they beheld the coast of this island extending about twenty miles in length, to which they gave the name of Puerto Santo, because first discovered upon the feast of All Saints. This is the smaller of the Madeiras, being only about two miles broad; and, as the only roadstead is upon the south-west side, the Portuguese probably anchored upon that side to be under the lee shelter of the island from the remnants of the tempest from which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... the Mull of Deerness into the roadstead of Ragnvaldsvoe, in the north of South Ronaldsay, which is now known either as St. Margaret's Hope or possibly as Widewall Bay in Scapa Flow, and it was while it was there that the annular eclipse of the sun, ascertained by astronomical calculation[14] ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... by Lieutenant Oxley, who anchored in it on a second expedition to examine Port Macquarie previous to its being settled, is a convenient roadstead during southerly winds: it is situated on the north side of Smoky Cape, and affords an anchorage in three fathoms, protected from the sea as far as North-East by East. Fresh water may be procured from a stream that runs over the beach. Four miles to the north of Smoky Cape is an inlet having a ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... free from anxiety. It was true that his ships were repaired, but many of his men remained on land to recover their strength, and but a small number of able-bodied seamen remained on board with him. The roadstead being lined with coral, great precautions were necessary to save the cables from being cut, but in spite of them, at new moon, a sudden tempest arose and broke the ship loose. The anchors held well, but the hawsers gave way, and the Centurion was carried ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... slowly to the lady on the water. Cold February, a little sloop, and the bleak roadstead at the mouth of the Rappahannock brought but few comforts to the anxious wife, who sat muffled upon that unstable deck, watching the opposite shore, whilst the ceaseless plash of the waves breaking upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... on board of this ship," added the principal, biting his lips with vexation, for, as usual, when the young tars displayed their seamanship, there were plenty of spectators on shore, and on board of other vessels in the roadstead. ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... world could have caused the building of a city where Nome is built except the thing that caused it: the finding of gold on the beach itself and in the creeks immediately behind it. It has no harbour or roadstead, no shelter or protection of any kind; it is in as bleak and exposed a position as a man would find if he should set out to hunt the earth over ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... boldly venture into the bay if alone, we wish to know if there are others below. Furnish Lieutenant Foley with a mount, and, with an escort of a troop, guide him over the road you came to-day to some spot where a view of the roadstead at Old Point Comfort is to be commanded." Speaking to the naval officer, he enjoined, "You will carefully observe any shipping there may be, sir, and of what force, and report to me with the least ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... from the sealers that neither the promontory separating St. Vincent from Spencer's Gulf, nor the neighbourhood of Port Lincoln, are other than barren and sandy wastes. They all agree in describing Port Lincoln itself as a magnificent roadstead, but equally agree as to the sterility of its shores. It appears, therefore, that the promontory of Cape Jervis owes its superiority to its natural features; in fact, to the mountains that occupy its centre, to the debris that has been washed from them, and to the decomposition of the ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... memory and imagination were fertile in fishermen's tales of floating isles in bottomless ponds, and of lakes mysteriously stocked with fishes, and would have kept us till nightfall to listen, but we could not afford to loiter in this roadstead, and so stood out to our sea again. Though we never trod in those meadows, but only touched their margin with our hands, we still retain ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... celebrated trial and death of the unfortunate Duc d'Enghien. Cuffe remained to dine with the commander-in-chief, while Carlo Giuntotardi and his niece got into their boat and took their way through the crowded roadstead toward the Neapolitan frigate that now formed the prison of the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Roraima, of the Quebec Line, arrived at St. Pierre early Thursday morning. For hours before we entered the roadstead we could see flames and smoke rising from Mont Pelee. No one on board had any idea of danger. Captain G. T. Muggah was on the bridge, and all hands got on deck ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... of the weather, getting down Channel was out of the question. We were obliged to be contented, on this first day of our voyage, with running across to the Welsh coast, and there sheltering ourselves—amid a perfect fleet of outward-bound merchantmen driven back by the wind—in a snug roadstead, for the afternoon ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... run of many gray days without a sight of sun, moon, or stars. The black night twinkled with the guiding lights of seamen and the steady straight lines of lights on shore; and all around the Fair Maid the riding lights of ships cast trembling trails upon the water of the roadstead. Captain Whalley saw not a gleam anywhere till the dawn broke and he found out that his clothing was soaked through with ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... responsively to this surmise, for the danger became every minute more imminent, and we knew what a terrific surf there must be then running on the shingle beach. But we now rapidly approached the shore; we were near to the floating light, and in the roadstead not a vessel remained; all had weighed and preferred being under what canvas they could bear. At last we were within two cables' lengths of the beach, and even at this distance from it