"Keels" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vikings of Jomsburg, and on hearing this news he sent abroad the war arrow all about the Thrandheim country, and to Mere and Raumsdale, north also into Naumdale and Halogaland; and in answer to this summons there assembled a vast fleet of warships to the number of one hundred and eighty keels, and a force amounting to eleven thousand men. So many vessels and warriors had never before been seen ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... fleet of sailing brigs, barques and schooners waiting for a favourable wind and spring tides, so that they might be put to sea without running the risk of thumping their keels off on the Bar. The vessels had been loaded for several weeks. Many of them were bound to the Baltic. These were spoken of as the "Spring Fleet." The older and smaller craft were engaged in the coasting trade, and the larger ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Kee-hee! yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage. Ka-la! Koo-loo! howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the welcome cry was heard — Stand up, Tashtego! —give it to him! The ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... rapture to stroll up and down the good road, and feel it hard and real under our feet, and not an abysmal impalpability, while all the grim shapes of our dreams fled to the spectral line of small boats sustaining the ferry-barge, and swaying slowly from it as the drowned men at their keels tugged ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... keels (Names attest what families be), The Kensington, and Richmond too, Leonidas, and Lee: But now they have their seat With the ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... The boldest keels of Phoenicia and Carthage had not approached its shores. From the footsteps of the ancient nations along the highways of time and fortune—the embattled millions of the old Asiatic despotisms, the iron phalanx of Macedonia, the living, crushing machinery of the Roman legion which ground ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... States, although at the present moment all its ships fly the British flag. Two new ships are, however, being completed for this line in American shipyards, the "Minnetonka" and "Minnewaska," of 13,401 tons each. This line, started by Americans in 1887, was the first to use the so-called bilge keels, or parallel keels along each side of the hull to prevent rolling. It now has a fleet of twenty-three vessels, with a total tonnage of about 90,000, and does a heavy passenger business despite the fact that its ships were primarily designed to carry cattle. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... years, a murmur of welfare and peace: Orchard golden-globed, plain waving in golden increase; Hopfields fairer than vineyards, green laughing tendrils and bine; Woodland misty in sunlight, and meadow sunny with kine;— Havens of heaving blue, where the keels of Guienne and the Hanse Jostle and creak by the quay, and the mast goes up like a lance, Gay with the pennons of peace, and, blazon'd with Adria's dyes, Purple and orange, the sails like a sunset burn in the skies. Bloodless conquests of commerce, that nation ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... how the game would be set out. Then we build ships and explore these islands, but in these pictures the ships are represented as already arriving. The ships are built out of our wooden bricks on flat keels made of two wooden pieces of 9 x 4-1/2; inches, which are very convenient to push about over the floor. Captain G. P. W. is steaming into the bay between the eastern and western islands. He carries heavy ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... answered Riderhood. 'Not so easy done. His luck's got fouled under the keels of the barges. I tried to haul in last time, but I couldn't. See how taut the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... sinuous and sinister stream whose waters began on the eastern slope of the glacial peaks just inland from Juneau, and swept to the north and west for more than two thousand miles. It was understood that this way was long and hard and cold, yet thousands eagerly embarked on keels of all designs and of all conditions of unseaworthiness. By far the greater number assaulted the mountain ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... think—she could only feel. It was morning—that white light was morning, though it was like the moon. Under it the Marsh lay like a land under the sea—it must have looked like this when the keels of the French boats swam over it, high above Ansdore, and Brodnyx, and Pedlinge, lying like red apples far beneath, at the bottom of the sea. That was nonsense ... but she could not think this morning, she ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... distress and howls of mortal agony answered the wind from all the upturned boat keels they sped by, and many hideously pale-looking folks clutched hold of their thwarts. The gleam of the sea-fire cast a blue glare on their faces, and they sat, and gaped, and glared, and ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... Keels are troublesome to make: lee-boards are effective substitutes, and are easily added to a rude boat or punt when it is desired to rig her ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... another at the stern, while the rest of the water slunk away from under her just to see how she would like it; so she was held up at her two ends only, and the weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning iron keels and bilge-stringers. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... meadows thronged with unnoticeable flowers; speeds his carpet knight—or is that hardly a just name for one whose sword "smites" so well?—upon a carpet of authentic wild flowers; pushes his rovers, in costume, from off blossoming shores, on the keels of old romance. The style and the manner, I have said, run side by side. If we may take one poet's too violent phrase, and consider poets to be "damned to poetry," why, then, Tennyson is condemned by a couple of sentences, "to run concurrently." We have the style and ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... first unfold![as] Her image floating on that noble tide, Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,[at] But now whereon a thousand keels did ride Of mighty strength, since Albion was allied, And to the Lusians did her aid afford: A nation swoln with ignorance and pride,[44] Who lick yet loathe the hand that waves the sword[au] To save them from the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... imagine the delight with which these experiences thrilled the young midshipman on the Providence. His eighteenth birthday was spent in the Pacific, in the early Autumn of a hemisphere where the sea was not yet cloven by innumerable keels, and where beauty, enchantment and mystery lay upon life and nature like a spell. A few years previously he had been a schoolboy in the flattest, most monotonous of English shires. Broad fields, dykes and fen had composed the landscape most familiar to his eye. In these surroundings ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... of our country planted upon it. After each has been passed another arises from the water, onwards we must go. There is no pause for our thoughts, none for our sympathy, none for our work, till our keels have visited, and the 'shout of a King' has been heard on every shore that fills 'the breadth of Thy land, O Emmanuel!' The limits of the visible community of Christ's Church to-day are far within the borders ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... advice against it; he had no sympathy with Paris, whom he bitterly reproached, much less with Helen; yet, when the war came, and the Grecian forces were marshaled on the plain, and their crooked keels were seen cutting the sands of the Trojan coast, Hector was a flaming fire, his beaming helmet was seen in the thickest of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... would in no circumstances be a party to any sort of aggression upon Germany." But we must oppose a violation of the neutrality of Belgium, and, if the naval competition continued, we should lay down two keels to Germany's one. As a sequel to these discussions the two Governments discussed the basis of an Entente. It soon appeared that Germany sought to bind us almost unconditionally to neutrality in all cases. To this the British Cabinet demurred, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... bay ships riding at anchor, more numerous than the sea-birds that haunt Monte Gibello or swim sentinel about its base. Trumpets from the shore answered to their trumpets; they heard a wild tattoo of drums within the walls. On even keels in the motionless tide the ships took up their moorings; and King Richard, throwing the end of his cloak over his shoulder, jumped off the gunwale of Trenchemer, and waded breast-deep to shore. He was the first of his realm to touch ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... All thy ways are good, O wind, and all the world should fester, Were thy fourfold godhead quenched, or stilled thy strife: Yet the waves and we desire too long the deep south-wester, Whence the waters quicken shoreward, clothed with life. Yet the field not made for ploughing save of keels nor harrowing Save of storm-winds lies unbrightened by thy breath: Banded broad with ruddy samphire glow the sea-banks narrowing Westward, while the sea gleams chill and still as death. Sharp and strange from inland ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... hulls through the liquid waves; or have the shells of the Indian Sea, whose quiet touch is said to hold so firmly that the angry billows cannot loosen it, with like power fixed their lips into your keels? Idle stands the bark though winged by swelling sails; the wind favours her but she makes no way; she is fixed without an anchor, she is bound without a cable; and these tiny animals hinder more than all such prospering circumstances can help. Thus, though the loyal wave may be hastening its ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... themselves much by being able to go on shore without fear of interruption. Several native vessels came in, not seeing them until they were round the point. They were of two descriptions, some having their planks sewn together with coir rope, which had keels, and others flat bottomed, the planking being secured by nails. Their anchors were of hard wood, with stones fastened to the shanks, so that they might sink to the bottom. The rudders were fastened by ropes passed outside. They had no tops, and only one large sail of matting. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... or smaller Murray cray-fish" most nearly resembles ASTACUS QUINQUE-CARINATUS, but it is three or four times larger than any of the specimens of that species which we possess, and the figure does not shew any indications of the five keels on the front of the head. In wanting the keel on the thorax it agrees with an Australian species described by Mr. Milne Edwards under the name of ASTACUS AUSTRALASIENSIS, said to come from New Holland, and to be ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... peaceful days for California. The vagrant keels of prying Commerce had not as yet ruffled the lordly gravity of her bays. No torn and ragged gulch betrayed the suspicion of golden treasure. The wild oats drooped idly in the morning heat or wrestled with the afternoon ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Mother! Hold me fast; my Praya sleeps Under innumerable keels to-day. Yet guard (and landward), or to-morrow sweeps Thy war-ships down ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... that the Great River flows into the Gulf, not the "Western Sea," longing eyes were turned toward the western part of the continent, in the hope that some stream would be found flowing into the Pacific which would carry the keels of commerce Indiaward. The huge barrier of the Rocky Mountains was {314} not known, and it was only in the effort to reach the Pacific by ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Cynthia sloop and Trial revenue cutter, other vessels were constructed on the new plan, among them the Lady Nelson. She was chosen for exploration because her three sliding centre-boards enabled her draught to be lessened in shallow waters, for when her sliding keels were up she drew ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... the day of sailing. The six galleys of war were brought down from their sheds, and on the rollers for the launching he-goats were bound so that the keels slid blood-stained into the sea. This was the 'roller-reddening,' a custom bequeathed from their forefathers, though the old men of the place muttered darkly that the ritual had been departed from, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... sea-weeds, and are lashed up and down upon their spreading branches, as they rock to and fro with the motion of the sea. Many live in sheltered harbors, attaching themselves to floating logs, or to the keels of vessels; and some are even so indifferent to the freshness of the water that they may be found in numbers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... men of his company did not lash their ships together, but rowed against the Danish keels that were faring loose, and every ship that they grappled did they clear. When the Danes noted this same did every man move his ship away from the spot whither the Earl was faring, but went he after them even as they withdrew, and ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... painfully, its propellers clogged by seaweed, its keels overgrown with barnacles, the grand armada crossed the Indian Ocean and headed northward for the China Sea. On May 27, steering for the Korean channel, it fell into a snare which a blind man ought to have been able to foresee. Togo's fleet had ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... business, and asked if I could not get leave to go with him. Orders were come from West Point to seize and destroy all periaguas, canoes, and boats in the possession of the few and often doubtfully loyal people between us and King's Ferry. He had for this duty two sail-rigged dories with slide-keels, and would take ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... tree is of straight growth, and takes its name from the strip-like character of its bark. . . . The wood is of a brown colour, hard, heavy, strong and close in the grain. It works up well . . . in ship-building, for planking, beams, keels and keelsons, and in civil architecture for joists, flooring, etc. Upon the farms it is used for fences and agricultural implements: it is also employed for furniture ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... mead ran through my veins and deepened my dream of things past, present, and to come, as I said: "Now hearken a tale, since ye will have it so. For last autumn I was in Suffolk at the good town of Dunwich, and thither came the keels from Iceland, and on them were some men of Iceland, and many a tale they had on their tongues; and with these men I foregathered, for I am in sooth a gatherer of tales, and this that is now at my tongue's end ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... where the colliers anchored most thickly. The landing party was divided into two boat-loads; Jones taking command of one, while Lieut. Wallingford held the tiller of the other boat. With muffled oars the Americans made for the shore, the boats' keels grated upon the pebbly shore, and an instant later the adventurers had scaled the ramparts of the forts, and had made themselves masters of the garrisons. All was done quietly. The guns in the fortifications were ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of longitude. The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from fifty-four subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats, and from some hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels. The area of its drainage-basin is as great as the combined areas of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Turkey; and almost all this wide region is fertile; the Mississippi ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... forests of stakes, for the support of the nets in which salmon, shad, and alewives are taken. The shad fishery, they told me, was not yet over, though the month of August was already come. We passed some small villages where we saw the keels of large unfinished vessels lying high upon the stocks; at Bath, one of the most considerable of these places, but a small village still, were five or six, on which the ship-builders were busy. These, I was told, when once launched would never ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Build me a burial-cairn high on the sea-cliff's head; It shall for memory tower up on Hronesness, So that the seafarers Beowulf's Barrow Henceforth shall name it, they who drive far and wide Over the mighty flood their foamy keels. Thou art the last of all the kindred of Wagmund! Wyrd has swept all my kin, all the brave chiefs away! Now must ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... pirate fleet on this coast should have landed near Selsea is likely enough. The marauders would not land near the Romney marshes or the Pevensey flats, where the great fortresses of Lymne and Anderida would block their passage; and they could not beach their keels easily anywhere along the cliff-girt coast between Beachy Head and Brighton; so they would naturally sail along past the marshland and the chalk cliffs till they reached the open champaign shore near Chichester. Cymenes-ora, where they ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... (See fig. 12.) It is the first leaf occurring in every branch on the side next to the main shoot and it is a two-keeled membranous structure resembling somewhat the palea found in the spikelets of grasses. The portion of the prophyll between the keels is concave due to the pressure of the main stem, while the sides beyond the keels bend ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... of soul stand forth, if not in evil times? When the skies are fair and the seas smooth, all ships sail festively. But the clouds lower, the winds shriek, the waves boil, and immediately each craft shows its quality. The deep is strown with broken masts, parted keels, floating wrecks; but here and there a ship rides the raging sea, and flings defiance to the wind. She overlives the sea because she is sea-worthy. Not our eighty years of peace alone, but our two years of war, are the touchstone of our character. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... field of enterprise by the old Britishers? American pride said "No;" American instinct said "No;" and, above all, American capitalists said "No!" Keels were laid down in New York; the shipbuilders' yards became unusually active; and the stately timbers of majestic ships gradually rose before the admiring gaze of the citizens of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... sight and scent of blooming flowers, To fill the happy sunlight's hours. When verdant fields grow bare and brown, When forest leaves come raining down, When frost has mated with the weather And all the birds go south together, When drying boats turn up their keels, Who wonders how the ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... capricious bakers! Being old, however, and superannuated, you will say that our English language must have got used to it: as the sea, that once (according to Camoens) was indignant at having his surface scratched, and his feelings harrowed, by keels, is ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and alley, From churches full of the old world's night, All have come out to the day's broad light. See, only see! how the masses sally Streaming and swarming through gardens and fields How the broad stream that bathes the valley Is everywhere cut with pleasure boats' keels, And that last skiff, so heavily laden, Almost to sinking, puts off in the stream; Ribbons and jewels of youngster and maiden From the far paths of the mountain gleam. How it hums o'er the fields and clangs from the steeple! This is the real heaven of the people, Both great and little are merry ...
— Faust • Goethe
... out of the line in which they may be marshalled, look forth and watch breathless, and the instant you perceive that beside our flags of Samos and Chios we hoist the ensign of Athens, draw off from your stations, and follow the wake of our keels, to the Athenian navy. Then, as the Gods direct us. Hark, a second time ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... force of about four hundred men with eighty horses. During the voyage, the squadron was carried among the shoals of Canarreo by the unskilfulness of the pilot Meruelo, where the ships got aground and remained for fifteen days constantly touching with their keels and unable to get into deep water. At the end of this period a storm at south brought so large an accession of water from the bay upon these flats that the ships got off. At Guaniguanigo they encountered another storm ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... the Iron Age. Crime burst in like a flood; modesty, truth, and honor fled. In their places came fraud and cunning, violence, and the wicked love of gain. Then seamen spread sails to the wind, and the trees were torn from the mountains to serve for keels to ships, and vex the face of ocean. The earth, which till now had been cultivated in common, began to be divided off into possessions. Men were not satisfied with what the surface produced, but must dig into its bowels, and draw forth from thence the ores of metals. Mischievous IRON, and more ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... 9-nerved. The second glume is similar to the first, but longer. The third and the fourth glumes are longer than the second glume, 5- to 7-nerved, paleate and triandrous; palea of both are lanceolate with ciliate keels. ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... coloured, as if painted by Nature in imitation of the rainbow. The river spread out, between and around a large number of pretty islands bearing thick cottonwood groves. The shallowness of the water caused our keels to touch occasionally, but the current was comparatively slow and we were not disturbed over it. Powell hesitated as to calling this place Rainbow or Island Park, the choice eventually falling to the latter. The valley is only three or four miles long in a straight line. Shortly before sunset ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the Gospel to the heathen Spaniards. Upon this beach had once stood an immense commercial city, the proudest in all Spain. This now desolate bay had once resounded with the voices of myriads, when the keels and commerce of all the then known ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... of each other under the capstan bars. Then, as a second lieutenant, he was in one of those grim three-deckers with powder- blackened hulls and crimson scupper-holes, their spare cables tied round their keels and over their bulwarks to hold them together, which carried the news into the Bay of Naples. From thence, as a reward for his services, he was transferred as first lieutenant to the Aurora frigate, engaged in cutting off supplies from Genoa, and in her he still remained ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on deck, Cavendish considered, upon inspection, that the tide would serve, as it was now rising rapidly; he therefore immediately gave orders that the winches and capstans should be manned, and the ships hove in towards the beach until their keels ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... nevermore the tropic routes Need poleward warp and veer, But on through the Gates of Goethals The steady keels shall steer, Where the tribes of man are led toward peace By ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... nights; and now, Although I be so old, I miss my lads, And there be many folk this stormy night Heavy with fear for theirs. Merciful Lord, Comfort them; save their honest boys, their pride, And let them hear next ebb the blessedest, Best sound—the boat-keels grating on the sand. I cannot pray with finer words: I know Nothing; I have no learning, cannot learn— Too old, too old. They say I want for nought, I have the parish pay; but I am dull Of hearing, and the fire ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... officer has left a description [Footnote: Denny's Military Journal, April 19, 1790.] of one such flotilla, over which he had assumed command. It contained sixteen flat-boats, then usually called "Kentuck boats," and two keels. The flat-boats were lashed three together and kept in one line. The women, children, and cattle were put in the middle scows, while the outside were manned and worked by the men. The keel boats kept on either flank. This particular ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Moslem chief urged on their rowers to the top of their speed. Their galleys soon shot ahead of the rest of the line, driven through the boiling surges as by the force of a tornado, and closing with a shock that made every timber crack, and the two vessels quiver to their very keels. So powerful, indeed, was the impetus they received, that the pasha's galley, which was considerably the larger and loftier of the two, was thrown so far upon its opponent that the prow reached the fourth bench ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... chasing each other up and down the pages of the visitors' register. Sad, sad was the sight— sadder, in a certain sense, than the smoke-wreaths of the Tuscarora and Alabama ploughing the broad ocean with their keels. U.S.A. and C.S.A.! What initials for Americans to write, with the precious memories of a common history and a common weal still held to their hearts—to write here or anywhere! What a riving and a ruin do those letters record! Still they brought in their severed hands a common homage-gift ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... of the abiding nature of local usages when originating in necessities and utility, that STRABO, in describing the boats in which the traffic was carried on between Taprobane and the continent, says they were "built with prows at each end, but without holds or keels."[1] ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... through the mist? Each instant the ghostly pall that shut out vision seaward seemed drifting away. Nathaniel's staring eyes saw a vague shape appear in it, an indistinct dirt-gray blotch, and he knew that it was a boat. Another followed, and then another; he heard the sound of oars, the grinding of keels upon the sand, and where the Mormons had been a few moments before the beach was now alive with mainlanders. In the growing light he could make out the king's men below him, inanimate spots in the middle of the narrow plain. Helpless he stood clutching ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... old shrouds, spars, rusty blocks, and superannuated tackles; and kept by villainous looking old men, in tarred trowsers, and with yellow beards like oakum. They look like wreckers; and the scattered goods they expose for sale, involuntarily remind one of the sea-beach, covered with keels and cordage, swept ashore in ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... great beam and perfectly flat bottoms, would only draw a few inches, and as their provenance was evidently from shallow waters, where neither keels, centre-boards nor lee-boards could be employed, recourse was had to enormous rudders and these cut-waters as a means of hauling a wind, the ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... an active commercial place. Shipbuilding was going on in the yards, and vessels were loading with coals, bound to all parts of the world, each with a number of keels, or oval boats, alongside, which had brought down the coal from the upper part of the river. On board the vessels cranes were at work lifting up tubs of coal from out of the keels, and depositing them in their holds. Of these keels I shall have more to say ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... canoe and rising to pour it over the side. For hour after hour, while the calm moon slowly climbed the sky, each slaved at his dull task. Lulled by the heave and fall of the long-backed rollers as they slid under the keels of the canoes, the men nearly dropped asleep where they stood. The quiet waters crooned to them like a mother singing an old lullaby—crooned and called, till a voice deep within them said, "It is better to lie down and sleep and die ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... by the king of Denmark, who had cut it off from the sea by stretching strong iron chains across the river Trave, on which the town is situated. He thus hoped to starve the people into surrender, and would have done so had not Birger come to their rescue. He had the keels of some large ships plated with iron, loaded them with provisions, and sailed up the river towards the beleaguered city. Hoisting all sail before a strong wind, he steered squarely on to the great chains, and struck them with so mighty a force ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... I shall not be in the least afraid. What a tiny little schooner! But is it not bold to spread both sails? And see, now that we come round to the wind, how the skiff keels over. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... went energetically to work. Vessels in foreign waters were called home, the keels of new craft laid in northern dockyards, and stout merchant ships bought and fitted up for the rough usage of war. By the end of 1861 the navy numbered 264 vessels. At the close of the war it had 671 ships, carrying ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and equipped after this manner. The keels were somewhat flatter than those of our ships, whereby they could more easily encounter the shallows and the ebbing of the tide: the prows were raised very high, and in like manner the sterns were adapted to the force of the waves and storms [which they were formed to sustain]. The ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... event of our refusal to take part in the controversy in its favor, to cripple our commerce by all means within its reach. That commerce, fostered by our accidental position as neutrals when the two great commercial nations of the world were at war, had reached a marvellous height. Its keels vexed every sea. Its flag was now seen in the frozen circles; and now it reflected from its waving folds the fervors of the southern cross. Our merchants, springing, as it were, in a single night from the station of ordinary dealers and dependents ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... wistfully upon the harbor, watching for the barkentine. Sometimes, as to-day, he mistook other sails for hers, but hers he mistook never. That Pacific Ocean, which, for all its hues and jeweled mists, he could not learn to love, had, since long before his day, been furrowed by the keels of Spain. Traders, and adventurers, and men of God had passed along this coast, planting their colonies and cloisters; but it was not his ocean. In the year that we, a thin strip of patriots away over on the ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... addition to Germanic soil; but this land was destined to be of more importance in the future of the Germanic peoples than all their continental possessions, original and acquired, put together. The day when the keels of the low-Dutch sea-thieves first grated on the British coast was big with the doom of many nations. There sprang up in conquered southern Britain, when its name had been significantly changed to England, that branch of the Germanic stock which ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... serpent banner! Hail to Olaf the Brave!" said King Ethelred, as the war-horns sounded a welcome; and on the low shores of the Isle of Dogs, just below the old city, the keels of the Norse war-ships grounded swiftly, and the boy viking and his followers leaped ashore. "Thou dost come in right good time with thy trusty dragon-ships, young king," said King Ethelred; "for the Danish robbers are ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... yachts, schooners of the first class are generally about sixty inches long, are heavily sparred—that is, they have very tall masts, long booms, and bow-sprit—and are ballasted with very deep and heavy lead keels. They are either "built" or "cut"—that is, ribbed and planked, or worked out from ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... presence was discovered. Presently, against the faintly dawning light in the east, the masts of two vessels could be seen. One was a large ship, the other a brig. Almost at the same time the rough sound of boats' keels grounding on the shore ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... achievements of science and art. She is foremost to-day in piercing with tunnels the mountain-chains, that the wheels of trade may roll unobstructed through rocky barriers, and cutting canals through the great isthmuses that the keels of commerce may sweep unhindered across the seas. But she has never yet had an office so illustrious as that which falls to her now—to show Europe how Republican institutions stimulate industry, guarantee order, promote all progress ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... soon fitted, made by Kerr out of the tin lining of one of the biscuit-cases, and passed through a close-fitting tin grummet sewn into the canvas of the roof just between the keels of the two boats, and the smoke nuisance was soon a thing of the past. Later on, another old oil-drum was made to surround this chimney, so that two pots could be cooked at once on the one stove. Those whose billets were near the stove suffered from the effects of the local thaw caused ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... somewhat longer, and therefore sharper, than the after body, which partook more of the form of an ellipse than of a cone; the curvilinear hull was supported steadily in position by two deep broad bilge-keels, one on either side and about one-third the extreme length of the ship; and, attached to the stern of the vessel by an ingeniously devised ball-and-socket joint in such a manner as to render a rudder unnecessary, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... with little model yachts," said Edith. "There's a club of the young officers and some of the townspeople and they have the prettiest little miniature boats with keels about a metre long, rigged exactly like real racing yachts. It's great sport to see them. But ought we not to ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... of France playing false proved true. Bare had our keels bumped through that forest of sailing craft, which ever swung to the tide below Quebec fort, when a company of young cadets marches down from the Castle St. Louis to escort us up to M. de la Barre, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Stand by to give her our starboard broadside as we cross her bows. Slap it right into the eyes of her—Phew! that's a nasty one," as a shot from her 32-pounder came along, smashing right through both our quarter-boats, cutting their keels clean in half, tearing a great gap in the bottom planking of each, filling the air in the immediate neighbourhood with splinters, and whizzing so close past my head that the wind of it whipped my ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... hold,— Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips, Of stormy midnights,—and a tale untold. They have remembered islands in the dawn, And windy capes that tried their slender spars, The tortuous channels where their keels have gone, And calm, blue nights of stillness and ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... shields, 4-4. Temples scaly, no shields between the orbit and labial plates. Eyes rather small, lower lid opatic, covered with scales. Ears oblong, with a large scale in front. Body fusiform, roundish thick; scales of the back, broad, lozenge-shaped, keeled; keels ending in a dagger point; largest on the hinder parts of the throat and belly; transverse, ovate, 6-sided. Limbs four, strong. Toes elongate, compressed, unequal, clawed; tail short, conical, tapering, depressed; with rings of large, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... brother beneath one of the trees of the grove, and looked with eyes of wonder on the scene before me! The noble river seemed to flow almost at our feet, and the only signs of life upon its surface were the great keels passing slowly up and down. Beyond it were the green meadows of Dunstan, whilst, rising behind them, was the fine amphitheatre crowned by the pretty village of Wickham and the woods of Ravensworth and Gibside. Young as I was, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... while ostensibly consenting to buy immunity on this basis, seldom levied the quota upon themselves. By offering bounties they drew the price of their freedom to work in the keels from outside sources. Lord Thurlow confessed that he did not know what "working in the keels" meant. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 7. 299—Law Officers' Opinions, 1752-77, No. 70.] There were' few in the fleet who could have enlightened him of their own experience. The keelmen ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... men raise a barrow for me on the headland, broad, high, to be seen far out at sea: that hereafter sea-farers, driving their foamy keels through ocean's mist, may behold and say, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the world unfolds itself before me. All seas are ploughed by the keels of English vessels, all coasts dotted with the coaling stations and fortresses of the British world-power. In England is vested the dominion of the globe, and England will retain it; she cannot permit the Russian monster ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... with their load of cod and flounders, shot the phantom boat I was pursuing, and I followed, obliged to slacken speed as we twisted in and out under the keels of ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... and black trench-water came the leaf, like a tiny fist of wrinkles, and day by day spread and uncurled, looking like the unwieldy paw of a kitten or cub. The keels and ribs covering the under-side increased in size and strength, and finally the great leaf was ironed out by the warm sun into a mighty sheet of smooth, emerald chlorophyll. Then, for a time,—no one ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... with wax lest they should hear them, and leap into the water and be drowned; of the sunken galleys with their tall masts, and the frozen sailors clinging to the rigging, and the mackerel swimming in and out of the open portholes; of the little barnacles who are great travellers, and cling to the keels of the ships and go round and round the world; and of the cuttlefish who live in the sides of the cliffs and stretch out their long black arms, and can make night come when they will it. She sang of the nautilus who ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... builders of cities. Up above them, the bluff rock waiting for the layers of huge stones,—the eastern nook of the port more perfectly protected than the southern, which receives more or less the swell from the northerly winds, and whose inner shore of hard sand tempted the weary keels,—while all around stretched a wide, fertile, and then probably forest-clad plain, doubtless abounding in the stags for which the district was long famous. Here the restless race "located," and seem to have prospered in the days of those brave men who lived before Agamemnon, to whom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... been ordered to take the wheels off a disused landau and fix instead two keels of wood beneath the axles. This improvised sledge, after it had been shod in steel by the blacksmith, was to play a part ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... and four centuries back that I lived, the first white man, on the coral isles of Raa Kook. In those waters, at that time, the keels of ships were rare. I might well have lived out my days there, in peace and fatness, under the sun where frost was not, had it not been for the Sparwehr. The Sparwehr was a Dutch merchantman daring the uncharted seas for Indies beyond the Indies. And she found me ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... narrow. Thus, when they meet a big ship they have to look up to attack her. The sails are not rigged like those of our ships which can be navigated in any wind. But wicked people on the coast of Fuhkien sold their ships to the foreigners; and the buyers, having fitted them with double bottoms and keels shaped so as to cleave the waves, came ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... trusted than a whirlpool at sea. He observed that many young men had gone to Paris with good cargoes of sense, and returned with a great deal of canvas, and no ballast at all, whereby they became crank all the days of their lives, and sometimes carried their keels above water. He desired Mr. Jolter to keep his pupil out of the clutches of those sharking priests who lie in wait to make converts of all young strangers, and in a particular manner cautioned the youth against carnal ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... reach of liquid light Flies Commerce with her countless keels; There the chained Titan in his might Turns slowly round the groaning wheels That drag her burdens, ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... asked the outraged Metis, addressing Ripley. "Mebe so you mak' w'at you call de deal. Mebe so I'm tell you who's de boss. Mebe so I'm name de man dat run de wheeskey into de Nort'. De man dat plans de cattle raids on de bordair. De man dat keels mor' Injun dan mos' men keels deer, eh! Wat den? Mebe so den you turn us ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the earth; but the loan which he tried to float remained inert and the northern barbarians, whose shipyards send forth most of the navies of the world, insisted upon cash or security as preliminary to laying the keels of the Zalapatan fleet. The project therefore hung fire. Though the craft that roamed up and down the bifurcated river was referred to as a gunboat, it was simply an American tug, some seventy-five feet in length, of the same tonnage and with ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... brain it made life in Norway unendurable. These bold Jarls and their Viking[169] followers, to whom, as to the ancient Greeks, the sea was not a barrier, but a highway,[170] had no mind to stay at home and submit to unwonted thraldom. So they manned their dragon-prowed keels, invoked the blessing of Wodan, god of storms, upon their enterprise, and sailed away. Some went to reinforce their kinsmen who were making it so hot for Alfred in England[171] and for Charles the Bald in Gaul; some had already visited Ireland ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... destruction of their enemies seemed inevitable. Ill-managed, panic-struck, staggering before their foes, the Spanish fleet was now close upon the fatal sands of Zeeland. Already there were but six and a-half fathoms of water, rapidly shoaling under their keels, and the pilots told Medina that all were irretrievably lost, for the freshening north-welter was driving them steadily upon the banks. The English, easily escaping the danger, hauled their wind, and paused to see the ruin of the proud ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the high rocks King Helge sends out ten dragon ships. The warriors with Frithiof rejoice and laugh at the king, for Bjorn had, unknown to all, leaped into the sea and bored holes in the boat-keels. Down sank the ships and many men ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... anchors at their cat-heads ready to bring them up, were being forced nearer and nearer to the low sandy shores that were marked only by the white foam of the breakers, and the leadsmen were giving warning that the keels were already dangerously near to the shelving bottom along the outlying fringe of shoals. The English ships, with plenty of sea-room, looked on without closing in to attack. Little ammunition was left, and Howard and his captains ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... this was an adventurous voyage. Twice that summer the Princess May went aground on the rocks, and once the Albert was fastened on a reef. Both vessels lost sections of their keels, but otherwise, due to good seamanship, ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... required to carry the surplus wealth of the ruling class into foreign markets, the workers build them. When surplus is needed to be utilized in taking advantage of some particularly attractive investment opportunity the workers create it. They lay down the keels of the fighting ships, and their sons aim and fire the guns. They are drafted into the army in time of war and their bodies are fed to the cannon which other workers in other countries, or perhaps ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... and imparting them, and the persons to whom, and the time when, they are severally to be imparted. As the shipwright first lays down the lines of the keel, and thus, as it were, draws the ship in outline, so do I seek to distinguish the patterns of life, and lay down their keels according to the nature of different men's souls; seeking truly to consider by what means, and in what ways, we may go through the voyage of life best. Now human affairs are hardly worth considering in earnest, and yet we ...
— Laws • Plato
... were dismayed by the sight of a fleet of long low vessels with spreading sails, heads carved like that of a serpent, and sterns finished like the tail of the reptile, such as they well knew to be the keels of the dreaded Northmen, the harbingers of destruction and desolation. Little hope of succor or protection was there from King Charles the Simple; and, indeed, had the sovereign been ever so warlike and energetic, it would little have availed Rouen, which might have ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... welcome. The first vessels that they saw were flat-bottomed, their sails were made of reeds and wicker, woven close together, only some were of leather; but, afterwards, they found ships made with round keels and canvas sails, and in all respects like our ships, and the seamen understood both astronomy and navigation. He got wonderfully into their favour by showing them the use of the needle, of which till then they were utterly ignorant. They sailed before with great ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... grating keels outslide, Our good boats forward swing; And while we ride the land-locked tide, Our negroes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Port Jackson, only two ships had ever entered Port Phillip. These were the Lady Nelson, under Murray's command, in February 1802—the harbour having been discovered in the previous month—and the Investigator, under Flinders, in April and May. No other keels had, from the moment of the discovery until Baudin's vessels finally left these coasts, breasted the broad expanse of waters at the head of which the great city of Melbourne now stands. The next ship to pass the heads was ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... perhaps remained, under shelter on the land, leaning over on their sides or standing upright on their keels, with lofty poops and swelling prows, and covered with gildings and mystic symbols. The chimaeras had lost their wings, the Pataec Gods their arms, the bulls their silver horns;—and half-painted, motionless, and rotten as they were, yet full of associations, and still emitting the scent of ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... wait a favouring wind For process westward swift to Martinique, Coaxing the English after. Join him there Gravina, Missiessy, and Ganteaume; Which junction once effected all our keels— While the pursuers linger in the West At hopeless fault.—Having hoodwinked them thus, Our boats skim over, disembark the army, And in the twinkling of a patriot's eye All ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... mere count of ships could win the day, The Persians had prevailed. The Greeks, in sooth, Had but three hundred galleys at the most, And other ten, select and separate. But—I am witness—Xerxes held command Of full a thousand keels, and, those apart, Two hundred more, and seven, for speed renowned!— So stands the reckoning, and who shall dare To say we ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... on a thousand keels, Had sent a greeting free, And the answering song swelled clear and strong When the wind came in ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... may no more Be with them. Bid the warriors raise a barrow After the burning, on the ness by the sea, On Hronesness, which shall rise high and be For a remembrance to my people. Seafarers Who from afar over the mists of waters Drive foamy keels may call it Beowulf's Mount Hereafter." Then the hero from his neck Put off a golden collar; to his thane, To the young warrior, gave it with his helm, Armlet and corslet; bade him use them well. "Thou art the last Waegmunding of our race, For fate has swept my kinsmen all away. Earls in ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... describes such and such evils in his "lamentable discourse."[40] Through Bede the information of Gildas has fallen into the stream of English history, and we cease to be aware of the original source. For example, the familiar tradition of the Saxons coming over in "three keels," ordinarily ascribed to Bede, is taken from Gildas. The date of this author and his work, as now generally accepted, is this:—That he was born in 520, the year of the battle of Mons Badonicus, and that he wrote about 564. But this rests on an ill-jointed and uncertain passage, which was misunderstood ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... its red mark on Younger England's brow. We love, we honor, the maternal dame, But let her priesthood wear a modest name, While through the waters of the Pilgrim's bay A new-born Mayflower shows her keels the way. Too old grew Britain for her mother's beads,— Must we be necklaced with her children's creeds? Welcome alike in surplice or in gown The loyal lieges of the Heavenly Crown! We greet with cheerful, not submissive, mien A sister church, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and my end sink deep so I let go an' vos fighting to keep up but he grab me and say to take holt of his shoulter. He swear he trown vid me if I don't. So I done it, ma'am, and he svim, svim turriple hard, draggin' me ashore. I yoost finds my feet on de bottom vhen he keels ofer, like dead, vid de cold and de playin' out. So I takes him in my arms and runs in. I had matches in my screw-box but my fingers vos dat froze I couldn't get 'em out first. But I manages make ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... Armed in the North his warrior-band To Sogn's old shore his force he led, And from all quarters thither sped War-ships and men; and haste was made By the young god of the sword-blade, The hero-viking of the wave, His wide domain from foes to save. With shining keels seven kings sailed on To meet this raven-feeding one. When the clash came, the stunning sound Was heard in Norway's farthest bound; And sea-borne corpses, floating far, Brought round the ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... driving its rough blocks out into the tumbling seas, the least urban thing in the world, that brought to the mind's eye men's bare chests and muscle-knotted arms, round-mouthed sea-chanteys, and great sound bodies caught to a wholesome death in the vicinity of upturned keels and foundered rust-red sails and the engulfing eternal sterilisation of the salt ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Cingalese at work, and then back home— But came not near his kin till pay was spent. He was not old, yet seemed so; for his face Looked like the drowned man's in the morgue, when it Has struck the wooden wharves and keels of ships. And all his flesh was pricked with Indian ink, His body marked as rare and delicate As dead men struck by lightning under trees, And pictured with fine twigs and curled ferns; Chains on his neck and anchors on his arms; Rings on his fingers, bracelets on his wrist; ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... shuddered and rocked herself about; and when dogs had eaten the fair body of Paris, then the Achaeans turned their eyes with longing to their homesteads. So there was a great ship-building and launching of keels; and at last King Menelaus embarked for peopled Lacedaemon, and took his lovely wife with him in the ship, and stayed his course at Rhodes for certain days, resting there with Helen. There he set a close guard about ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett
... on the Boodah in a deck-room containing a number of boats with castored keels, capable of being quickly launched down an incline, where Mr. F. Quilter-Beckett, the Admiral, with some lieutenants, awaited them at a bureau on which lay documents, while in the background stood Hogarth and Loveday, and, "Gentlemen, this is a ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... not so sure of that," said Prester Kleig. "For I have a suspicion that those submarines have tractors under their keels, and that they can come out on land! If this is so the monsters can, guarded by armour-plate, penetrate to the very heart of our most populated areas before their aero-subs ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... and boats are of many kinds; for on the rivers and creeks inland they use certain very large canoes, each made from one log, and others fitted with benches and made from planks, and built up on keels. They have vireys and barangays, which are certain quick and light vessels that lie low in the water, put together with little wooden nails. These are as slender at the stern as at the bow, and they can hold a number of rowers on both sides, who propel their vessels with bucceyes ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... roaring deeps in watery mountains rise, Above the sides of some tall ship ascend, Its womb they deluge, and its ribs they rend: Thus loudly roaring, and o'erpowering all, Mount the thick Trojans up the Grecian wall; Legions on legions from each side arise: Thick sound the keels; the storm of arrows flies. Fierce on the ships above, the cars below, These wield the mace, and those ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... five hostile submarines were known to be waiting in the vicinity with the object of attacking any crippled ships from the battle fleets, and it became the duty of the patrols to clear them away from the lines of communication. For over twenty hours the seas around were churned by the keels of a heterogeneous fleet of ships armed with equally heterogeneous weapons. Guns' crews stayed by their weapons until their limbs ached and look-outs searched the sea with burning eyes. Through the short ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... the deep Low plung'd them. Straight the rigid wood grows soft The timber turns to flesh; the crooked prows To heads are chang'd: the oars to floating legs, And toes; while what were ribs, as ribs remain; The keels, deep in the vessels sunk, become The spinal bones; in soft long tresses flows The cordage; into arms the sailyards change: The hue of all cerulean as before. And now the Naiaeds of the ocean sport With girlish play, amid those very waves Ere while so dreaded: ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the ill-assorted fleet struggled up the sluggish Yazoo, past impenetrable forests where the cypress clutched at the keels, past long-deserted cotton fields, until it came at last to the black ruins of a home. In due time the great army was landed. It spread out by brigade and division and regiment and company, the men splashing and paddling through the Chickasaw and the swamps toward the bluffs. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the heavy clouds, the effects of sunlight feebly piercing the prevailing grey. His numerous pictures painted at the port of Havre are profoundly expressive. Nobody has excelled him in drawing sailing-boats, in giving the exact feeling of the keels plunged into the water, in grouping the masts, in rendering the activity of a port, in indicating the value of a sail against the sky, the fluidity of calm water, the melancholy of the distance, the shiver of short waves rippled by the breeze. Boudin is a learned colourist of grey tones. ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... the Medes, Persians, and Armenians,[68] having sailed over into Africa, occupied the parts nearest to our sea.[69] The Persians, however, settled more toward the ocean,[70] and used the inverted keels of their vessels for huts, there being no wood in the country, and no opportunity of obtaining it, either by purchase or barter, from the Spaniards; for a wide sea, and an unknown tongue, were barriers to all intercourse. These, by degrees, formed intermarriages with the Getulians; and because, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... between, a wilderness, unsettled, unexplored, traversed only by the original lords of the soil, the Chaco Indians, who, as said, have preserved a deadly hostility to the paleface, ever since the keels of the latter first cleft ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... master of the shore, and they saw armed troops lining the whole bank, promptly pursuing the discomfited fleet of the enemy, towed out into the deep all the ships which had not either shattered their prows by the violence with which they struck the shore, or set their keels fast in the shallows. They captured as many as twenty-five out of forty. Nor was that the most splendid result of their victory: but they became masters of the whole sea on that coast by one slight battle; advancing, then, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... romance appear to promise immediate fulfilment; all lights on board the vessel are obscured, loud voices are hushed; you fancy a thousand men on shore, and yet see nothing; the lonely river, unaccustomed to furrowing keels, lapses by the vessel with a treacherous sound; and all the senses are merged in a sort of anxious trance. Three times I have had in full perfection this fascinating experience; but that night was the first, and its zest was the keenest. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... to the bay, On glistening light or misty gray, And there at dawn and set of day In prayer she kneels: "Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a home From wind and wave the wanderers come; I only see the tossing foam Of stranger keels. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... spoke Ere keels of oak By unseen power Began to lower; Then on and on Are downward drawn To Ran's safe keeping. King Helge, leaping, Is glad to swim From the sinking stem. And Bjorn, none blaming, Laughed loud, exclaiming: "Thou asa-blood, The art was good; No one detected, Or e'en suspected, I bored so quick,— ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... Poet seemed to hear, In drowse or dream, more near and near Across the border-land of sleep The blowing of a blithesome horn, That laughed the dismal day to scorn; A splash of hoofs and rush of wheels Through sand and mire like stranding keels, As from the road with sudden sweep The Mail drove up the little steep, And stopped beside the tavern door; A moment stopped, and then again With crack of whip and bark of dog Plunged forward through the sea of fog, And all was silent ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... bare as a block of marble, Gull Island is passed where another crew in later years perish as castaways. Gray finback whales flounder in schools. The lazy humpbacks lounge round and round the ships, eyeing the keels curiously. A polar bear is seen on an ice pan. Then the ships come to those lonely harbors north of Newfoundland—Griguet and Quirpon and Ha-Ha-Bay, rock girt, treeless, always windy, desolate, with an eternal moaning of the tide ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... trotting and jingling on the yellow roads, and long, narrow boats passing in a leisure majestic and infinite over the surface of the stolid canals; the rivers had only themselves to support, for Staffordshire rivers have remained virgin of keels to this day. One could imagine the messages concerning prices, sudden death, and horses, in their flight through the wires under the feet of birds. In the inns Utopians were shouting the universe into order over beer, and in the halls and parks the dignity of England was being preserved ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... shot may be hurled at the highest velocity, and gunners who shall launch them on their errand of destruction with the greatest accuracy? The French emperor has fairly overreached his island rivals. While they were experimenting, he laid the keels of two iron-clads of six thousand tons burden. In 1859 he ordered the construction of twenty steel-clad frigates and fifty gunboats. Lord Clarence Paget declared in debate last March, that, while England had, finished ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Are comforting, and helping; and her voice Falls on the heart, as, after Winter, Spring Falls on the World, and there is no more pain. And, in her influence, hope returns, and life, And the passion of endeavour: so that, soon, The idle ports are insolent with keels; The stithies roar, and the mills thrum With energy and achievement; weald and wold Exult; the cottage-garden teems With innocent hues and odours; boy and girl Mate prosperously; there are sweet women to kiss; There are good women to ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... Silverly chained with luxury of tune Your senses lie, in a delicious gaol Of harmony, hours of string'd enchantment. Or if you wake your ears for the river's voice, You hear the chime of fawning lipping water, Trodden to chattering falsehood by the keels Of kings' happiness. And what is it to you, When strangely shudders the fabric of your navy To feel the thrilling tide beneath it grieving; Or when its timber drinks the river's mood, The mighty mood of man's Despair, which runs Like subtle electric blood through all ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... the boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... established fact that the question of building steamships large enough and strong enough to cross the ocean was discussed by a number of New York merchants who were ready to embark capital in the project, several years before the keels of the Royal William, the Savannah, the Sirius, or the Great Western were laid. But we must leave this subject for the present, and return ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... great benefactor encouraged his people to the brave adventure, and led them, in crossing the sea to Britain. Men had not yet learned to build boats, with prow or stern, with keels and masts, or with sails, rudders, or oars, or much less to put engines in their bowels, or iron chimneys for smoke stacks, by which we see the mighty ships driven across the ocean without ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... of his craft, between the forward wings and the rear ones, where the rudders were located, was shaped like a cigar, with side wings somewhat like the fin keels of the ocean liner to prevent a rolling motion. In addition, Tom had an ingenious device to automatically adapt his monoplane to sudden currents of air that might overturn it, and this device was one of the ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... Sir George Elliot, "I am informed that the Americans are likely to adopt Captain Hodgett's form of bottom for their new ships, which must give greater steadiness than bilge keels." ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... there be, that through the dusk of an evening in the summer go up and down this river. There I saw, in a high barque all of gold, gods the of the pomp of cities; there I saw gods of splendour, in boats bejewelled to the keels; gods of magnificence and gods of power. I saw the dark ships and the glint of steel of the gods whose trade was war, and I heard the melody of the bells of silver arow in the rigging of harpstrings as the gods of melody went sailing through the ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... mud, which forms the bars at the mouth of the river, vessels drawing from sixteen to twenty feet ground; but their keels are driven through it by strong tugs, or even by the winds acting on the sails. The State of Louisiana has to look out for its levees almost as carefully as Holland does for its dikes. Millions have ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... of the Bahr Giraffe. I therefore instructed the English shipwrights to take the job in hand, and during a ramble through the forest they selected several trees. These were quickly felled, and the sawyers were soon at work cutting planks, keels, and all the necessary wood for boat-building. It is a pleasure to see English mechanics at work in a wild country; they finish a job while an Egyptian workman is considering how to do it. In a very short time Mr. Jarvis, the head shipwright, had constructed an impromptu workshop, with an iron ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... their high-decked strong sailing-vessels with flat bottoms were also far better adapted for the high-running waves of the Atlantic Ocean than the low, lightly-built oared galleys of the Romans with their sharp keels. Neither the missiles nor the boarding-bridges of the Romans could reach the high deck of the enemy's vessels, and the iron beaks recoiled powerless from the strong oaken planks. But the Roman mariners cut the ropes, by which the yards were fastened to the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... river ebbs and flows, between its big ship-building yards and the railway to York, under endless moving craft and a forest of masts, now straight on end, now slanting helplessly on one side when there's not water enough to float their keels; and the long row of Cornish ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... easily did these three long-boats shed their false keels, which half an hour later were but harmless-looking stacks of timber among Sir Felix's undergrowth. Half an hour later, had your unwary feet led you to a certain corner of Sir Felix's well-timbered demesne, you might have scratched your head and wondered what magic carpet ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wind. Three coasting boats, one of which was heavily laden with brooms, left the roads at the same time, and their crews said they hoped to reach Valparaiso before us. But they had too great confidence in their round-bottomed keels, for they did not anchor in their place of destination till five or six days after our arrival. The wind soon got up, blowing W.N.W., but rather flat. In the course of the night, during the second watch, we were roused from our sleep ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Our eager keels quest unaccustomed waters, And, from the vast uncharted waste in front, The mystic circles leap To greet our prows with mightiest possibilities; Bringing us—what? —Dread shoals and shifting banks? —And ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... or footprints left in the sea, and the water furrowed on that morning more than four hundred years ago by the keels of Columbus's little fleet is as smooth and trackless as it was before they clove it. Yet if you approach Guanahani from the east during the hours of darkness you also will see a light that waxes and wanes on the horizon. What the light ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... forward supplies for this place. Taking advantage of a calm that the sea might not beat upon the month of the river, we went out with three of the ships, the boats towing a-head. Yet though they were lightened as much as possible, every one of the keels rubbed on the sand which was fortunately loose and moving; and we then took in with all expedition every thing that was unloaded for making the ships draw less water. While we lay upon the open coast, about a league from the mouth of the river, it pleased GOD miraculously to induce the admiral ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... fixed them to their rifles. A second call pealed forth, and the towropes were cast off, oars splashed into the water, and, with a wild exulting yell from their occupants, the boats dashed for the shore, the men in them hurling themselves into the shallow water as the keels ground ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... ships do seem to show their keels, Phoebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels, And turned to smile upon thy bashful eyes, Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize. The evening weather was so bright, and clear, That men of health were of unusual cheer; Stepping like Homer at the trumpet's call, Or young Apollo ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... clouded by the dark smoke rising from the harbor. The ardent sun gazes at the green sea through a thin veil. It is unable to see its reflection in the water so agitated is the latter by the oars, the steamer screws and the sharp keels of the Turkish feluccas, or sail boats, that plough the narrow harbor in every direction. The waves imprisoned by stone walls, crushed under the enormous weights that they carry, beat against the sides of the vessels and the quays; beat ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... stores were landed and carried up the slope, the boats drawn ashore and in an incredibly short space of time dragged on to the rollers, so many men harnessing themselves like a team of horses to the rope attached to the boats' keels, and cheering loudly as difficulty after difficulty was surmounted, the rollers being changed time after time till the ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the welcome ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... we'd lose time getting 'em, she says. Some the boys get so sick from the heat and the glue smell they heave up their breakfast and can't eat nothing all day. I 'ain't fainted but twice since I been there, but Alex Hobbs keels over once a week, anyhow. Used to frighten me at first when I saw him getting green-y, but I don't ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... wall And plane-tree tall The lake's blue wavelets rise and fall; In they creep, Out they sweep, And ever their rhythmic measure keep, As the light breeze over the water steals, And fills the sails of a score of keels. ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... those Norwegian men who set out eagerly before the north-east wind when it came down from their mountains in the month of March like a god of great stature to impel them to the West. They pushed their Long Keels out upon the rollers, grinding the shingle of the beach at the fjord-head. They ran down the calm narrows, they breasted and they met the open sea. Then for days and days they drove under this master of theirs and high friend, having the wind for a sort of captain, and looking always out ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... the following days the eager eyes and strained nerves of the seamen led to similar disappointments. Land birds appeared; some alighted fearlessly on the rigging and sang. Dolphins frolicked about the keels. Flying-fish, pursued by their enemy the bonito (mackerel), rose from the water in rainbow argosies, and fell sometimes inside the caravels. A heron, a pelican and a duck passed, flying southwest. By the true reckoning the fleet had sailed ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey |
