"Steerage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the bold Stephen Decatur in 1804 when he cut out and set fire to the Philadelphia, which had fallen into the hands of pirates at Tripoli, and helping Thomas Truxtun in 1799-1800 when the Constellation whipped the Frenchmen, L'Insurgente and La Vengeance. In wardroom or steerage almost every man could tell of engagements in which he had behaved with credit. Trained in the school of hard knocks, the sailor knew the value of discipline and gunnery, of the smart ship and the willing crew, while on land the soldier rusted and ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... on the wharf—the rushing on board of belated freight and baggage—the crush of passengers and their friends on deck, or down in the cabins, where partings were being drunk in wine; the crowd of steerage passengers forward, trying to keep out of the way of the sailors, and at the same time to salute or converse with their friends on the dock; the rattle and bustle all around; the blow of steam from the impatient boilers; the sharp, brisk orders of the junior ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... from Liverpool two maiden ladies in the room next mine made representations to the captain which resulted in my removal to the steerage. They couldn't consent, they said, to listen to the shrieks of the ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... I succeeded I should come back to bring her plenty and happiness, but if I failed I should never look upon her face again. I kissed her hand and the baby once, and slipped out of the room. Three nights after I was out at sea, bound for Melbourne, a steerage passenger with a digger's tools for my baggage, and seven shillings in my pocket. After three and a half years of hard and bitter struggles on the goldfields, at last I struck it rich, realised twenty thousand pounds, and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... not advisable to interfere with the favourite of the Lady, and especially since she had brought the estate into the present family. Master Jasper Wingate was a man experienced, as he often boasted, in the ways of great families, and knew how to keep the steerage even when the wind and tide chanced ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... packed with peon prisoners. The life within was an almost exact replica of that on the streets of the capital, even to hawkers of sweets, fruit-vendors, and the rest, while up from them rose a decaying stench as from the steerage quarters of old transatlantic liners. Those who choose, work at their trade within as outside. By night the prisoners are herded together in hundreds from six to six in the wretched old dungeon-like ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Rowers fell as they sat on the upper benches; on the poop the proreus lay with half his men. Glaucon never counted how many missiles dinted his helmet and buckler. The next instant the two ships were drifting without steerage-way. The grappling-irons dashed down upon the Athenian, and simultaneously the brown Phoenician boarders were scrambling like cats upon ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... supposed to have embarked. We learn from him that his errand was not announced to the passengers, who may have no idea of it to this hour. That he went below, with the captain, lamp in hand - it being dark, and the whole steerage abed and sea-sick - and engaged the Mrs. Manning who WAS on board, in a conversation about her luggage, until she was, with no small pains, induced to raise her head, and turn her face towards the light. Satisfied that she was not the object of his search, he quietly re-embarked in the Government ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Rockefeller was born on a New York farm, and began his career as a young business man in St. Louis. Marcus Hanna was a Cleveland grocer's clerk at the age of twenty. Claus Spreckles, the sugar king, came from Germany as a steerage passenger to the United States in 1848. Marshall Field was a farmer boy in Conway, Massachusetts, until he left to grow up with the young Chicago. Andrew Carnegie came as a ten-year-old boy from Scotland to ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... 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 do not check its onward rush; as ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... we found it 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 difficult to come at that they could not effectually ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Perkins was detached from the Cyane, and he bade adieu forever to her dark, cramped-up, tallow-candle lighted steerage, baggy hammock, and hard fare, where the occasional dessert to a salt dinner had been dried apples, mixed with bread and flavored with whiskey! There were no eleven-o'clock breakfasts for midshipmen in those days, and canned meats, condensed ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... day, it is clear that there must have been distribution of food (principally uncooked) to groups or families, who, with the aid of servants (when available), must each have prepared their own meals, cooking as occasion and opportunity indicated; much after the manner of the steerage passengers in later days, but before those of the great ocean liners. There appears to have been but one cook for the officers and crew of the ship, and his hands were doubtless full with their demands. It is certain that his service to the passengers must have been very slight. That "the cook" is ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... aboard a train 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 ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... 