we were surrounded with the breakers; the surf broke many feet ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... channel, had followed us. We had escaped what seemed almost certain death, but were not out of danger. Our new good chain was attached to our bad chain, and the captain had let out all our chain to free us from the other vessel, so we were actually hanging by our bad chain in the open roadstead, not in the protection of a harbor, and liable to drag our anchor or break our chain and be wrecked; but we could do nothing more than submit to our fate. I thought I would get into my berth and try and get to sleep, and, if I found myself alive in ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... me, without any trace to guide him, he had almost despaired, when, the night before this last, coming in from sea, he saw the Penguin Light; and noticing how, while you were signalling to me, at times it stopped for a moment, he thought it was the Upper Roadstead Light, and so ran in and made this little harbor by mistake. Thereby it was that we have ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... men were to be conveyed across to England, and from Dunkirk 12,000. But where were they to effect a junction with each other and with the Spaniards? Tassis assures us that they had selected for this purpose the roadstead of Margate on the coast of Kent, a safe and convenient harbour;[270] there immediately after the Spanish armada had arrived, or as nearly as possible at the same time with it, the fleet of transports from the Netherlands also was to make the shore, and Alexander of Parma was then to assume the command ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... month after the events related in the last chapter the bluff-bowed French coasting steamer, Admiral Dupont, dropped anchor in the shallow roadstead off the steamy harbor of Fort Assini on the far-famed Ivory Coast. A few days before, the boys had left Sierra Leone and engaged quarters on the cockroach-infested little craft for the voyage down the coast. It was blisteringly hot and ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... made the land near the Gulf of Guayaquil, and thence ran down to Tumbez, an open roadstead, in which we brought up about a mile from the mouth of a river with a bar across it. Here the crew, instead of enjoying the rest they expected, were employed in towing off rafts of wood and water through the heavy surf setting on the shore. It was very hard work under a blazing sun, but still ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... made plain to us as we fetched our way round to the eastward and came out upon the face of a steep hill that broke away in steep cliffs to the very foreshore. There, below us, lay a neat deep-water roadstead covered to westward by a small island with a tower on it and a battery. The shore ran out towards the island, and the two had been joined by a mole, or the makings of one, about thirty yards long; and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of the Delta of the Volga, and it lies 580 versts above Astrakhan, which is said to be at the river's mouth, but which is still 150 versts from the roadstead or anchorage, called the Nine Feet Station; the spot on the Caspian where sea ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... be dreaded, even after receiving the greatest injury. A favourable opportunity fortunately offered itself of displaying the power of the steamer to Ibrahim Pasha's camp at Patras. On approaching the roadstead, a brig heavily laden was seen at anchor, which had evidently arrived the preceding night, little expecting that the Greek squadron would quit the gulf in the daytime. Hastings immediately made every preparation for cutting her out, but the Austrian consul was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Monterey could not destroy the interest and pleasure felt on arriving at Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful places in the province, and at that time much larger than Monterey. As the ship came into the roadstead which served as a harbor, the town lay spread out before them: in the foreground, straggling along the beach and for some distance back, were the adobe houses of the inhabitants, about one hundred in number, most of them glittering white in the brilliant sunlight; among ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... greater part of his life has been a seaman on the big vessels sailing the northern and southern oceans, talks about capstans and icebergs and beautiful black women from the West Indies. He sets the capstan turning, so that the great three-master makes sail out of the Havana roadstead, and all his hearers feel their hearts ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... departure about her, notwithstanding. The deacon was not much concerned; and some of Roswell Gardiner's clothes were still at his washerwoman's, circumstances that were fully explained, when the schooner was seen to anchor in Gardiner's Bay, which is an outer roadstead to all the ports ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the roadstead of Phalerum during that same night. How far the crews were demoralized by the defeat of the previous day is shown by the fact that there was something of a panic as the white cliffs of Sunium glimmered through the darkness ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... the channel into Big Wreck Cove, wings full-spread, skimming the heaving blue of the summer sea, looked like a huge member of the tern family. From Wreckers' Head and the other sand bluffs guarding this roadstead from the heave of the Atlantic rollers, the schooner with her yachtlike lines was truly a picture to please ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... and out of the Kalvik River. The first mishap occurred during the trip on which the boilers were towed in, and it looked to Boyd less like an accident than a carefully planned move to cripple him at one stroke. The other ships were busily discharging and the roadstead was alive with small craft of various kinds, when the huge boilers were swung over the side of The Bedford Castle and blocked into position for the journey to the shore. George and a half-dozen of his men went along with the load while Emerson remained ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... out of the crowded roadstead of Singapore, and skirting the red cliffs of Tanah Merah, slip round the heel of the Peninsula, you turn your back for a space on the seas in which ships jostle one another, and betake yourself to a corner of the globe where the world is very old, and where conditions of life have seen ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... people. Two of them contained families from Killinek. But the violence of the wind was such, that we could not stay in this unsheltered place with safety. We therefore worked our way, with the help of the Esquimaux, round another point, into a roadstead, rather more sheltered than the former, though open to the sea. A little tobacco is the reward expected and given for ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... from winds, on the west by the principal island, which has a length of 250 yards, and on the north by a long range of islets and reefs, extending in a north-easterly direction a distance of at least 600 yards. An excellent roadstead was thus formed by nature, which art early improved into a small but commodious harbour, a line of wall being carried out from the coast northwards to the most easterly of the islets, and the only unprotected side of the harbour being ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... return to my own element, and will endeavour to describe some of the occurrences of the war in the Black Sea. The Russians had three lines of action in those waters. First, to capture Sulina, and to destroy the squadron lying at anchor in its roadstead; second, to capture Batoum and its much-envied harbour; third, the somewhat undignified action of sending out fast vessels, mostly mail-boats, armed with a couple of guns, their object being to destroy the Turkish coasting trade. These vessels ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... the Rufigi River. The Emden under Captain Mller had better success. Throughout September and October she haunted the coasts of India and harried British trade, setting fire to an oil-tank at Madras, torpedoing a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer in the roadstead of Penang, and capturing in all some seventeen British merchantmen. She had, however, lost her own attendant colliers about 25 October, and a raid on the Cocos or Keeling islands on 9 November was interrupted by the arrival of H.M.S. Sydney, which had been warned by wireless, on her way from ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... admit us on board the vessel which will bear you to England, and with you the destiny and the vengeance of the French people." This vessel, on board of which Bonaparte was to embark, has had time to wear herself out in harbour. Others put, as a device for their flags in the roadstead, "a good wind, and thirty hours". In short, all France resounded with gasconades, of which Bonaparte ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... than probable that Anlaf sailing from Dublin would come over to England by the usual route to the havens opposite, near the great roadstead of the Dee estuary. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... cession of a piece of territory there, which the German government a few months later recognized as a German Colony. Five years earlier, in 1878, Walfish Bay, which lies farther north, and is the best haven (or rather roadstead) on the coast, had been annexed to Cape Colony; but though it was generally understood both in the Colony and in England, that the whole of the west coast up to the Portuguese boundary was in some vague way subject to British influence, nothing had been done to claim ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... no harbour, you understand. The small steamer—by name the P.M. Diaz—drops anchor a short mile out in a half-protected roadstead, and discharges what she has to discharge, or lades what she has to lade, by boats. Her ladings during the banana-harvest are feverish, tumultuous, vociferous. Her ladings during the sleepy remainder of the year comprise canned ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead — I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... she joined them at the top she saw his solitary figure at the further edge, standing motionless against the sea. All the while that she remained with her pupils he stood without turning, as if looking at the frigates in the roadstead, but more probably in meditation, unconscious where he was. In leaving the spot one of the children threw away half a sponge-biscuit that she had been eating. Passing near it he stooped, picked it up carefully, and put ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... were closely akin to the Greeks; and it is by no means an erroneous conjecture, that Terracina was formerly called [Greek: Tracheine] or the "rough place on a rock"; Formiae must be connected with [Greek: hormos] "a roadstead" or "place for casting anchor." As certain as Pyrgi signifies "towers," so certainly does Roma signify "strength," and I believe that those are quite right who consider that the name Roma in this sense is not accidental. This Roma is described ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Britain—have seen fair Spanish women, had sun, wind, rain, wet decks, and dry decks, and the bustle and interest of dropping anchor in Port, with all the movement of tugs and boats and people going and coming to and from shore—the roadstead blustery and fluttering with flags, and everything afloat bobbing and moving, excepting the great ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... fresh gale from the northward in the afternoon, and the ice still continuing to oppose an impenetrable barrier to our farther progress, I determined to beat up to the northern shore of the bay, and, if a tolerable roadstead could be found, to drop our anchors till some change should take place. This was accordingly done at three P.M., in seven fathoms' water. This roadstead, which I called the BAY OF THE HECLA AND GRIPER, affords very secure shelter with the wind from E.N.E. round by north to S.W., and we found ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... rule only applies to ships belonging to Amsterdam or other ports in Holland; and that foreign ships are more free in that respect, but cannot relieve themselves from the second. The pilots who bring in ships from the outside bring them to the Texel roadstead or the Helder, and others take them to Amsterdam or elsewhere; and those who take them from Amsterdam, go no further than the Texel road or the Vlie,[58] and other pilots carry them out to sea. The fee of the pilots is a guilder[59] a foot for every foot the ship draws, though any sum ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... Valhalla must ride at anchor a mile from shore. When they take on fruit it is conveyed on lighters and freighter sloops. At Solitas, where there was a fine harbour, ships of many kinds were to be seen, but in the roadstead off Coralio scarcely any save the fruiters paused. Now and then a tramp coaster, or a mysterious brig from Spain, or a saucy French barque would hang innocently for a few days in the offing. Then the custom-house crew would ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... here, my lad,' said the Captain to Rob, when he had matured this notable scheme, 'to-morrow, I shan't be found in this here roadstead till night—not till arter midnight p'rhaps. But you keep watch till you hear me knock, and the moment you do, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sailed into the Chilean roadstead in February, 1814, and found the Essex there. As Captain Hillyar was passing in to seek an anchorage, the mate of a British merchantman climbed aboard to tell him that the Essex was unprepared for attack ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... forget the sensation produced in a ship I commanded one evening on the coast of Peru, as we steered towards the roadstead of Payta. An immense balsa was dashing out before the land-wind, and sending a snowy wreath of foam before her like that which curls up before the bow of a frigate in chase. As long as she was kept before the wind, we could ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... we skirted this miserable coast, upon which not a green speck relieved the eye; at length we sighted the minaret which marked the position of Larnaca, the port or roadstead to which the mail was bound; and in the town we distinguished three or four green trees. We cast anchor about half a mile from the shore. Nine or ten vessels, including several steamers, were in the roadstead, and a number of lighters were employed ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... in the day, brought tales of a strange invasion, and wanted to know who were the two offensive lunatics in a steam-launch, apparently after a man and a girl, and telling a story of which one could make neither head nor tail. Their reception by the roadstead was generally unsympathetic, even to the point of the mate of an American ship bundling them out over ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... veritable coffin-ships, in which I would not willingly navigate the Serpentine. Shipping disasters have been frequent not only at sea, but also while landing here, for Nome has no harbour, but merely an open, shallow roadstead, fully exposed to the billows of the ocean. There is therefore frequently a heavy surf along the beach, and here many a poor miner has been drowned within a few yards of the Eldorado he has risked his all ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... all, that a great naval expedition required a leader who understood his business. Perseus, in the shape of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, after a week of disastrous battles, found himself at the end of it in an exposed roadstead, where he ought never to have been, nine-tenths of his provisions thrown overboard as unfit for food, his ammunition exhausted by the unforeseen demands upon it, the seamen and soldiers harassed and dispirited, officers the whole week without sleep, and the enemy, who had hunted him ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... into a certain roadstead one evening where lay more huge battleships, cruisers and smaller armored vessels than Whistler and his mates had ever seen before. They flew the flags of three nations, and they were prepared to move en masse upon the ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... a slow progress along the Delaware shore, the sloop hove to in a wide roadstead and the anchor was run out. The steeples and shipping of a little town were visible by the water side, but no one put off to meet them. To the surprise of all, Bonnet himself came on deck, wearing a good coat ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... (as was the custom) to the king's flag, (the custom being to fire a salute of ten guns from all the ships-of-war when they came to anchor). To the great surprise of the lookout who repented then of having dispatched his assistant to the sergeant, he saw the frigate heave to, outside the roadstead, and lower a boat; this boat was propelled through the waves to the entrance of the port, while the frigate rode at anchor and ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... their wonderful crops of corn. Such was the MAY-FLOWER'S burden, animate and inanimate, whe —the last passenger and the last piece of freight transferred from the SPEEDWELL—her anchor "hove short," she swung with the tide in Plymouth roadstead, ready to depart at ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... arrived opposite the British fort at Accra, and, after staying there a week, they embarked on board the Clinker, Lieutenant Matson, commander; and having sailed direct for Badagry, they dropped anchor in the roadstead in the front of that town on the 19th. From the commander of the Clinker they received a young man of colour, named Antonio, son to the chief of Bonny, who eagerly embraced the opportunity of proceeding with them into the interior, being ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... more bustling town than Copenhagen itself; and I suppose that arises from the number of sailors connected with the vessels in the roadstead, who are to be met in the narrow lanes and alleys of the town; and here all the pilots in Denmark mostly wait for ships ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... on. Where we were going to I could not make out, for they would never let me see their compass. At last we made the land somewhere on the coast of Syria, I am pretty certain; and, running in, we found a fifty-gun ship, brought up in a roadstead a couple of miles off the shore. The Mistico went alongside and stores of all sorts and provisions were hoisted up out of her, and then without my leave being asked I found myself transferred, like ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... he deserves for this wandering critic and no more, I will take the liberty of saying that there is art, and a great deal of art, in the site of the clean town; and that there is society, and good society, in that forest of spars in the roadstead, and in the fishing and shooting in the neighbourhood. When the Tauchnitz editions have been exhausted, and when the stranger has mastered Cervantes and Lope de Vega, Espronceda, Larra, and Rivas, there is always that book which Dr. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... by the Eboli. Thus, in the absence of Alexander, all was suspense and suspicion. It seemed possible that disaster instead of triumph was in store for them through the treachery of the commander-in-chief. Four and twenty hours and more, they had been lying in that dangerous roadstead, and although the weather had been calm and the sea tranquil, there seemed something brooding in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mountainous coast which rose steadily into majestic, barren ranges, still white with the melting snows; and at ten in the evening under a golden sunset, amid screaming whistles, they anchored in the roadstead of Nome. Before the rumble of her chains had ceased or the echo from the fleet's salute had died from the shoreward hills, the ship was surrounded by a swarm of tiny craft clamoring about her iron sides, while ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... bottom of which the Dream lay shipwrecked was the only one of any size, and that extended over some seven or eight miles. An open roadstead, no vessel would have found it a safe shelter, at least unless the wind was blowing ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... the inhabitants came off to the flagship, asking me to land as large a force as I could spare, but as General Lima had declined to supply a military detachment, it was out of my power to comply; for the roadstead being unsafe, and the flagship nearly aground, I could not dispense with the English seamen, whilst the Portuguese portion of the crews was not to be trusted. Besides which, the foreign seamen were not ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... crossing. Ethelberta's head ached after a while, and Cornelia's healthy cheeks of red were found to have diminished their colour to the size of a wafer and the quality of a stain. The Speedwell entered the breakwater at Cherbourg to find the schooner already in the roadstead; and by the time the steamer was brought up Ethelberta could see the men on board the yacht clewing up and making things snug in a way from which she inferred that they were not going to leave the harbour again that day. With the aspect of a fair galleon that could easily out-manoeuvre her ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... believe), requesting the immediate delivery of the anchor and cable,—upon the plea of his seignoral rights of flotsam and jetsam. Now the idea was as preposterous as the demand was impudent. We had picked up the anchor in the roadstead of a foreign power, about fifteen hundred miles ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in sight an island well known in fame, Tenedos, rich of store while the realm of Priam endured, [23-55]now but a bay and roadstead treacherous to ships. Hither they launch forth, and hide on the solitary shore: we fancied they were gone, and had run down the wind for Mycenae. So all the Teucrian land put her long grief away. The gates are flung open; men go rejoicingly to see the Doric camp, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... grant, and on receiving it had returned to France, at the end of August 1604, to recruit colonists. Thus he had escaped the horrible winter at St Croix, but on account of lawsuits it had proved impossible for him to return to Acadia in the following year. Hence the noble roadstead of Port Royal was still unoccupied when De Monts, Champlain, and Pontgrave took the people of St Croix thither in August 1605. Not only did the people go. Even the framework of the houses was shipped across the bay and set up in this ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... expected to stop at the Sandwich Islands, but when they arrived in the roadstead of Honolulu, word came that cholera had broken out and many were dying daily. They could not land. It was a double disappointment; not only were the lectures lost, but Clemens had long looked forward to revisiting the islands he had so loved in the days of his youth. There ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... we all were, with the exception of the Indiaman, it took us until past midnight to reach Weymouth roadstead, where we anchored for the night, without communicating with the shore; no one in the town, therefore, was aware of our quick return to port, and our brilliant success, until the following morning; and as for Mr Peter White, our ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... was very proud of this little house, with its healthful position and beautiful outlook over the bay of Bridlington. It stood in a niche of the low soft cliff, where now the sea-parade extends from the northern pier of Bridlington Quay; and when the roadstead between that and the point was filled with a fleet of every kind of craft, or, better still, when they all made sail at once—as happened when a trusty breeze arose—the view was lively, and very pleasant, and full of moving interest. Often one of his ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... occupation of El Arish on the 22nd December, that town developed apace. Mine-sweeping operations were at once commenced in the roadstead, a pier was erected, and, on the 24th, the supply ships from Port Said began unloading stores and supplies. The lie of the land gives unlimited opportunity to a power having the command of the sea to supplement his other means of bringing forward supplies by ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock |