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 ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... Whidden, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Falk, and Roger, whose duties included oversight of the cargo, supervision of matters purely of business and trade in foreign ports, and a deal of clerical work that Captain Whidden had no mind to be bothered with; three in the steerage—the cook (contrary, perhaps, to the more usual custom), the steward, and the carpenter; and ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... night-glass in his hand, had been instructed to use extra vigilance. There was a heavy ground swell on, showing that there had recently been a blow somewhere, and the schooner had just breeze enough to give her steerage way, with nothing to spare. Marcy was thinking of home, and wondering how much longer it would be necessary for him to lead this double life, when he saw something that called him back to earth again. He took a short look at it through his glass, and then ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... along at a speed of between six and seven knots; but after that the wind began to soften rapidly away again, until at length, when the sun swept into view above the eastern horizon, we scarcely had steerage way, and half an hour later it fell a flat calm. We accordingly lowered the sail, and, this done, I directed Simpson, the sailmaker—who was the lightest of us, and therefore the least likely to capsize the boat—to ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... found an ancient tar Who 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
... to Genoa, and often to Marseilles, and accomplish the remainder of the journey to Havre or Calais by easy stages from village to village. Thus they become a paying investment from the beginning. This journey occupies the greater portion of the summer months; and after a long trip in the steerage of a sailing-vessel, the unfortunate children land at Castle Garden. As the parents never hear from them again, they do not know whether they are ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... 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 ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... unpractical and improvident, overbearing of manner, passionately independent in thought and conduct, failed utterly in his attempts to realise whatever ambitions he had cherished. So it was hardly strange that this the first chapter of his Odyssey should end in the steerage of an American-bound ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... vessels are fitted out in the most complete manner for defence, at a very considerable expense, and are well provided with small arms. All mariners, recruiting parties, soldiers upon furlow, and all other steerage passengers who have been accustomed to the use of firearms, and who will engage to assist in defending themselves, will be accommodated with their passage to and from London upon satisfying the masters for their provisions, which in no instance shall ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... sands and there anchor, and to make across them past the Whittaker Beacon into the channel as soon as there was sufficient water to enable him to do so. The wind was light, sometimes scarcely sufficient to belly out the sails and give the boat steerage way, at others coming in short puffs which heeled her over and made her ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— Progress and History • Various
... 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, next door to the penniless immigrant, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... preservation. It is as with a ship at sea,—all must pull together, or somebody must go overboard. There can be no such order of things as an agreed state of mutiny,—forecastle seceding from cabin, and steerage independent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... had a great deal of luggage, innumerable bags and rugs and hampers and sea-chairs, and were composed largely of ladies of various ages, a little pale with anticipation, wrapped also in striped shawls, though in prettier ones than the nursing mothers of the steerage, and crowned with very high hats and feathers. They darted to and fro across the gangway, looking for each other and for their scattered parcels; they separated and reunited, they exclaimed and declared, they eyed with dismay the occupants of the forward ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... Mitsu 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
... steerage; we didn't meet again on board, and as it happened at Marseilles, this poor fellow—er—now what was his name? A very unusual one. Began ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... stand the bumping and straining. Great confusion for a time prevailed, but soon I realized that the captain had taken all proper precautions to secure his boats, of which there were six at the davits. These are the first things that steerage-passengers make for in case of shipwreck, and right over my head I heard the captain's voice say in a low tone, but quite decided: "Let go that falls, or, damn you, I'll blow your head off!" This seemingly harsh language gave ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the fleets were striving for the weather gage, the wind had shifted to the southwest. The French, momentarily disordered by the change, had formed in line ahead about noon, heading northwest, westerly, so as just to keep their main topsails aback and the ships with bare steerage way, but under command (F3). The British standing south-southeast, by the wind, were passing (B2-B3) across the head of the enemy's fleet at a distance of from three to two miles—the latter being the estimate by their ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... with ten shillings a week pocket-money—eating in beastly cheap restaurants—riding on the tops of 'buses when some girls I know are feeding at the Ritz and rolling round in limousines. That's what I get for being soft. And now because I won't shoot myself, or go off to nowhere steerage, I'm a bad, abandoned woman. What d'you ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... mother's family had lost heavily by him, her mother gave us 500 pounds to make a start in South Australia. An 80-acre section was built for 80 pounds, and this entitled us to the steerage passage of four adults. This helped for my elder sister and two brothers (my younger brother David was left for his education with his aunts in Scotland), but we had to have another female, so we took with us a servant ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... more "Choicest Flowers" arrived from San Francisco (rare orchids whose grandfathers had come over from Ireland in the steerage). The third son of an English baronet who owned a chicken-ranch near Los Angeles and a German count who sold Rhine wines to the best families also appeared; for that night Blakely's mother was to give such a dinner as had never before been ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... anyway. It may be a provision of nature that woman shall inspire her child with sufficient self-esteem to take him through the world with a first-class ticket, a cabin passage, that he may escape the poor accommodations of excessive humility, the steerage of the ship of life. It seems incredible that our mother was mistaken in thinking her boys the brightest, best, and most creditable in all the region roundabout! Let us by our lives, marvel rather at the correctness of her vision than the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... one hundred and forty-seven other emigrants and eighteen first-class passengers. It was, I suppose, a part of my father's enthusiastically desperate state of mind at this time that we were booked as steerage passengers. We were to lay aside finally all the effete uses of sophisticated life. We were emigrants, bent upon carving a home for ourselves out of the virgin wilderness. Naturally, we were to travel in the steerage. And, indeed, I have good reason to suppose that my father's ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the steerage flew the gambler without waiting to reply, and bounding into the midst of a group of German emigrants seated there, quietly smoking their pipes, angrily demanded which of them it was who had been on the upper deck just now, abusing ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... shall only want what I can carry with me or pack on horses. Anything else would only be a nuisance. As to a rough suit for the voyage, the clothes I had before I put these on" (and he glanced at his black suit) "will do capitally. Of course I shall go steerage. I can get out for four or five pounds that way, and I shall be quite as well off as I should be as an apprentice. I know I must have some money, but I won't take more than is absolutely necessary. ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... partners, with James Lewis, acting captain's clerk, and one other, with the two mates, slept in the cabin or wardroom below the poop. Forward of this main cabin was a large room extending across the ship, called the steerage, in which the rest of the clerks, the mechanics, and ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... 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 tight as in ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... with never an instant's pause between sight and stroke. The Indian in the stern took his cue from Dominique; now paddling for dear life, now flinging his body back as with a turn of the wrist he checked the steerage. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 wheel with ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... been in greater peril, and it was more difficult than ever to keep her off the shoals. The long dark night was coming on, the masts were pounding away against the sides, having been cut adrift. An effort was made to rig a spar on the stump of the foremast, so as to keep steerage-way on the ship, the Captain having resolved to steer for the Scheldt, in which river he hoped to find safe anchorage. Owing to the way the ship was tumbling about, some hours passed, however, before the jury-mast could be rigged and sail set on it. The ship was then kept as much as possible ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... dollars' worth of furs he shipped them to London and embarked as a passenger in the steerage. The trip showed him that ability to sell was quite as necessary as the ability to buy—a point which with all of his shrewdness ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... we 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 a target like a ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... night, by Silverado 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, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stretches of small loose floes and brash. Progress was good until darkness made a stop necessary. The next morning the pack was denser. Stenhouse shipped a preventer jury-rudder (the weighted spanker gaff), but could not get steerage way. Broad leads were sighted to the north- west in the afternoon, and the ship got within a quarter of a mile of the nearest lead before being held up by heavy pack. She again bumped severely during the night, and ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... mentioned your matter to him. He is a very sharp-witted man, and one whose accuracy of observation I should trust implicitly, even if his own interests were involved. Well, he said that on board of the steam-ship Talisman, now lying off Gravesend, he saw that very day a woman among the steerage emigrants who answered to my description exactly, and added that he had heard her spoken of as the wife of a somewhat dissipated man, who had all the appearance of a seafaring person, named Richards. ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... first, the creaking of a block, then a faint wash of sea; and out of the white depths of the fog came the bulky hull of a full-rigged ship. Her sails were set, but she made scarcely steerage way. Her rusty sides and general look bespoke a long voyage just concluding; and we found on hailing her that she was the British ship Marathon, from Calcutta for San Francisco. We boarded the Marathon, though almost in sight of ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... sailors were scrubbing the ship while the spray helped to wash the decks, and they tightened the fastenings of the life-boats. The firemen too were busy dropping cinders astern. Fires in the cook's galley were lighted, and the steerage passengers were aroused for breakfast, ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... the guns, were mustered on poop and forecastle, and some were sent aloft to the tops to assist the tars there to sweep the British decks with handgrenade and musket. And, lastly, the surgeon and his mates went below to cockpit and steerage, to make ready for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 of individuals ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... know, and he had picked out a couple of peachy Swede girls who were going to meet their cousin at the Battery. Minnie and I went on board ship as soon as she docked, to meet our relatives, and we had a good look at 'em while they were lined up with the other steerage passengers. They were fine, and we got Jensen to take 'em up to the Bronx. They're up at Molloy's house overnight. It's better to keep 'em there, and give 'em some food. You know, the emigrant society is apt to be on the lookout to-day. The cousin was there when the ferry came in from ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... before her baby came—she was in Poland then,—she sent for Mrs. Talcott. Mrs. Talcott had been married, too, and had lost her husband and was very poor. But she left everything and crossed to Europe in the steerage—and what it must have been in those days!—imagine!—to join her unfortunate relative. My guardian has told me of it; she calls Mrs. Talcott: 'Un coeur d'or dans un corps de bois.' She stayed with Dolores Okraska until she died a little time after. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... crown apiece would have gone beyond it, as we discovered afterward, for the old lady's handkerchief was in her box, lost under some more of her property; and the tide of sleepy charity taking this direction under such vehement impulse, several other steerage passengers lost their goods, but found themselves too late in doing so. But the Major was satisfied, and the rude man who had told him to go amiss, begged his pardon, and thus we sailed on slowly ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... 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
... Daggett's purpose. He had begun to burn his vessel, for there was now no alternative; but he was doing it on a system which, as he explained it to Roswell, was not only to leave him materials with which to construct a smaller craft in the spring, but which would allow of his inhabiting the steerage and cabin ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Fougueux" upon the "Temeraire," so that for a few minutes the four ships were fast together, in the heat of the fight. About quarter past two, the "Victory" was shoved clear, and lay with her head to the northward, though scarcely with steerage way. The three others remained in contact with their heads to the southward. While this melee was in progress, the French flagship "Bucentaure" surrendered, at five minutes past two; but, before hauling down ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... with some friendly assistance, sailed, in 1850, from New York, as a steerage passenger for San Francisco. Arriving at Aspinwall, the point of debarkation, on the Atlantic side, boats and boatsmen were engaged to transport passengers and baggage up the "Chagress," a small and shallow river. Crossing the Isthmus to Panama, on the Pacific side, I ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... tickets is sold on the River and Sound boats; on the Ocean steamers there are two classes: cabin and steerage. The steerage passengers on the Ocean steamers have a dining-room separate from the first-class passengers—on the lower deck—and are given abundance of wholesome ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... as I left the galley with a big tea-pot in one hand, and in the hollow of the other arm several loaves of fresh-baked bread. One of the hunters, a tall, loose-jointed chap named Henderson, was going aft at the time from the steerage (the name the hunters facetiously gave their midships sleeping quarters) to the cabin. Wolf Larsen was on the poop, smoking his ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... shipowner, then formed, in conjunction with the late Mr. G. H. Fletcher, the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited; and we were commissioned by them to build six large Transatlantic steamers, capable of carrying a heavy cargo of goods, as well as a full complement of cabin and steerage passengers, between Liverpool and New York, at a speed equal, if not superior, to that of the Cunard and Inman lines. The vessels were to be longer than any we had yet constructed, being 420 feet keel and 41 feet beam, with ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... quiet 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 little ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Sandy—merry of 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 ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... a laugh at this, while Isagani continued: "That's why my uncle, being a conscientious man, won't go on the upper deck, fearful that Dona Victorina will ask him about Don Tiburcio. Just imagine, when Dona Victorina learned that I was a steerage passenger she gazed at me ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... help that, sir. I've just come from California in the steerage, and you can't keep ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... and see if my quarter's salary would take me out in the steerage to some diggings or other. What would your brother say to me if I turned up at the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or two ago, when a company was running boats between Australia and New Zealand without competition, the steerage fare was three pound direct single, and two pound ten shillings between Auckland and Wellington. The potatoes were black and green and soggy, the beef like bits scraped off the inside of a hide which had lain out for a day or so, the cabbage ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... in was the Northerner, advertised to sail on the twenty-ninth day of November, 1850. The cabin room was all engaged, and they charged us nine ounces for steerage passage; but I did not care as much about their good rooms and clean sheets as I would have done at one time, for I had been a long time without either and did not care to pay the difference. When we were at the ship's office we had to take our turns to get tickets. One man weighed out the dust, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... down-draught; the hull 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 instant; the children add their shrill ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... out from it in the starboard side. Forward of this came the companion ladder, and forward of this again the wardroom, or senior officers' mess, with small cabins on either side for the lieutenants, surgeon, and other officers. Passing through the wardroom, the visitor entered the gunroom, or "steerage," allotted on the starboard side to the midshipmen, and on the port to the engineers. Next came the engine-room, occupying an unusual space for a vessel of the Alabama's size; the coal bunkers, &c.; and finally, the berth-deck, or forecastle, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... and saw a 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 his wife and put the ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... 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 I ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... mischief still 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 ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... years—whose high colour, brilliant eye, and feeble step told their own tale. But this man was not friendless. His young wife was there, and supported him with tender solicitude towards a seat. These two were in the after-cabin. Among the steerage passengers the fell disease was represented in the person of a little boy. "Too late" was written on the countenances of at least two of these,—the married man and the ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... cruel or offensive practices permitted. The Captain should always have the power of protecting his officers and passengers from being compelled to submit to the demands of old Neptune, by paying a small fine for the exemption: say cabin passengers, five shillings, steerage passengers half-a-crown. The sum total of these fines should be divided among those sailors who had previously crossed the line; and, if any of the sailors on board should be found to throw water, rope yarns dipped in tar, or in any ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... even so As in my vaunting wish that mocked itself With 'Fool, O fool, to brag at the edge of loss.' We saw the ships of England even so Run at the Spaniards on a wind, lay to, Bespatter them with hail of battle, then Take their prerogative of nimble steerage, Fly off, and ere the enemy, heavy in hand, Delivered his reply to the wasteful wave That made its grave of foam, race out of range, Then tack and crowd all sail, and after them Again. So harassed they that ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... West Indies; instead of which people laughed while I spoke in panting jerks, and the water dripped out of my clothes. After I had made it clear that I wanted to go with Carlos, and could pay for my passage, I was handed down into the steerage, where a tallow candle burnt in a thick, blue atmosphere. I was stripped and filled with some fiery liquid, and fell asleep. Old Rangsley was ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... 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
... said again. "I've had a beastly time. By God! I came steerage. I've got nothing but what I stand up in, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... small door that is open for a 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 ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... said the captain, "listen while I spin you a bit of a yarn which dates back some twenty-five years ago, when, but a wee bit of a midshipman, I was the youngster of the starboard steerage mess on board the old frigate Macedonian, then flag-ship of the West India squadron, and bearing the broad pennant of ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... stories—yes, and had finished them and seen them in print as well—was stumped at the very beginning of this one. Like Sim Phinney I had worked at my job "a long spell" and "cal'lated" I knew it, but here was something I didn't know. As Sim said, when he faced his problem, "I couldn't seem to get steerage ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lighthouse at each end on the left side going in, but the work still requires a good deal of dredging, and the steamboat, although passing slowly and steadily, made a very great surge. In fact, it requires good steerage-way and a careful hand at the helm ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... ancestor 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
... told Christy that he would probably find the person who had brought the letter to him in the waist, for he knew nothing of his quality, position, or anything else about him, and he did not know where to berth him, though there was room enough in the ward room or the steerage. He was dressed like a gentleman, and brought two very handsome ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... laid before your Majesty Would make for this, in sum:— That Mr. Fox, Lord Grenville, and their friends, Be straightway asked to join. With Melville gone, With Sidmouth, and with Buckinghamshire too, The steerage of affairs has stood of late Somewhat provisional, as you, sir, know, With stop-gap functions thrust on offices Which common weal can tolerate but awhile. So, for the weighty reasons I have urged, I do repeat my most respectful ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... lose, as February was nearly over. I took a steerage passage to San Francisco, resolving that I would mend my fortunes. It is so easy to drift. I was already in the social slough, a hobo and an outcast. I saw that as long as I remained friendless and unknown nothing but degraded toil was open to me. Surely ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Providence was responsible. When she rose to testify in 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 ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... instant, and in another minute the craft would have been on the rocks, stern-foremost, and beating her bottom in, had not Courtenay—who happened to be standing close by—sprung to the tiller and jammed it hard a-weather, thus causing her to pay off and forge ahead before losing steerage-way altogether. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... jangle with peerage And ministers shuffle their mobs; Mad pilots who reck not of steerage Though tempest ahead of them throbs. That throbbing and sobbing Of wind and gradual wave They hear not and fear not Who guide thee ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... from Europe on an English steamer visited the steerage, and after some friendly talk proposed a singing service—it something could be started that "everybody" knew—for there were hundreds of emigrants there from nearly every ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... is a poor woman amongst the steerage passengers that needs me." And she riz right up and started, like Paul, not disobedient to the Heavenly vision, not for a minute. She told me afterward that she found a woman with a newly-born child almost dying for want of help. She was alone ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... not pace the deck, as most modern heroes do, for his passage was steerage, and there was very little deck for him to promenade. Just at first he was low-spirited, he felt the loneliness of his own company, everything seemed different without the bright companionship of his friend beside him. He felt keenly leaving Europe, ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... could be confided in, were armed 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 ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... that during the voyage we passed two dolphins, one whale and one iceberg (none of them moving very fast at the time), and that on the fourth day out the sea was so rough that the Captain said that in forty years he had never seen such weather. One of the steerage passengers, we were told, was actually washed overboard: I think it was over board that he was washed, but it may have been on ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... 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 amateur ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... that you are astute; another friend, who makes cigar stumps into chewing tobacco, says, you're "up to snuff." Assuming the truth of those statements, I apply to you for information. You have the ability, have you also the inclination, to aid a poor, weary mariner on the voyage of life, (in the steerage,) who has been buffeted by reason, tempest-tossed by imagination, becalmed by fancy, wrecked by stupidity, (other people's,) and is now whirling helplessly in the Maelstrom of conundrums? (If that doesn't touch your heart, then has language failed to accomplish the end for which it was designed—to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... 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 Redemptorists, and the former being confined ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... sea rolling after them broke over the stern of the ship, tore everything before it, stove in the steerage, carried away the rudder, shivered the wheel to pieces and tore up the very ringbolts of the deck, carrying the men who stood on the deck forward and sweeping them overboard. Among them was the unfortunate captain of the Silverwing. John was standing ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... 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 ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... larger, and of irregular shape, 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. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... many different characters, sympathies and antipathies, one wondered if it could be possible to live long with harmony and unselfishness in such daily crowded contact. I suppose we were representative of the many, who, whether in the poop or steerage of similar ships, were looking hopefully towards the far off, not-long-named southern colony, which was becoming known to the people ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... lash out lion fashion, and leave apes To dock their stump and dress their haunches up. My business is not to remake myself, But make the absolute best of what God made. Or—our first simile—though you prove me doomed To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole, The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive To make what use of each were possible; And as this cabin gets upholstery, 360 That hutch should rustle with ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... "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 the crown ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... under full sail, but as she approached nearer to the land whose outlines at every moment became more distinct, the topgallants were taken in until the Bertha Hamilton had just enough canvas drawing to give her good steerage way. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... to knock up cabins for Vivian, Guy Bolding, and myself in the hold; for thinking we could not too soon lay aside the pretensions of Europe,—"de-fine-gentlemanize" ourselves, as Trevanion recommended,—we had engaged steerage passage, to the great humoring of our finances. We had, too, the luxury to be by ourselves, and our own Cumberland folks were round us, as ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seen after that hour in the rather extreme negligee of the early morning. Also it becomes the universal custom, or perhaps I should say the necessity, to slumber for an hour after the noon meal. Certainly sleep descending on the tropical traveller is armed with a bludgeon. Passengers, crew, steerage, "deck," animal, and bird fall down then in an enchantment. I have often wondered who navigates the ship during that sacred hour, or, indeed, if anybody navigates it at all. Perhaps that time is sacred to the genii ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... persisted on my 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 ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... 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 ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... 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
... 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 permission to knock two ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... 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. readily moved it, while with a rider in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... 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
... how 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 some ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... sxteli. Stealth, by kasxe, sekrete. Stealthy kasxa, sekreta. Steam vaporo. Steamboat vaporsxipo. Steam-engine vapormasxino. Steed cxevalo. Steel sxtalo. Steelyard pesilo, pesmasxino. Steep kruta. Steep trempi. Steeple pregxeja turo. Steer juna bovviro. Steer direkti. Steerage antauxparto. Steersman direktilisto. Stem trunketo. Stem of a pipe pipa tubo. Stem (of ship) antauxparto. Stench malbonodoro. Stenographer stenografisto. Stenography stenografio. Step sxtupo. Step pasxi. Step by step pasxo post pasxo, pasxo pasxe. Step (relationship) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes |
