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More "Merchantman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... turn aside from these scenes and sayings which show the least amiable side of a nature essentially noble, and pass to one of the little incidents that are strikingly characteristic of the man. On board the Sterling, the merchantman on which Cooper's first voyage was made, was a boy younger than himself. His name was Ned Myers. This person had spent his life on the sea. He had belonged to seventy-two crafts, exclusive of prison-ships, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... fatal August 10, however, it seemed to Captain Milias that fortune had thrust into his hands a golden opportunity of snapping up a British sloop of war, and carrying her as a trophy into Rochefort. An American merchantman fell in with him, and its master reported that he had been brought-to on the previous day by a British man-of-war, and compelled to produce his papers. The American told the French captain that he had been allowed ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... "Foam" was well loaded and sail was made for Kingston, Jamaica. Off Morant Point they picked up a negro pilot in his little canoe far out at sea. The pilot wore a pair of blue pants, white shirt and stove-pipe hat, given him no doubt by some passenger or captain of a merchantman. He gravely saluted all on deck as he passed his bare feet over the bulwarks and turning to the captain said in the peculiar dialect of the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... said John. "We had sold all of them about two months before to a British merchantman who had lost her boats in a cyclone. One of the things our captain wanted to get to St. Thomas for was to buy some more boats. He heard he could get some ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Comes another vital change! When he left the shop, he felt all that he had to do to follow his destiny was to go to sea. Now the star has led him up to a blank wall. The only promotion he can obtain on these merchantmen is to a captainship; and the captaincy on a small merchantman will mean pretty much a monotonous flying back and forward like a shuttle between the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... of this remark, and easily pardoned its familiarity for its truth. In these sealers the discipline is by no means of that distant and military or naval character that is found in even an ordinary merchantman. As every seaman has an interest in the result of the voyage, some excuse was made for this departure from the more general usage; and this familiarity itself never exceeded the bounds that were necessary ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Jones was given charge of an old merchantman named Duras whose name he was allowed to change to suit his own pleasure. In deference to Benjamin Franklin who had always been his close friend Jones called his new craft the Bonhomme Richard, in honor of Benjamin Franklin's famous nickname of "Poor Richard." The Bonhomme Richard ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... treats a merchantman like gentlemen on the high seas, and I never knew one on 'em to turn their backs on friends or foes. What a pity they ever cut adrift from the Old Country! Howsoever, matey, it can't be helped, and you had better up with the port studding-sails, hang out ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... understanding needs one ultimate Cause on which it can rest amid the dance of fleeting phenomena; the heart cannot pour out its love to be shared among many. No string of goodly pearls will ever give the merchantman assurance that his quest is complete. Only when human nature finds all in One, and that One a living Person, the Lover and Friend of all souls, does it fold its wings and rest as a bird after ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... making it necessary for any meddlesome custom-house officers to come aboard and ask questions. Accordingly, he decided to stop at Valparaiso. He thought it likely that if he did not meet a vessel going into port which would lay to and take his letter, he might find some merchantman, anchored in the roadstead, to which he could send a boat, and on which he was sure to find some one who would willingly post ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... outside, but so close in and under their batteries that it was impossible to get at them in that position. We, one morning at daybreak, captured a row-boat with twenty-two men, armed with swivels and muskets. We had disguised the ship so much that she took us for a merchantman, and before she discovered her mistake was within pistol-shot. Three months had now expired, which had been passed much in the same manner as the last cruise, when a cutter came out to order ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... some point on this coast. There is no American man-of-war here to obtain intelligence. What risk does she run of being searched? But suppose that there is a man-of-war in port. What is to secure the master of the merchantman against her [the man-of-war's commander's knowing all about his [the merchant-man's] intention, or suspecting it in time to be upon him [the merchant-man] before he shall have run a league on his way to Texas?" Consul Trist ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... since this little story was set afloat on the sea of books. It is not a man-of-war, nor even a high-sided merchantman; only a small, peaceful sailing-vessel. Yet it has had rather an adventurous voyage. Twice it has fallen into the hands of pirates. The tides have carried it to far countries. It has been passed through the translator's ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... to meet came smoothly on until the pirate craft was well in range, when ports flew open along the stranger's sides, guns were run out, and a heavy broadside splintered through the planks of the robber galley. It was a man-of-war, not a merchantman, that had run Blackbeard down. The war-ship closed and grappled with the corsair, but while the sailors were standing at the chains ready to leap aboard and complete the subjugation of the outlaws a mass of flame burst from the pirate ship, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the little desert island of the Flat-Holme, in hopes of there meeting with the Irish fleet, which her sons, Edmund and Godwin, were bringing against the West of England. How the fleet had never come, and they had starved for many days; and how she had bribed a passing merchantman to take her and her wretched train to the land of Baldwin the Debonnaire, who might have pity on her for the sake of his daughter Judith, and Tosti her husband who died ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... and all representations and entreaties on the subject proved ineffectual. In this difficulty aid came from an unlooked-for quarter. Deserted by their own countrymen, the missionaries applied to the captain of a German merchantman, which was in the port, and the request being acceded to, two of the Fathers and five German sailors rowed ashore, armed to the teeth, to arrange for the escape of as many Christians as possible. They ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... ain't a-pervertin' Scriptur' nor nuthin', but I can't help thinkin' of one passage, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and when he hath found one pearl of great price, for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that pearl.' Well, Mary, I've been and sold my brig last week," he said, folding ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the Trebizond merchantman took on board his cargo of young and lovely Circassians, and navigated the Black Sea with a flowing sheet and a flag flying at his peak, which told his business and the commerce that he was engaged in; now the trade is contraband, and the slave ship has to pick its way cautiously ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... far than this. Everything God provides for us is personal. There is always the personal touch and presence. Do you remember that during the earlier days of the recent war with Spain this occurrence frequently took place? In the Caribbean waters a Spanish merchantman would be overtaken by an American warship. A few shots were sent over the bows of the merchantman with a demand for surrender. And then the Spanish flag was seen to drop from the merchantman's masthead ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... terrific. Every window in the hotel was shattered, and some scores of labourers working near the Gatun Locks were killed instantly. Six hundred tons of dynamite, secreted in the hold of a German merchantman, had been exploded as the vessel passed through the locks, and ten thousand tons of Portland cement had sunk in the tangled iron wreck, to form a huge blockading mass of solid rock on the floor ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... evening, September 26th; but my heart leaped within me to see her English colors. I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English merchantman, returning from Japan by the north and south seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddel of Deptford, a very civil man, and an excellent sailor. We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south; there were about fifty men in the ship; ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... The merchantman, having passed the protecting promontory, and swept around the tall ship of war, had gained an offing, about a half mile beyond, under the lee of a thickly-wooded, long, narrow island; and was now lying snugly at ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... a ramshackle building reminiscent of the days when the street bristled with bowsprits of ships from all over the world, an age when the American merchantman flew our flag on the uttermost of the seven-seas. On the ground floor was an apparently innocent junk dealer's shop, in reality the meeting-place of the junta. By an outside stairway the lofts above were reached, hiding their secrets behind windows opaque with ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... anxieties;— Soon maintenance grows the extreme reach of hope For those held in respect, as in a vice, By citizens of whom they are the pick. Of men the least bond is the roving seaman Who hires himself to merchantman or pirate For single voyages, stays where he may please, Lives his purse empty in a dozen ports, And ne'er obeys the ghost of what once was! His laugh chimes readily; his kiss, no symbol Of aught to come, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... — N. ship, vessel, sail; craft, bottom. navy, marine, fleet, flotilla; shipping. man of war &c (combatant) 726; transport, tender, storeship^; merchant ship, merchantman; packet, liner; whaler, slaver, collier, coaster, lighter; fishing boat, pilot boat; trawler, hulk; yacht; baggala^; floating hotel, floating palace; ocean greyhound. ship, bark, barque, brig, snow, hermaphrodite brig; brigantine, barkantine^; schooner; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was attached to the Chinese station, but had recently obtained information that war had been declared between England and the States. She was now making her way to the west by a circuitous route to avoid the British squadron, and, at the same time, with a view to pick up an English merchantman or two. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... last into the English ports, having accomplished nothing, and having expended superfluously a considerable amount of money and trouble. Essex, with a few of the vessels, subsequently made a cruise towards the Azores, but, beyond the capture of a Spanish merchantman or two, gained no glory and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with England suppose, or with France. This might be an English ship of war coming to catch up every merchantman she could overhaul that carried American colours, and make a prize of her; don't ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... his two children, he went first from Rye to Boulogne, and there, on the 15th of August, 1818, embarked in the Rose, a merchantman which had formerly been a warsloop. The long voyage was uninteresting until Cape Horn was reached. There, and in passing along the rugged coast-line of Tierra del Fuego, Lord Cochrane was struck by its wild scenery. He watched the lazy penguins that crowded on the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... rudder that had been unshipped. The storm abating, he made for the first port, to repair the ship's damages, intending to return to Jamaica, to deliver her up to her captain; but, from a vessel they spoke at sea, he learned that Jemmison was gone to England in a merchantman. To England then ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the security of their hiding places, the Germans were meditating a bold stroke. Submarines were being coaled and victualed in preparation for a dash across the Atlantic. Already, one enemy submarine—a merchantman—had passed the allied ships blocking the English channel and had crossed to America and returned. Some months later, a U-Boat of the war type had followed suit. A cordon of ally ships had been thrown around American ports to snare this venturesome submarine on its return, but it had eluded ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... freebooter, who had more than thirty such vessels under his command. The smallness of our vessel encouraged the attack, and her strength being so much more than in proportion to her size, supposing her a merchantman, rendered it fatal. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... curdle the blood of the brawniest pirate. He who had been Jack Cockrell in mortal guise was quick to slide the cabin hatch closed and fasten it. For the moment they had captured the armed brig Royal James and as ferocious a crew of rascals as ever scuttled a merchantman. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... wonders at, they having been formerly like sisters."—Diary, vol. i. p. 284.] and in four days we came to Caen, and myself, sister, and maid went from Mr. Fanborne's house, where my brother and all his family lodged, aboard a small merchantman that lay in the river; and upon the 30th of August, I arrived in the Cowes, near Southampton, to which place I went that night, and came to London two days after. This was the first time I had taken a journey without your father, and the first manage of ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... commanded by men who had come into favor at the court of King Angus recently. The Black Star and the Queen Flavia—whose captain had contemptuously ignored an order from Gram to re-christen her Queen Evita—had remained. They were his ships, not King Angus'. The captain of the merchantman from Wardshaven now on orbit refused to take a cargo to Newhaven; he had been chartered by King Angus, and would take orders from no ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... the great ships, the fisherman's sloop, the king's corvette, and the merchantman, all lay anchored in the basin and harbor, their prows boring into the gale, their crude hulls rising and falling, tossing and plunging, tugging like living things at their hempen cables. The snow fell ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... while waiting in the harbor of Havana for a crew, our vessel was anchored near the wharves, next to an English merchantman. One afternoon I heard a scream from the neighboring craft, and perceived a boy rush from the cabin with his face dyed in blood. He was instantly pursued by a burly seaman, inflicting blows with his fist. I implored the brute to desist, but my interference ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Spirite had not come whole out of her struggle with the powers of the abyss. Timbers were sadly strained, a mast was gone, every man on board was weary and muscle-sore. And then a Levantine gale drove the crippled merchantman down on ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... the navigating officers of a merchantman are merely the employees of civilians—the shipowners. In the second place, the Board of Trade, by compelling shipowners to carry a certain number of navigators and engineers holding certificates of competency, have placed them on one professional ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and having closed the door, and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... general character of the persons sent in pressed men's rooms Admiralty thus had Trade on the hip, and Trade suffered much in consequence. More than one rich merchantman, rusty from long voyaging, strewed the coast with her cargo and timbers because all the able seamen had been taken out of her, and none better than old men and boys could be found to sail her. Few seaport towns were as wise as Sunderland, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... off the sea, the privateers continued the naval war. At that time a merchantman could be turned into a capable fighting ship by adding strengthening timbers and providing the necessary guns. Such a ship, when commissioned as a privateer by the United States government, could capture the enemy's merchantmen and on occasion fight small cruisers. For instance, ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart
... allowed their wages[n]: great advantages in point of wages are given to volunteer seamen in order to induce them to enter into his majesty's service[o]: and every foreign seaman, who during a war shall serve two years in any man of war, merchantman, or privateer, is naturalized ipso facto[p]. About the middle of king William's reign, a scheme was set on foot[q] for a register of seamen to the number of thirty thousand, for a constant and regular supply of the king's fleet; with great privileges to the registered men, and, on the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... and 1696.] were so developed and expanded as to include the following prescriptions: (1) In general all import and export trade must be conducted in ships built in England, in Ireland, or in the colonies, manned and commanded by British subjects. Thus, if a French or Dutch merchantman appeared in Massachusetts Bay, offering to sell at a great bargain his cargo of spices or silks, the shrewd merchants of Boston were legally bound not to buy of him. (2) Certain "enumerated" articles, such as sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and, later, rice and furs, could be exported ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Royal Navy. But this is a merchantman; you don't think he will presume to break into the monopoly of the superior branch. He will only swear by the wind and weather. Thunder and squalls! Donner and blitzen! Handspikes and halyards! these are the innocent execrations of the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... had been done he had bargained with a Peruvian captain of a merchantman to carry the cargo ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... the order—a certain brand of wine, iced beyond recognition for any normal palate, was always served to Aholibah. She loved "needles on her tongue," she asseverated if any one offered her weaker stuff. That July night she looked like a piratical craft that had captured a sleek merchantman for prize. She was all smoothness; Ambroise alone detected the retracted claws of the leopardess. She blazed in the electric illumination, and her large hat, with its swelling plumes, threw her dusky features into ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... chained to the privateer, had, in sinking, like to have lost that too. Two or three of the hands got on shore, and came to The Hague; but how terribly I was alarmed any one may judge, when I heard the ship the privateer had was the Newfoundland merchantman, as I had bought two shares in out of four. About two months after news was current about The Hague of a privateer or merchantman, one of them of the town, though not known which, having an engagement in the Mediterranean, in which action both the privateer and ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... these priceless floating depots. Imbros, here, lies quite open to submarine attacks, and in a northerly gale, becomes a mere roadstead. The Admiral, who regards soldiers as wayward water babes, has insisted on lashing a merchantman to each side of the Arcadian to serve as torpedo buffers. There are, it seems, at least two German submarines prowling about at the present moment between Gaba Tepe and Cape Helles. After torpedoing the Triumph the same ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... privateer La Doutelle, one of the fastest little vessels on the coast. She has brought in more than one English merchantman as a prize." ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... is a merchantman, which arrived last night from St. Pierre," said the sailor, respectfully ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... twenty-nine vessels were British trawlers. There were four British and one French merchantman in the list. The others were vessels of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... being transferred to the American flag, engaged in commerce between American ports and South American ports, or other places remotely removed from the Fatherland, Great Britain would make no difficulty. The Dacia, a merchantman of the Hamburg-America line, had been lying at her wharf in Port Arthur, Texas, since the outbreak of the war. In early January, 1915, she was purchased by Mr. E.N. Breitung, of Marquette, Michigan. Mr. Breitung caused ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... they have been doing! They have been doing great work. I cruised over there on one of our destroyers. She was five years old, yet one day during an 85-mile run to answer an S O S call she exceeded her builder's trial by half a knot. Incidentally, she saved a merchantman which had been shelled for four hours by a U-boat and her $3,000,000 cargo; also she ran the U-boat under—one of the new big U-boats with two 5.9 deck guns. On the same day two other destroyers of our group took from a sinking ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... his kind friend the captain, and the rest of his mates. The sailor who accompanied him patted him on the back, and spoke cheeringly to him in a foreign language; and he was soon between decks with the crew. Several of these could speak English, and Will found that he was on board a Dutch merchantman, bound with troops ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... Venice," Browning wrote to a friend on Good Friday, 1838. He voyaged as sole passenger on a merchantman, and soon was on friendliest terms with the rough kindly captain. For the first fortnight the sea was stormy and Browning suffered much; as they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, Captain Davidson aided him to reach the deck, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... their cousin like two fussy little tugs with a fine merchantman, the children returned to the parlour, where Emil kissed all the women and shook hands with all the men except his uncle; him he embraced in the good old German style, to the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... private one, with our English colours and uniform. In beating up to Pernambuco, we spoke with vessels every day, but they were all Portuguese. When near to St. Salvadore, we were in great danger of being captured by a British frigate, which we mistook for a large merchantman, until she came within half musket shot of us; but, luckily for us, it died away calm, when we out with our oars, which seamen call sweeps, and in spite of their round and grape shot, we got clear of ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... change.' But its illegitimation does not seem to have greatly circumscribed its activity. In the face of apparent danger, it has continued to flourish, and there has been hardly more risk to a pirate with a living cargo from Gaboon, than would be encountered by an ordinary merchantman from pirates in the Gulf. Indeed, there were many who believed and feared, prior to the breaking out of the present rebellion, that the next compromise between the North and South would be the repeal of all laws prohibiting the African slave-trade. So rapidly ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fortified with salt. All this made Mistress Windham's memory the more sad. A good reliable rose red was always wanting. Madder could be purchased, for it was raised in the Southern colonies, but the madder was a brown red. Finally some enterprising merchantman introduced cochineal, and the vacuum was filled. With a judicious addition of logwood, rose red, wine red and deep ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... hull is painted black, but there is abundance of scarlet, bright blue, and gilding upon her prow, stern, and upper works. The slim hull itself is about 140 feet long, 14 feet wide, and rides the harbor so lightly as to show it draws very little water; for the warship, even more perhaps than the merchantman, is built on the theory that her crew must drag her up upon the beach almost ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... waterman, and that you have no great fancy for a man-of-war, although you have a hankering for the sea. Now, as you cannot cruise with your friend Spicer on the Spanish Main, nor yet be safe from impressment in a privateer or merchantman, we have been thinking that, perhaps, you would have no objection to be a channel and river pilot; and if so, I have an old friend in that service, who, I think, may help you. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... went down to the quay, to get a boat to take her out to the merchantman, she looked in at the post-office, where she found Marie Forstberg already up, and busy in the sitting-room in her morning dress. She was greatly astonished when Elizabeth told her of ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... take the usual precaution of visit and search to ascertain whether a suspected merchantman is in fact of belligerent nationality, or is in fact carrying contraband ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... touching in our ports for refreshment or advices; and against this the article provides. But the armed vessels of France have been also admitted to land and sell their prize-goods here for a consumption, in which case, it is as reasonable they should pay duties, as the goods of a merchantman landed and sold for consumption. They have however demanded, and as a matter of right, to sell them free of duty, a right, they say, given by this article of the treaty, though the article does not give the right to sell at all. Where a treaty does not give ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... toward six o'clock we approached Gibraltar, running beneath a crimson sunset and between misty purple shores. On one hand lay Africa, on the other the Moorish country, both shrouded in a soft haze and edged with snowy foam. Down below the soldiers of Italy were singing. A merchantman of belligerent nationality, our ship proudly flew its flag again. Indeed, had it failed to do so, the British patrol-boats would long since have known the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... rare February day of the year 1760, and a young Tony, newly of age, and bound on the grand tour aboard the crack merchantman of old Bracknell's fleet, felt his heart leap up as the distant city trembled into shape. Venice! The name, since childhood, had been a magician's wand to him. In the hall of the old Bracknell house at Salem there hung a series of yellowing prints which Uncle ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... a ship belonging to the islands, one which had been prepared for this purpose; and left the port, accompanied by another Chinese merchantman, which was at Manila. In this ship Sinsay embarked with all the ship supplies, in order to take them to the port of Buliano, where Omoncon's large ship was stationed, and in which the voyage was to be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... fight of July 22nd la malheureuse affaire; his ships were encumbered with sick; they worked badly; on August 15th a north-east gale carried away the top-mast of a Spanish ship; and having heard from a Danish merchantman the news—false news, as it afterwards appeared—that Cornwallis with twenty-five ships was to the north, he turned and scudded before the wind. He could not divine the disastrous influence of his conduct on the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... have no anchor; and one foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water. No forms can have any dangerous importance whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes no difference how many ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... every American port to desert and ship under the Stars and Stripes. In the winter of 1801 every British ship visiting New York lost the greater part of its crew. At Norfolk the entire crew of a British merchantman deserted to an American sloop-of-war. A lively trade was done in forged papers of American citizenship, and the British naval officer who gave a boat-load of bluejackets shore leave at New York was liable to find them all Americans when their leave was up. Other nations looked ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... We have punished them heavily enough; we have taken their ship, and sent half of them to Eternity. Let them take the tale back to Tunis how a British merchantman re-captured their ship. Now set to work to get some of the sail off both craft, and then, when we have got things snug, we will splice the main ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... without receiving, or even thinking of his share of prize-money. And he had to support existence with such mean mechanical employment as came in his way, till an opportunity was offered of engaging himself as seaman, again from sheer necessity, on a homeward-bound merchantman—an opportunity which he seized, if not eagerly, for there was no eagerness left in him, yet under the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... very properly clapped the door in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened, Excellency; no, not I. Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without a ducat in my pocket, or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board of a Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected: but luckily we were attacked by a pirate; half the crew were butchered, the rest captured. I was one of the last,—always in luck, you see, signor, monks' sons have a knack that way! The captain of the pirate took ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... purge the brain of dogmatic phrases, which force revolutionary jargon into the background and keep a man sensible and practical; and all the more because three of them, Jean Bon, former captain of a merchantman, Prieur and Carnot, engineering officers, are professional men and go to the front to put their shoulders to the wheel on the spot. Jean Bon, always visiting the coasts, goes on board a vessel of the fleet leaving Brest to save the great American convoy; Carnot, at Watignies, orders Jourdan ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of the batteries. The pith of the Akashi's report, therefore, was that there were two Russian ships—the new cruiser Variag, and the gunboat Korietz—at Chemulpo, four cruisers and an armed merchantman at Vladivostock, while the remainder of the Russian fleet was at ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... upon the other tack, or by some other artifice, she might escape us; but it clearing up in less than an hour, we found that we had both weathered and forereached upon her considerably, and now we were near enough discover that she was only a merchantman, without so much as a single tier of guns. About half an hour after twelve, being then within a reasonable distance of her, we fired four shot amongst her rigging, on which they lowered their topsails and bore ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... a tremendous amount of canvas; and leaping through the sea with the pace of a dolphin, came up with the doomed merchantman hand ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... approach of a boat which they were sending off in our direction. The distance was about five miles, and the men had a hard pull in the broiling heat. When they came on board, you should have seen how we all clustered about them. The ship was a merchantman from Bristol, bound to New York; she had been out eleven weeks, her provisions were beginning to run short, and the crew was on allowance. Our captain, who is a gentleman, furnished them with flour, tea, sugar, porter, cold tongue, ham, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... containing a few half-consumed embers; there was the compass, swinging between the stern-windows. A nice Brussels carpet was under my feet; and there were three doors on either side of the cabin, opening into the staterooms. The vessel appeared to have been a first-class merchantman, fitted to carry half a dozen passengers; and how such a vessel as this ever found its way into these northern seas was a mystery. I just glanced for a moment into these rooms, and saw there trunks and valises, and all the ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... 6: In the work of MM. Correard and Savigny, this gentleman is made mention of in substance as follows. "On the evening of the 11th, they met with more of the natives, and an Irishman, captain of a merchantman, who, of his own accord, had left St Louis with the intention of assisting the sufferers. He spoke the language of the country, and was dressed in the Moorish costume. We are sorry we cannot recollect the name ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... voyage. The foul winds prophesied never blew, the icebergs kept far away to the northward, the excitement of flight from Russian privateers was exchanged for the sight of one harmless merchantman; even the fogs off Newfoundland ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the stern of the canoe, and he was about to question him, when the other, grasping his arm with an expressive touch, pointed to a dark object moving across the road. Gerald turned his head, and beheld the same figure that had so recently quitted the cabin of the merchantman. Following its movements, he saw it noiselessly enter into the grounds of a cottage, opposite an old tannery, where it ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the deep afar Robin the brave was waging war, With other tarry desperadoes About the latitude of Barbadoes. He knew no touch of craven fear; His voice was thunder in the cheer; First, from the main-to'-gallan' high, The skulking merchantman to spy— The first to bound upon the deck, The last to leave the sinking wreck. His hand was steel, his word was law, His mates regarded him with awe. No pirate in the whole profession Held a more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... merchantman, had been captured by a French frigate, and brought into the port of Philadelphia, where she was completely equipped as a privateer, and was just about to sail on a cruise under the name of le petit Democrat, when the secretary of the treasury communicated her situation ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Germans say that merchant-ships ought not to carry weapons for defense; it is too dangerous for the dainty U-boat; every merchantman thus armed must be treated as a vessel of war. But the law of nations for more than two centuries has sanctioned the carrying of defensive armament by merchant-ships, and precisely because they might need it to protect themselves ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... and rivelled by adverse blasts, gallantly struggling towards the shore. The vessel was not of English build, and resembled in its bulk and fashion those employed by the Easterlings in their trade, half merchantman, half war-ship. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... English America, curiously in contrast with the law-abiding character of the Non-conformist colonizations. Along the seaboard wild pirates nestled, skimmers of the seas of the most daring type, worthy brethren of the Kidds, the Blackbeards, and the Teaches, terrors of the merchantman and the well-disposed emigrant. But in spite of the sternness of the law-abiding, and the savageness of the lawless portions of the English settlements, they contrasted favorably in every way with the settlements which were nominally ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... vessel sighted a large merchantman, off the coast of Spain, and engaged it in a terrible conflict. The merchantman carried twice as many people and heavier guns than the Sea Rover; but by the skilful management of his ship Captain Lane continued to rake her fore and aft until she was forced to strike her colors. When ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... this year an eighteen-gun ship from Cambridge, Mass., fell in with a Barbary pirate of twenty guns, and was hard put to it to escape. And, as the seventeenth century drew near its close, these pests of the sea so increased, that evil was sure to befall the peaceful merchantman that put to sea without due preparation for a fight or ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... down the black flag and turn myself into an honest merchantman, with children in the hold and a wife at the helm. You would remind me that grey hairs begin to show, that health falls into rags, that high spirits split like canvas, and that in the end the bright buccaneer drifts, an old derelict, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... table where Ishmael sat there was no one present except the old retired merchantman, Captain Mountz, who sat on the opposite side, directly under the port lights. And with the rolling of the ship these two diners, holding desperately onto the edge of the table, were tossed up and down like boys ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Clieu was a merchantman, and many were the trials that beset passengers and crew. Narrowly escaping capture by a corsair of Tunis, menaced by a violent tempest that threatened to annihilate them, they finally encountered a calm that proved more appalling than either. The ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... from the Prince of Conde. It was proved that in the summer of 1563 there were 400 English and Huguenot rovers in and about the Channel, and that they had taken 700 prizes between them. The Queen's own ships followed suit. Captain Cotton in the Phoenix captured an Antwerp merchantman in Flushing. The harbour-master protested. Cotton laughed, and sailed away with his prize. The Regent Margaret wrote in indignation to Elizabeth. Such insolence, she said, was not to be endured. She would have Captain Cotton chastised as an example to all others. Elizabeth measured ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... wise man, and when he found his son bent on a sailor's life, determined to give him a taste-of it, in the hope that this would be enough. John was therefore taken from school at the age of thirteen, and sent in a merchantman to Lisbon. The Bay of Biscay, however, did not cure his enthusiasm; and so we next find John Franklin as a midshipman on board the Polyphemus, seventy-four guns. These were stirring times. In 1801 young Franklin's ship led the line in the battle ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... twenty-sixth; but my heart leaped within me to see her English colors. I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English merchantman returning from Japan by the North and South Seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddle, of Deptford, a very civil man and an excellent sailor. We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south. There were about fifty men in the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... fun to ram a merchantman, with all the law you get into," said the signal quartermaster, standing near the young women. "And ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... in China, when even to this day accounts reach us, through the Press, of piratical enterprises; but never again will the black, rakish-looking craft of the pirate, with the Jolly Roger flying, be liable to pounce down upon the unsuspecting and harmless merchantman. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Singapore—which, though an English colony, is a very Babel of languages and nations—in a Bombay merchantman, whose captain was an Arab, the cook Chinese, and the fourteen men who composed the crew belonged to at least half that many different nations, whilst our party in the cabin were English, Scotch, French and American. After eight days of rather stormy weather we disembarked at the mouth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... His next wish was for clothes to which he might have a better right than to the uniform of the senior midshipman of H.M.S. Calypso—a garb in which he did not like to appear before the French Consul. Mr. Thompson consulted his Greek clerk, and a chest belonging to a captured merchantman, which had been claimed as British property, but had not found an owner, was opened, and proved to contain a wardrobe sufficient to equip Arthur like other gentlemen of the day, in a dark crimson coat, with a little gold lace about it, and the rest of the dress white, a wide beaver hat, looped ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the forecastle. Landsmen, whose ideas of a sailor's sleeping-place are taken from the snow-white hammocks and exquisitely clean berth-deck of a man of war, or from the rough, but substantial comfort of a well-appointed merchantman, can form no conception of the surpassing and countless abominations of a South-Sea whaler. The "Little Jule," as her crew affectionately styled her, was a craft of two hundred tons or thereabouts; she had sailed with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... devil are we to do?" he asked. "The merchantman will flee us; the war-vessel will destroy us; neither will believe our colors or give us a chance to explain. We will meet even a worse reception if we go nosing around a British port—mines, nets and all of it. We ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... end of the year the Chamber of Commerce examines the boys, and an exhibition drill is given. The graduates are usually fitted to ship in a merchantman as "ordinary," and are aided in their efforts to find a good ship and a good captain by many of New York's most prominent merchants and ship-owners, who take a deep interest in the school. The instruction on board the St. ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to be read aloud in class. 27. Outline for testing silent reading. Tell the story briefly in your own words, following the topic headings given in the book. 28. Find in the Glossary the meaning of: keep; human; engines; bandages; turret; carriages; merchantman. 29. Pronounce: ruined; drowned; waistcoat; Imperial; courtiers; theater; reigned; learned; Lilliput; graciously; ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... of the year 18—, I was the only passenger on board the merchantman, Alceste, which was bound to the Brazils. One fine moonlight night, I stood on the deck, and gazed on the quiet ocean, on which the moon-beams danced. The wind was so still, that it scarcely agitated the sails, which were spread out to invite it. I looked round; it was the same on every side—a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked toward Roosevelt Street. It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the children, and what did it matter? She had fought her fight for twenty years, and it had ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... see, in a Revenue sloop, And, off Cape Finisteere, A merchantman we see, A Frenchman, going free, So we made for the bold Mounseer, D'ye see? We made for the bold Mounseer! But she proved to be a Frigate - and she up with her ports, And fires with a thirty-two! It come uncommon near, But we answered with a cheer, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... on them! If it announce the coming of one loved and longed for, how we delight to look at it, to sit down on it, to caress it in our fancies, as a lone exile walking out on a windy pier yearns towards the merchantman lying alongside, with the colors of his own native land at her peak, and the name of the port he sailed from long ago upon her stern! But if it tell the near approach of the undesired, inevitable guest, what sound short ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... already stated, it is the most useless of the large rivers of the world as a carrier of ships of commerce. No boat, carrying produce of field, mill or mart, has ever passed up or down its course. No whitewinged schooner or other merchantman has enlivened its course by proudly gliding on its bosom to waiting port, where cargoes are discharged and received. No thrilling fleet of battleships ever has seen its banks, or ever will, for it is useless, absolutely, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the Captain decided things had gone too far. He himself apparently remained to watch over the linen; but at five o'clock on the Sunday morning, Aunt Anna, Fleeming, and his mother were rowed in a pour of rain on board an English merchantman, to suffer "nine mortal hours of agonising suspense." With the end of that time peace was restored. On Tuesday morning officers with white flags appeared on the bastions; then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched in, two hundred men sleeping ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sea, as will be seen in the chapter on Naval Operations. On September 4, 1914, an attempt was made by the Germans to wreck the British gunboat Dwarf, which with the cruiser Cumberland was watching German ships in the Cameroon estuary. The German merchantman Nachtigal tried later to ram the same gunboat and wrecked herself with a loss of 36 men. Further attempts to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... fine March morning, we steered our course to the English coast, to take an active part in the commercial war. Gently the waves splashed around the prow and glided over the lower deck. Our duty was to examine every merchantman we met with the object of destroying those of the enemy. The essential thing was to ascertain the nationality of the ships we stopped. On the following morning, we were given several ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... Mahisasakah school; the Dirghagama and Samyuktagama Sutras; and also the Samyukta-sanchaya-pitaka;—all being works unknown in the land of Han. Having obtained these Sanscrit works, he took passage in a large merchantman, on board of which there were more than two hundred men, and to which was attached by a rope a smaller vessel, as a provision against damage or injury to the large one from the perils of the navigation. With a favorable wind, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... had been in that part of the Bay. The vessel's head was now laid to the southward and westward, in waiting for the zephyr, which might soon be expected. The gallant frigate, seen from the impending rocks, looked like a light merchantman, in all but her symmetry and warlike guise; nature being moulded on so grand a scale all along that coast, as to render objects of human art unusually diminutive to the eye. On the other hand, the country-houses, churches, hermitages, convents, and villages, clustered ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore, And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... good luck suddenly deserted him; for no sooner was he berthed, with sails stowed and anchors out, than he discovered that the French merchantman next him was none other than a vessel which on his last voyage out he had attempted to board in mid-channel, and, but for a sudden squall, would have captured and plundered. The captain of the merchantman had already reported his wrongs to the authorities; and now, ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... ocean; and even the few splendid victories obtained by the gallant little American navy, had failed as yet to inspire in the bosoms of her sailors, any feeling like that of fear or of caution; and Captain Horton, of the merchantman Betsy Allen, smoked his pipe, and drank his glass as unconcernedly as if there were no such thing as an American privateer upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... traffic or for pleasure; but, above the crowd swaying forever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or thirst of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the temple, attesting to them, whether they would hear or whether they would forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchantman might buy without a price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... fiery Moors from the Barbary States, of all hues and countries, and marked solely by the common stamp of a wild-beast ferocity. Rasping up on either side, with oars trailing to save them from snapping, they poured in a living torrent with horrid yell and shrill whoop upon the defenceless merchantman. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and dodge—when they had a mind to it—and mostly they had. Was it the two pounds ten a month that sent them there? They didn't think their pay half good enough. No; it was something in them, something inborn and subtle and everlasting. I don't say positively that the crew of a French or German merchantman wouldn't have done it, but I doubt whether it would have been done in the same way. There was a completeness in it, something solid like a principle, and masterful like an instinct—a disclosure of something secret—of that hidden something, that gift, ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... had been suffering from an attack of panic as a result of Wilson's recent decision to support the preparedness movement. They were further terrified by the possibility that some American citizen traveling on an armed merchantman might lose his life and that the demand for entrance into the war might thus become irresistible. Bryanites, pro-German propagandists, and Irish combined against the President, and were reinforced by ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... vessel appeared in sight. I was immediately assisted to the mast-head, and commanded to report what vessel it was. I examined it for a quarter of an hour through my spy-glass, and was at last convinced that it was a large Dutch merchantman. The captain then had me brought down, and communicated my discovery to the crew, who received ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... mind could enjoy in any state; but at the end of that space, good usage had so far spoiled him that he longed to be at liberty again, though at the expense of another sea voyage. Accordingly, leaving his master, he went away again on board of a merchantman bound for the Straits. During the time which the ship lay in port for her loading, he contracted some distemper from the heat of the country, and his immoderate love of its wine and the fruits that grow there. These brought him very low, and he falling at the same time into company of some ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... procedure, and no doubt accounted for ship after ship being taken and plundered. I felt startled, too, as I realised the strength of the crews, and what a simultaneous attempt to board might mean. With an ordinary merchantman, even with a strong crew, undoubtedly death and destruction, while even with our well-armed men and guns I began to have doubts. A slip in the manoeuvres, ever so slight a mistake on Captain Thwaites' part, or a blunder in the carrying ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... at a lad of spirit like you thinking of such a thing. If you have learned a lot you will, if you are steady, be sure to get on in time, and may very well become a petty officer. No lad of spirit would take to the life of a merchantman who could enter the navy. I don't say that some of the Indiamen are not fine ships, but you would find it very hard to get a berth on one of them. Our lieutenant will be over here in a day or two, and I have no doubt that if I speak to him for you he will ship you ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... the sinking of the steamer Falaba, by which an American citizen lost his life, the Government of the United States is surprised to find the Imperial German Government contending that an effort on the part of a merchantman to escape capture and secure assistance alters the obligation of the officer seeking to make the capture in respect of the safety of the lives of those on board the merchantman, although the vessel had ceased her attempt to escape when torpedoed. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... hair was black, his heavy jaw was shadowed by an enormous black mustachio. A kerchief of brilliant red tied about his throat gave him the appearance of the matador in a Spanish bullfight rather than the officer of an English merchantman. He glanced at the dory occasionally, shook his head silently in response to the requests to go aboard, and at length when that did not serve to put an end to them, he shrugged his shoulders and disappeared. The seaman continued to lean over the gunwale and ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... if bound for a hostile port, another that it is only necessary to show that the ultimate destination of the goods is hostile. The latter rule was declared to apply in the American case of the Springbok, an English merchantman conveying goods in 1863 from a neutral port to a neutral port, but, it was alleged, with the evident intention that the goods should reach by a later stage of the same voyage the belligerent forces of the Southern ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... see in war times it ain't always convenient. A peaceful merchantman don't want to show her lights to any privateers that may happen to be cruising about, and you may be sure that the privateer don't want to attract the attention of peaceful traders until she is close upon them, or to come ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... vessels of every nationality and bound upon every sort of errand. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutral ownership bound from neutral port to neutral port, have been destroyed along with vessels of belligerent ownership in constantly increasing numbers. Sometimes the merchantman attacked has been warned and summoned to surrender before being fired on or torpedoed; sometimes passengers or crews have been vouchsafed the poor security of being allowed to take to the ship's boats before she was sent to the bottom. But again and ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... be objected that men trained in Royal Navy discipline and habits never mix well with men trained in the other service; their customs and habits of life and work are quite different to those of the merchant seaman. It used to be a recognised belief that the sailor of the merchantman could adapt himself with striking facility to the work of the Royal Navy and its discipline, but the Navy trained man was never successful aboard a cargo vessel. The former impression originated, no doubt, during the good old times when it was customary for prowling ruffians from men-of-war ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... had now a long "spell" of fine weather, without any incident to break the monotony of our lives, there can be no better place to describe the duties, regulations, and customs of an American merchantman, of which ours was a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and his party had to tranship, for their vessel was probably of small tonnage, and only fit to run along the coast. In either port they would have no difficulty in finding some merchantman to take them across to Syria. Accordingly they shifted into one bound for Tyre, and apparently ready to sail. The second part of their voyage took them right out to sea, and their course lay to the west, and then to the south of Cyprus, which Luke mentions as if to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... unpopular, and ultimately on the winning, side. Casting his rote for the diffusion of popular literature, a wide suffrage, a mild penal code, he yet endorsed the saying of an old American author, "A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft that will never sink, but then your feet ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... away. 'Easy now,' a voice said. 'You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked toward Roosevelt Street. It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the children, and what did it matter? She had fought ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... and uniform. In beating up to Pernambuco, we spoke with vessels every day, but they were all Portuguese. When near to St. Salvadore, we were in great danger of being captured by a British frigate, which we mistook for a large merchantman, until she came within half musket shot of us; but, luckily for us, it died away calm, when we out with our oars, which seamen call sweeps, and in spite of their round and grape shot, we got clear of her without ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... trained in Royal Navy discipline and habits never mix well with men trained in the other service; their customs and habits of life and work are quite different to those of the merchant seaman. It used to be a recognised belief that the sailor of the merchantman could adapt himself with striking facility to the work of the Royal Navy and its discipline, but the Navy trained man was never successful aboard a cargo vessel. The former impression originated, no doubt, during the good old times when it was customary for prowling ruffians from men-of-war to drag ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... already possesses; even what he bought and paid for but yesterday; even what everybody else would call absolutely the poor man's own, he throws it all back again upon God every day, and thus holds all he has as his instant purchase of the great Merchantman. The poor man's market is as far as possible from being a Vanity Fair, but the catalogues and the sale-lists of that fair may be taken as a specimen of the things that change hands continually in the poor man's market ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... of a wizard. Having an understanding with the elements, certain phenomena of theirs are exhibited for his particular benefit. Unusually clear weather, with a fine steady breeze, is a certain sign that a merchantman is at hand; whale-spouts seen from the harbour are tokens of a whaling vessel's approach; and thunder and lightning, happening so seldom as they do, are proof positive that a man-of-war ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... in sinking, like to have lost that too. Two or three of the hands got on shore, and came to The Hague; but how terribly I was alarmed any one may judge, when I heard the ship the privateer had was the Newfoundland merchantman, as I had bought two shares in out of four. About two months after news was current about The Hague of a privateer or merchantman, one of them of the town, though not known which, having an engagement in the Mediterranean, in which action both the privateer and trader was ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... anchor; and one foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water. No forms can have any dangerous importance ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... frigate for watching the Egyptian coast, and, indeed, had he been able to send a larger craft, it would not have been so well suited for the purpose, for the pirates would hardly have ventured to attack her. We shall, after we have put out to sea, disguise the brig and rig her as a merchantman in order to tempt them out. We shall not do it until we are well away, for the pirates may have friends here who might send them information. We shall head for the south, and shall give out that we are ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... the Chinese station, but had recently obtained information that war had been declared between England and the States. She was now making her way to the west by a circuitous route to avoid the British squadron, and, at the same time, with a view to pick up an English merchantman or two. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... But then it would obviously not do to rely on such a mere chance as that. Another idea was to get into the open water southward of the Isle of Pines, and look out for either an English frigate—one of which would be pretty certain to be cruising in that direction—or an eastward-bound merchantman from Honduras. ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... as the Windsor Castle, were becalmed. He immediately went down to Newton, acquainting him with the circumstance, which bore a very suspicious appearance. Newton hastened on deck; with his glass he could plainly distinguish that the stranger was a vessel of a low, raking description, evidently no merchantman, but built for sailing fast, and in all probability a privateer. The man at the mast-head reported that boats were constantly passing between the two vessels. Newton, who felt very anxious for the safety of his friends, accepted the offer ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... breeze filled the sails. An unusual arrangement of the vessel attracted the attention of Albert. Soon he observed men at the guns, and Captain Templeton standing in a commanding position. The brig was bearing down upon a French merchantman. ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... Here, a stately barque, with disordered topsails almost bursting from the yards as she hurries her hapless crew—all ignorant, perchance, of its proximity—towards the dread lee-shore. Elsewhere, looming through the murk, a ponderous merchantman, her mainmast and mizzen gone, and just enough of the foremast left to support the bellying foresail that bears ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... seems to have been more adventuresome than the other boys in Priscilla's family. He was master of a merchantman in Boston and commander of armed vessels which supplied marine posts with provisions. Like his sister, Elizabeth, he had thirteen children. He was once accused of witchcraft, when he was present at a trial, and was imprisoned fifteen weeks without being allowed ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... Desmond, with a slight gesture to Bulger to restrain himself—he too had recognized the newcomers—"since when the Nawab has taken into his service the crew of an interloping English merchantman?" ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... friend, take care.' That's what he said," I thought to myself; "I know French enough for that. Take care of what? And why does he call Walters 'my friend'? He's only a common sailor, and a midshipman even in a merchantman oughtn't to be friends in that way ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... wrong. Berkeley was wrong. The Right of Search did not include the right to search a foreign man-of-war, though, unlike the modern 'right of search,' which is confined to cargoes, it did include the right to search a neutral merchantman on the high seas for any 'national' who was 'wanted.' Canning, however, distinctly stated that the men's nationality would affect the consideration of restoring them or not. Monroe now had a good case. But he made the fatal mistake of writing officially to Canning ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... rest of his mates. The sailor who accompanied him patted him on the back, and spoke cheeringly to him in a foreign language; and he was soon between decks with the crew. Several of these could speak English, and Will found that he was on board a Dutch merchantman, ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... Yesterday's papers may serve for to-day's, and Sunday's for all the week. There is, as it were, a syncope in all things; nothing is doing; art, science, and business, are alike at a stand-still. The stage, the press, the easel, the loom, the rudder of the merchantman, and the helm of the state, all are alike in a most extraordinary negative condition. The world is in a catalepsy. It hears and sees, but it can ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... of many a mystified merchantman searched the murk for those coruscations with which the crescent of forts had constellated the Atlantic, the mariner's sea-rent waiting ready, with his ship's-papers, in his cash box: but no galaxy of ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... to ram a merchantman, with all the law you get into," said the signal quartermaster, standing near the young women. "And if they hit ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... account. But he was never so foolish as to think that peaceful trade could go on without a fighting navy to protect it. So he built men-of-war; though he used these for trade as well. Men-of-war built specially for fighting were of course much better in a battle than any mere merchantman could be. But in those days, and for some time after, merchantmen went about well armed and often joined the king's ships of the Royal Navy during war, as many of them did against the Germans in our ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... took barge and went to Blackwall, and viewed the Dock and the new west Dock which is newly made there, and a brave new merchantman which is to launched shortly, and they say to be called the Royal Oake. Hence we walked to Dick Shoare, and thence to the Towre, and so home."—Vol. i. p. 178. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... in the hope that you will receive it in time to meet me at the steamer—the Columba, a merchantman. It sails at four from Pier 7, East Boston. If not, let me tell you again how much I thank you for what you have done—and would do. From time to time I shall write to you, if you wish, and you can write to me in care of Dr. Carl Sorez, ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... running beneath a crimson sunset and between misty purple shores. On one hand lay Africa, on the other the Moorish country, both shrouded in a soft haze and edged with snowy foam. Down below the soldiers of Italy were singing. A merchantman of belligerent nationality, our ship proudly flew its flag again. Indeed, had it failed to do so, the British patrol-boats would long since ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... with as much content as a person of his unsettled mind could enjoy in any state; but at the end of that space, good usage had so far spoiled him that he longed to be at liberty again, though at the expense of another sea voyage. Accordingly, leaving his master, he went away again on board of a merchantman bound for the Straits. During the time which the ship lay in port for her loading, he contracted some distemper from the heat of the country, and his immoderate love of its wine and the fruits that grow there. These brought him very low, and he falling at the same time into company ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... well known to all my short-jacketed readers, that it seldom has, in "sea dic." or nautical language, any reference to antiquity on the part of the bearer thereof; but is merely a familiar or affectionate distinction; as the commander of a merchantman, although perhaps under twenty years of age, is invariably called the "old man," by ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... discussion as to the order—a certain brand of wine, iced beyond recognition for any normal palate, was always served to Aholibah. She loved "needles on her tongue," she asseverated if any one offered her weaker stuff. That July night she looked like a piratical craft that had captured a sleek merchantman for prize. She was all smoothness; Ambroise alone detected the retracted claws of the leopardess. She blazed in the electric illumination, and her large hat, with its swelling plumes, threw her dusky features into shadow—her eyes seemed far away under ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Very different would be the fate of an unarmed vessel, for the explosion of a torpedo would probably blow such a large hole in the thin steel plates that she would go to the bottom like a stone. To torpedo a merchantman simply means the cold-blooded murder of the crew, for their chances of escape would be almost negligible, whilst it is impossible to find words to describe the attempts which have been made to sink hospital ships. About the last there is a degree of callous ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... German Government with regard to its announcement of a war zone and the use of submarines against merchantmen on the high seas—the principle that the high seas are free, that the character and cargo of a merchantman must first be ascertained before she can lawfully be seized or destroyed, and that the lives of noncombatants may in no case be put in jeopardy unless the vessel resists or seeks to escape after being summoned to submit to examination, for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... a long "spell" of fine weather, without any incident to break the monotony of our lives, there can be no better place to describe the duties, regulations, and customs of an American merchantman, of which ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... "Merchantman fitted out for privateersman, probably. That's the sort of craft Russia would be likeliest to send to a secret prison like ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... a huge three-master of clumsy build; her elaborately ornamented prow, the shape of her decks, and her rigging all marked her as an old-fashioned merchantman. ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... women and children are crammed down below, where the unhappy prisoners are likewise stowed away during an action. Their principal plan is boarding a vessel, if possible, and carrying her by numbers; and certainly if a merchantman fired ill, she would inevitably be taken; but with grape and canister fairly directed, the slaughter would be so great that they would be glad to sheer off before they neared a vessel. This is, of course, supposing a calm, for in a breeze they would never have the hardihood to venture ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... it. The ship slackened her sails, and I came up with her between five and six in the evening, September 26th; but my heart leaped within me to see her English colours. I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English merchantman, returning from Japan by the North and South seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddel, of Deptford, a very civil man, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... whole earth with our name and power, nothing good has been our lot. In the first place we disputed in cliques at home and within our walls, and later we exported this plague to the camps. Therefore our city, like a great merchantman full of a crowd of every race borne without a pilot these many years through rough water, rolls and shoots hither and thither because it is without ballast. Do not, then, allow her to be longer exposed to the tempest; for you see that she is waterlogged. And do not let her ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... heard of harsh discipline on war-vessels, and that the navy tar, when in a foreign port, is permitted to see little more of the country than may be viewed over the rail or from the rigging of his ship. A merchantman is the craft he inclines to—at least, to make a beginning with—especially one that trades from port to port, visiting many lands; for, in truth, his leaning toward a sea life has much to do with a desire ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... said: "I am very sorry, captain, to have to correct your impression that this is part of our maneuvers. Japan is at war with the United States of America, and every merchantman flying the American flag is from ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... bright beams of the morning sun, that looked aslant through the open window. He ran out to the cliff. The sturdy sea-breeze fanned his feverish cheeks, and tossed the white caps of waves that beat in pleasant music on the beach below. A stately merchantman with snowy canvas was entering the Gate. The voices of sailors came cheerfully from a bark at anchor below the point. The muskets of the sentries gleamed brightly on Alcatraz, and the rolling of drums swelled on the breeze. Farther on, the hills of San Francisco, cottage-crowned ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... before he took leave of his master; rather, indeed, departed without taking leave; and, having broke open his mother's escritore, and carried off with him all the valuable effects he there found, to the amount of about fifty pounds, he marched off to sea, and went on board a merchantman, whence he was afterwards pressed into a man ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Vinaya-pitaka of the Mahisasakah (school);(1) the Dirghagama and Samyuktagama(2) (Sutras); and also the Samyukta-sanchaya-pitaka;(3)—all being works unknown in the land of Han. Having obtained these Sanskrit works, he took passage in a large merchantman, on board of which there were more than 200 men, and to which was attached by a rope a smaller vessel, as a provision against damage or injury to the large one from the perils of the navigation. With a favourable wind, ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... great ships, the fisherman's sloop, the king's corvette, and the merchantman, all lay anchored in the basin and harbor, their prows boring into the gale, their crude hulls rising and falling, tossing and plunging, tugging like living things at their hempen cables. The snow fell upon them, changing them into phantoms, all seemingly eager to join ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... have them exterminated. He himself could not protect his own trade. But the neutrality of the island must be respected. Skinner, the Zebra's captain, sailed away towards the Boca, and found, to his grim delight, that the privateers had mistaken him for a certain English merchantman whom they had blockaded in Port of Spain, and were giving him chase. He let them come up and try to board; and what followed may be easily guessed. In three-quarters of an hour they were all burnt, sunk, or driven on shore; the remnant of their crews escaped to ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... to the stern of the canoe, and he was about to question him, when the other, grasping his arm with an expressive touch, pointed to a dark object moving across the road. Gerald turned his head, and beheld the same figure that had so recently quitted the cabin of the merchantman. Following its movements, he saw it noiselessly enter into the grounds of a cottage, opposite an old ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... S. The conflict between affection and duty was at length decided in favour of my father, and the rejected lover set out in despair for Bristol. From thence, in a few days after his arrival, he took his passage in a merchantman for a distant part of the globe; and from that hour no intelligence ever arrived of his fate or fortune. I have often heard my mother speak of this ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... not superiority stepped in) at the very outset if, for instance, we had sent several Dreadnoughts to catch the Emden. It was strongly suspected, mind you, that there were German armed vessels on the trade routes. As one merchantman after another was sunk there could no longer be any doubt about it. What if, in panic, we had suddenly dispersed our naval force to every part of the globe? What then? But we didn't. What again if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... laden merchantman, was the slowest sailer, it was decided that she should take the lead, the other two following. La Salle, with his brother, Father Membre, and some others, transferred their quarters from the Joli to ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... usual amount of bustle on board a merchantman the canvas was at length set, the yards braced in the manner necessary for casting the ship, and the men returned to the windlass—Williams walking aft and standing by the wheel, whilst Rogers and Martin remained on the forecastle to superintend the operation of getting the anchor. Williams ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... accent. I am not a Frenchman, although I write 'monsieur' before my name. Still less am I either a German or an Italian. Neither am I a genuine Russian, although I look to Russia as my native country. In brief, my father was a Russian, my mother was a Frenchwoman, and I was born on board a merchantman during a gale of wind ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... expedition of Commodore Perry, few efforts to intrude upon the Japanese had proceeded from the United States. An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1837, by an American merchantman, to return a party of Japanese who had been shipwrecked on our Western coast. In 1846, Commodore Biddle was deputed to open negotiations, and entered the Bay of Yedo with two ships of war. Receiving an unfavorable answer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... business takes a little lull, And gives the merchantman A chance to seek domestic scenes, To interview the magazines, Convoke his growing clan, The boys and girls almost unknown, And get acquainted with his own; As well the household budget ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... craft resembling the lugger had been in that part of the Bay. The vessel's head was now laid to the southward and westward, in waiting for the zephyr, which might soon be expected. The gallant frigate, seen from the impending rocks, looked like a light merchantman, in all but her symmetry and warlike guise; nature being moulded on so grand a scale all along that coast, as to render objects of human art unusually diminutive to the eye. On the other hand, the country-houses, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... flag or pennon, and sorely stripped and rivelled by adverse blasts, gallantly struggling towards the shore. The vessel was not of English build, and resembled in its bulk and fashion those employed by the Easterlings in their trade, half merchantman, half war-ship. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been doing! They have been doing great work. I cruised over there on one of our destroyers. She was five years old, yet one day during an 85-mile run to answer an S O S call she exceeded her builder's trial by half a knot. Incidentally, she saved a merchantman which had been shelled for four hours by a U-boat and her $3,000,000 cargo; also she ran the U-boat under—one of the new big U-boats with two 5.9 deck guns. On the same day two other destroyers of our group took from ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... the process, the pledge of England should be broken, and her honour betrayed, is not regarded by the best authorities as an objection or even as a relevant fact. In the more sacred name of uniformity Ireland is swamped in the Westminster Parliament like a fishing-smack in the wash of a great merchantman. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... great tumult and expectation in Bristol. The partisans of Monmouth knew that he was almost within sight of their city, and imagined that he would be among them before daybreak. About an hour after sunset a merchantman lying at the quay took fire. Such an occurrence, in a port crowded with shipping, could not but excite great alarm. The whole river was in commotion. The streets were crowded. Seditious cries were heard amidst the darkness and confusion. It was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of, this state of things, there was trouble brewing on board the vessel. Our mate (as the first mate is always called, par excellence) was a worthy man;—a more honest, upright, and kind-hearted man I never saw; but he was too good for the mate of a merchantman. He was not the man to call a sailor a "son of a b—-h," and knock him down with a handspike. He wanted the energy and spirit for such a voyage as ours, and for such a captain. Captain T—— was a vigorous, energetic fellow. As sailors say, "he ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of the biggest merchantman, grasping the steering oar by its handle, which the Greeks call [Greek: oiax], and with one hand bringing it to the turning point, according to the rules of his art, by pressure about a centre, can turn the ship, although she may be laden with a very large or even enormous ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... was a mate of a merchantman, but when most of the officers of the former royal navy had emigrated or perished, he was, in 1793, made a captain of the republican navy, and in 1796 an admiral. During the battle of Aboukir he was the chief of the staff, under Admiral Brueys, and saved himself ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... loss; Asia Minor ports are being shelled; one-third of the Dardanelles reported clear of Turkish mines; concentration of Turkish fleet reported; Germans state that a submarine, reported by the Captain of British merchantman Thordis to have been sunk by his vessel, escaped; German Embassy at Washington expresses regret over torpedo attack on British hospital ship Asturias in February, stating that the attack, which did no harm, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of a merchantman engineer would not seem, to open a fair prospect into literature. The work is gruelling and at the same time monotonous. Constant change of scene and absence of home ties are (I speak subject to correction) demoralizing; after the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... two pounds ten a month that sent them there? They didn't think their pay half good enough. No; it was something in them, something inborn and subtle and everlasting. I don't say positively that the crew of a French or German merchantman wouldn't have done it, but I doubt whether it would have been done in the same way. There was a completeness in it, something solid like a principle, and masterful like an instinct—a disclosure of something secret—of that hidden something, ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... that she was, and her weary sailors found brief respite in the harbor of Valparaiso on March 14, 1813. Thence Porter headed up the coast, disguising the trim frigate so that she looked like a lubberly, high-pooped Spanish merchantman. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... captain of a sailing merchantman bound for England, who had been engaged to transport the Americans ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... but so close in and under their batteries that it was impossible to get at them in that position. We, one morning at daybreak, captured a row-boat with twenty-two men, armed with swivels and muskets. We had disguised the ship so much that she took us for a merchantman, and before she discovered her mistake was within pistol-shot. Three months had now expired, which had been passed much in the same manner as the last cruise, when a cutter came out to order us into ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... which they gave vent. The bodies of the two men who were killed, while yet warm, were thrown overboard directly they were found to be dead, and the wounded were dragged below, and left without a surgeon or anyone to attend on them. Instead of the timid Spanish merchantman we expected to get alongside, we found that this vessel was no other than a United States man-of-war sent to look out for the Foam—in fact, that we had caught a Tartar. Hawk, to do him justice, stood undaunted, his energies rising with the occasion, ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... send it to the bottom. If rammed it was lost. Should a submarine rise to the surface, send an officer aboard a ship it had halted, and await the result of his search, it would be exposed all the time to destruction at the hands of enemy vessels coming up to her aid. Indeed if the merchantman happened to carry one gun a single shot might put the assailant out of business. Accordingly the practice grew up among the Germans of launching their torpedoes without a word of warning at their helpless victim. The wound inflicted by a torpedo is such that the ship will go down ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... the history of the past and the Utopian speculation on the future; in noble theology, capable statesmanship, and science at once brilliant and profound; in the voyage of discovery, and the change of the swan-like merchantman into a very fire-drake of war for the defence of the threatened shores; in the first brave speech of the Puritan in Elizabeth's Parliament, the first murmurs of the voice of liberty, soon to thunder throughout the land; in the naturalizing of foreign genius by translation, and the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... weather been calmer, the pirates would have at once boarded the vessel and carried her as a prize into the harbor; but the sea ran so high that this was impossible. Manton therefore ran down as close to the side of the merchantman (for such she seemed to be) as enabled him to hail her through the speaking-trumpet. When sufficiently near he ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... his expectations. In Venice there were constantly bargains to be purchased from ships returning laden with the spoils of some captured Genoese merchantman, or taken in the sack of some Eastern seaport. The prices, too, asked by the traders with the towns of Syria or the Black Sea, were but a fraction of those charged when these goods arrived in London. It was true that occasionally some of his cargoes ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... North Berwick, with little escort—as there was a truce for the time between England and Scotland; and they were under no apprehension of meeting with any vessels, save those of the former nation. Notwithstanding this, the ship which carried the Prince was captured by an armed merchantman, and carried to London, where Henry IV., the usurping Bolingbroke, utterly regardless of treaties, committed him and his attendants ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... actually happened. The admiral considered the fight of July 22nd la malheureuse affaire; his ships were encumbered with sick; they worked badly; on August 15th a north-east gale carried away the top-mast of a Spanish ship; and having heard from a Danish merchantman the news—false news, as it afterwards appeared—that Cornwallis with twenty-five ships was to the north, he turned and scudded before the wind. He could not divine the disastrous influence of his conduct ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... The bishop was merchantman, freighting ships. His wharves are wide, his fleet is great, his cargoes are many. Only he is freighting ships for heaven. No bales of merchandise nor ingots of iron, but souls for whom Christ died,—these are his cargoes; ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... letter will reach England by a merchantman now on its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not see my native land, perhaps for many years. We have already reached a very high latitude, and it is the height of summer; but last Monday, July 31, we were nearly surrounded by ice which closed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... himself gallantly through his danger; when he has endured the brunt of war, and come through it with victory; when he has exposed himself on behalf of his country and singed his epaulets with an enemy's fire. Captain Wilkes tapped a merchantman on the shoulder in the high seas, and told him that his passengers were wanted. In doing this he showed no lack of spirit, for it might be his duty; but where was his spirit when he submitted to be ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... declared between Germany and Russia the Porte ordered the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles closed to every kind of shipping, at the same time barring the entrances of these channels with rows of mines. The first boat to suffer from this measure was a British merchantman, which was sunk outside the Bosphorus, while another had a narrow escape in the Dardanelles. A large number of steamers of every nationality are waiting outside the straits for the special pilot boats of the Turkish Government, ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... is no planter, no dealer in horses and fat cattle, no grower of sugar-cane! Instead of that," he yelled, drawing his sword and flourishing it above his head, "instead of that I am pirate Bonnet, the new terror of the sea! You, my men, my brave men, you are not the crew of the good merchantman, the Sarah Williams, you are pirates all. You are the pirate crew of the pirate ship Revenge. That is now the name of this vessel on which you sail, and you are all pirates, who ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... in March, 1813, she gave chase to a sail off the Surinam River on the coast of South America. The stranger seemed to evince no great desire to escape; and the privateer soon gained sufficiently to discover that the supposed merchantman was a British sloop-of-war, whose long row of open ports showed that she carried twenty-seven guns. Champlin and his men found this a more ugly customer than they had expected; but it was too late to retreat, and to surrender was out of the question: so, calling the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... alongside, and grappling-irons were tossed aboard the ill-fated merchantman. The Pirate Captain, standing in the stern of his vessel, surveyed them ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... it would take to tell, the Vulture, black sails spread, moved forward to head off the merchantman ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... of the pirate brig stood following the motions of the flying merchantman; he thought not of sleep or of refreshment, it was enough for him that he was in pursuit of an English vessel, that his revenge was again to be ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... vital change! When he left the shop, he felt all that he had to do to follow his destiny was to go to sea. Now the star has led him up to a blank wall. The only promotion he can obtain on these merchantmen is to a captainship; and the captaincy on a small merchantman will mean pretty much a monotonous flying back and forward like a shuttle between the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... was hurrying to meet came smoothly on until the pirate craft was well in range, when ports flew open along the stranger's sides, guns were run out, and a heavy broadside splintered through the planks of the robber galley. It was a man-of-war, not a merchantman, that had run Blackbeard down. The war-ship closed and grappled with the corsair, but while the sailors were standing at the chains ready to leap aboard and complete the subjugation of the outlaws a mass of flame ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... this remark, and easily pardoned its familiarity for its truth. In these sealers the discipline is by no means of that distant and military or naval character that is found in even an ordinary merchantman. As every seaman has an interest in the result of the voyage, some excuse was made for this departure from the more general usage; and this familiarity itself never exceeded the bounds that were necessary to the observance ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Flat-Holme, in hopes of there meeting with the Irish fleet, which her sons, Edmund and Godwin, were bringing against the West of England. How the fleet had never come, and they had starved for many days; and how she had bribed a passing merchantman to take her and her wretched train to the land of Baldwin the Debonnaire, who might have pity on her for the sake of his daughter Judith, and Tosti her husband who died in ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... land; they were more successful on the sea, as will be seen in the chapter on Naval Operations. On September 4, 1914, an attempt was made by the Germans to wreck the British gunboat Dwarf, which with the cruiser Cumberland was watching German ships in the Cameroon estuary. The German merchantman Nachtigal tried later to ram the same gunboat and wrecked herself with a loss of 36 men. Further attempts to destroy ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... as he recovered from his wounds, That he had come aboard a merchantman, Had reached the island on the very day The castle was destroyed,—took refuge there And fought the robber band with all his might Until he fell, faint with the loss of blood, Into the rocky cleft wherein I found him. And ever since we two have lived together; He built ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... windward of an island between the tropics. We anchored at 11 o'clock in 14 fathom clean sand, and very smooth water, about three-quarters of a mile from the shore, in the same place where I anchored in my voyage round the world; and found riding here the Newport of London, a merchantman, Captain Barefoot commander, who welcomed me with 3 guns and I returned one for thanks. He came from Fayal, one of the western islands; and had store of wine and brandy aboard. He was taking in salt ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... of canvas; and leaping through the sea with the pace of a dolphin, came up with the doomed merchantman hand ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... mind the plane-tree. Come, Callicles, you were not so timid when you plundered the merchantman off Cape Malea. Take up the torch and move. Hippomachus, tell one of the slaves to bring a sow. (A sow was sacrificed to Ceres at the admission to the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his. In a pamphlet, entitled "Remarks upon the Navy," 1700, the term is declared to have been the name of a certain nautical personage who had lived in the lifetime of the writer. "There was, sir, in our time, one Captain Fudge, commander of a merchantman, who upon his return from a voyage, how ill-fraught soever his ship was, always brought home his owners a good cargo of lies; so much that now, aboard ship, the sailors, when they hear a great lie told, cry out, 'You fudge it!'" It is singular that such an obscure byword among ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was too poor to own a name! But he was cook's boy on board a merchantman, and they called him 'Galley Vick.' I never knew him by any other name. Did you ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and other privileges. This induced the Hirado feudatory to revoke the edict which he had issued against the Jesuits, and they were preparing to take advantage of his renewed hospitality when a Portuguese merchantman entered Hirado. Its appearance convinced the local chieftain that trade could be had without the accompaniment of religion, towards which he renewed his hostility. When, however, this change of demeanour was communicated to Funai, the Jesuit leader, Torres, hastened thence to Hirado, and induced ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... salt beef; for, he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge. At ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... sunset. The merchantman, having passed the protecting promontory, and swept around the tall ship of war, had gained an offing, about a half mile beyond, under the lee of a thickly-wooded, long, narrow island; and was now lying snugly at anchor, riding out the heavy ground-swell occasioned by the abated storm; while all ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... knowledge of taking a lunar, and of chronometers set by Greenwich time. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, when he so gallantly and piously reminded his crew that "heaven was as near by sea as on land," was sitting in the stern of a craft hardly so large as the long-boat of a modern merchantman. Yet the modern time does not give us commanders such as were of old, still less such seamen. Science has robbed the sea of its secret,—is every day bearing away something of the old difficulties and dangers which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... any," said John. "We had sold all of them about two months before to a British merchantman who had lost her boats in a cyclone. One of the things our captain wanted to get to St. Thomas for was to buy some more boats. He heard he could get ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... were instantly made, and our eyes gladdened by the sight of a boat which was put off from the ship. In this we soon embarked, and, with a sensation of wild delight, found ourselves once more treading the deck of a good vessel. She was an English merchantman, bound for Canton. We made a quick passage to that port, where we found a vessel just ready to sail for Liverpool. In this I embarked, with my father, who still remained in the same sad state of mental derangement. No incident, worthy of referring to now, occurred on our passage to Liverpool, ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... a-pervertin' Scriptur' nor nuthin', but I can't help thinkin' of one passage, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and when he hath found one pearl of great price, for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that pearl.' Well, Mary, I've been and sold my brig last week," he said, folding his daughter's little quiet head under his coat, "'cause it ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... during the last war between England and America, he had, with several others, been "impressed" upon the high seas, out of a New England merchantman. The ship that impressed him was an English frigate, the Macedonian, afterward taken by the Neversink, the ship ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... of history, Queen Mab's register, one whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman, you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator. List him a writer ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... deck to watch the approach of a boat which they were sending off in our direction. The distance was about five miles, and the men had a hard pull in the broiling heat. When they came on board, you should have seen how we all clustered about them. The ship was a merchantman from Bristol, bound to New York; she had been out eleven weeks, her provisions were beginning to run short, and the crew was on allowance. Our captain, who is a gentleman, furnished them with flour, tea, sugar, porter, cold tongue, ham, eggs, etc., etc. The men remained ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Trebizond merchantman took on board his cargo of young and lovely Circassians, and navigated the Black Sea with a flowing sheet and a flag flying at his peak, which told his business and the commerce that he was engaged in; now the trade is contraband, and the ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... thing they should never come on board the Gally again, nor have the Boat, or Small-Armes, for he had no Commission to take any but the King's Enemies, and Pirates, and that he would attack them with the Gally and drive them into Bombay; the other being a Merchantman and having no Guns, might easily have done it with a few hands, and with all the arguments and menaces he could use could scarce restraine them from their unlawful Designe, but at last prevailed, and with much ado got him cleare, and let ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... hostile port, another that it is only necessary to show that the ultimate destination of the goods is hostile. The latter rule was declared to apply in the American case of the Springbok, an English merchantman conveying goods in 1863 from a neutral port to a neutral port, but, it was alleged, with the evident intention that the goods should reach by a later stage of the same voyage the belligerent forces of the Southern Confederacy, ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... For three days the pirate ship pursued her course in fair weather, and without incident. On the fourth day she sighted a merchantman, to whom she gave chase. But the captain of the merchantman, seeing his danger, crowded on every stitch of canvas he possessed, and having a fair wind, and an uncommonly fast ship, he kept so far ahead that, the sun going down, the pirate lost sight ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... the other oceans, from the ends of the earth, carrying every kind of flag known to the nations. The whalesman, late harpooning "fish" in the Arctic ocean, with him who has been chasing "cachalot" in the Pacific or Indian; the merchantman standing towards Australia, China, or Japan the traders among the South Sea Islands; the coasters of Mexico, Chili, Peru; men-o'-war of every flag and fashion, frigates, corvettes, and double-deckers; even Chinese junks and Malayan prahus are seen setting into San ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the incidents of Captain Cook's visit to the Tonga, or Friendly group, the high state of cultivation in which he found the islands, the apparently friendly reception he met with from the chiefs, and their treacherous purposes to cut off the ship, as they shortly afterwards did a merchantman which visited their shores, murdering ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Spanish galley—for I remained on the same vessel all the time,—we, together with other vessels, made several attacks upon English ships, but we were beaten off with heavy loss in every case except one, and that was when we captured a small English merchantman called the Dainty, the unfortunate crew of which, I suppose, were put into the Inquisition, as I had been. These many conflicts were productive of heavy casualties among the slaves, many more, indeed, than among the soldiers and sailors who ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... meddlesome custom-house officers to come aboard and ask questions. Accordingly, he decided to stop at Valparaiso. He thought it likely that if he did not meet a vessel going into port which would lay to and take his letter, he might find some merchantman, anchored in the roadstead, to which he could send a boat, and on which he was sure to find some one who ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... and loveliness? Were her eyes less bright, or was her conversation less cheery, or were her attitudes less picturesque and pleasing, because old Captain Barkstead, instead of still sailing a fleet merchantman, now mopingly cleaned his reflectors, and, when strangers came, hid himself in the lantern? Moreover, had she not brought with her from her former home, wherever that might be, a wit, and intellect, and intelligence which might adorn any position? ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... masquerade as a blooming merchantman," chuckled "Dye." "This reminds me of my boyhood days when I read pirate stories. Do you remember that yarn about Kydd, where he rigged painted canvas about his ship and hid all the ports, 'Stump'? It was great. The whole ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... an English merchantman, had been captured by a French frigate, and brought into the port of Philadelphia, where she was completely equipped as a privateer, and was just about to sail on a cruise under the name of le petit Democrat, when the secretary of the treasury communicated ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... man, and when he found his son bent on a sailor's life, determined to give him a taste-of it, in the hope that this would be enough. John was therefore taken from school at the age of thirteen, and sent in a merchantman to Lisbon. The Bay of Biscay, however, did not cure his enthusiasm; and so we next find John Franklin as a midshipman on board the Polyphemus, seventy-four guns. These were stirring times. In 1801 young Franklin's ship led the line in the battle of Copenhagen, and ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... sinking of the steamer Falaba, by which an American citizen lost his life, the Government of the United States is surprised to find the Imperial German Government contending that an effort on the part of a merchantman to escape capture and secure assistance alters the obligation of the officer seeking to make the capture in respect of the safety of the lives of those on board the merchantman, although the vessel had ceased her attempt to escape when torpedoed. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... from the Barbary States, of all hues and countries, and marked solely by the common stamp of a wild-beast ferocity. Rasping up on either side, with oars trailing to save them from snapping, they poured in a living torrent with horrid yell and shrill whoop upon the defenceless merchantman. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre. There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore, And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore. He would not fly the Rovers' flag — the bloody or the black, But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack. He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew — he swore it was only a loan; But when I would ask for my own again, he ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... right than to the uniform of the senior midshipman of H.M.S. Calypso—a garb in which he did not like to appear before the French Consul. Mr. Thompson consulted his Greek clerk, and a chest belonging to a captured merchantman, which had been claimed as British property, but had not found an owner, was opened, and proved to contain a wardrobe sufficient to equip Arthur like other gentlemen of the day, in a dark crimson coat, with a little gold lace about it, and the rest of the dress ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he was killed he sat up and drank till the morning with some of his own men and the master of a merchantman; and having had intelligence of the two sloops coming to attack him, as has been before observed, one of his men asked him, in case anything should happen to him in the engagement with the sloops, whether his wife knew where he had buried his money? He answered, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... one. England at that time had become the undisputed mistress of the ocean; and even the few splendid victories obtained by the gallant little American navy, had failed as yet to inspire in the bosoms of her sailors, any feeling like that of fear or of caution; and Captain Horton, of the merchantman Betsy Allen, smoked his pipe, and drank his glass as unconcernedly as if there were no such thing as an American privateer ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... to pictures by Turner, The Garden of the Hesperides, and The Meuse: Orange-Merchantman going to pieces ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... have no great fancy for a man-of-war, although you have a hankering for the sea. Now, as you cannot cruise with your friend Spicer on the Spanish Main, nor yet be safe from impressment in a privateer or merchantman, we have been thinking that, perhaps, you would have no objection to be a channel and river pilot; and if so, I have an old friend in that service, who, I think, may help you. What ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... treated on board the Bellona, expressed his wish also to join; Jack, at Tom's recommendation, took him as his steward. Dr Locock, expressing his gratitude for the kindness he had received, went on shore, intending to remain until he could join an American ship, either a man-of-war or a merchantman. ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... the naval service. Subordination is the word here; this is not a trading-vessel, but a ship-of-war, and I intend to be implicitly obeyed," he continued sternly, looking even more fiercely at them. "Nevertheless," he added, somewhat relaxing his set features, "although we be not a peaceful merchantman, yet I expect and intend to do a little trading with the ships of the enemy, and in any prizes which we may capture, you know you will all have a just, nay, a liberal, share. It must not be lost sight of, however, that the first business of this ship, as of every other ship-of-war ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... into favor at the court of King Angus recently. The Black Star and the Queen Flavia—whose captain had contemptuously ignored an order from Gram to re-christen her Queen Evita—had remained. They were his ships, not King Angus'. The captain of the merchantman from Wardshaven now on orbit refused to take a cargo to Newhaven; he had been chartered by King Angus, and would take orders ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... was not inclined to stop, and it required another shot before she would stop her engines. The Nashville sent an officer in a boat to inform the steamer that she was a prize to the United States. She was found to be a Spanish merchantman, the Buena Ventura, and was sent in charge of a prize-crew to Key West. During the next thirty days, many other Spanish ships, with cargoes worth millions of dollars, were captured by different vessels of the navy. A few were released, ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... approach, this appearance was modified, and the true character of the vessel was plain—a Spanish merchantman of the first class, carrying negro slaves, amongst other valuable freight, from one colonial port to another. A very large, and, in its time, a very fine vessel, such as in those days were at intervals encountered ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... a rare February day of the year 1760, and a young Tony, newly of age, and bound on the grand tour aboard the crack merchantman of old Bracknell's fleet, felt his heart leap up as the distant city trembled into shape. Venice! The name, since childhood, had been a magician's wand to him. In the hall of the old Bracknell house at Salem there hung a series of yellowing prints which Uncle ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... and Phoenicia. It may be said of Phoenicia herself that she built-up her advanced culture on ideas borrowed almost wholly from her customers. But control of the seas for trade involved control of the seas for war, and behind the merchantman stood the trireme. It is significant and appropriate that a Phoenician coin that has come down to us bears the relief of a ship ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... They neither hated nor despised Gwynplaine. Only the meanest calker of the meanest crew of the meanest merchantman, anchored in the meanest English seaport, considered himself immeasurably superior to this amuser of the "scum," and believed that a calker is as superior to an actor as a lord is ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Jamaica, the captain, mate, and all but five of the crew died of yellow fever, and the ship was taken by Paul into Whitehaven. For this he received a share in the cargo, and in 1768, when he was twenty-one years old, the owners of the John (a merchantman sailing from the same port) gave him command, and in her he made several voyages to America. Life on a merchantman is rough enough to-day, and was still rougher at that time. To maintain discipline at sea requires a strong hand and a not too gentle tongue, and Jones was fully equipped ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... groups of three or four, are talking or chewing betel; one is making a new handle to his chopping-knife, another is stitching away at a new pair of trousers or a shirt, and all are as quiet and well-conducted as on board the best-ordered English merchantman. Two or three take it by turns to watch in the bows and see after the braces and halyards of the great sails; the two steersmen are below in the steerage; our captain, or the juragan, gives the course, guided partly by the compass and partly by the direction ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... foreign nations. Yea, the universities of this realm are not all clear in this detestable fact. But cursed is that belly which seeketh to be fed with so ungodly gains, and so deeply shameth his natural country. I know a merchantman, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble Libraries for forty shillings price: a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied in the stead of gray paper by the space of more than ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... present, he has led us to both poles, from the uttermost recesses of the Pacific to Behring's Strait, and the infinite wastes of the Antarctic waters. There is even an enormous region that no vessel, whether war-ship or merchantman, ever traverses, at a few degrees beyond the southern points of America and Africa. No one visits that ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... de Clieu was a merchantman, and many were the trials that beset passengers and crew. Narrowly escaping capture by a corsair of Tunis, menaced by a violent tempest that threatened to annihilate them, they finally encountered a calm that proved more appalling than either. The supply of drinking ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... sea-shore found there a fisherman's boat, which we entered thanking our stars and launched it and floated far away on the current, unknowing whither Destiny was directing us. On the third day we espied a vessel making us, whereat we rejoiced with joy excessive, deeming her to be some merchantman coming to our aidance. No sooner had it lain alongside, however, than up there sprang five or six pirates,[FN244] each brandishing a naked brand in hand, and boarding us tied our arms behind us and carried us to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... be known, And take back our attendant to the ship. And then once more, should ye appear to waste The time unduly, I will send again This same man hither in disguise, transformed To the strange semblance of a merchantman; From dark suggestion of whose crafty tongue, Thou, O my son, shalt gather timely counsel. Now to my ship. This charge I leave to thee. May secret Hermes guide us to our end, And civic Pallas, named of victory, The sure protectress ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... were so developed and expanded as to include the following prescriptions: (1) In general all import and export trade must be conducted in ships built in England, in Ireland, or in the colonies, manned and commanded by British subjects. Thus, if a French or Dutch merchantman appeared in Massachusetts Bay, offering to sell at a great bargain his cargo of spices or silks, the shrewd merchants of Boston were legally bound not to buy of him. (2) Certain "enumerated" articles, such as sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and, later, rice and furs, could be exported ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... silver, the walls christall, with four eagles and four greyhounds standing up at the top to bear up a dish; which indeed is one of the neatest pieces of plate that ever I saw, and the case is very pretty also. [A salt-sellar answering this description is preserved at the Tower.] This evening come a merchantman in the harbour, which we hired at London to carry horses to Portugall; but Lord! what running, here was to the seaside to hear what news, thinking it had come ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... extra floor in a merchantman to preserve the cargo from wet in the event of leakage. They are also used in magazines and sail-rooms so as to form a vacant space beneath the powder-barrels ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... shames. Scotty wept over his poor old mother in Edinburgh—a lady, he insisted, gently born—who was in reduced circumstances, who had pinched herself to pay the lump sum to the ship-owners for his apprenticeship, whose sacrificing dream had been to see him a merchantman officer and a gentleman, and who was heartbroken because he had deserted his ship in Australia and joined another as a common sailor before the mast. And Scotty proved it. He drew her last sad letter from his pocket and wept over ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... Bainbridge, as handsome, impetuous and daring a sailor as ever trod a deck. Bainbridge, who was five years younger than Decatur, began his seafaring career at the age of sixteen, and three years later was in command of a merchantman. He entered the navy at its reorganization in 1798, and two years later was appointed to command the George Washington, a ship of ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... negroes at some point on this coast. There is no American man-of-war here to obtain intelligence. What risk does she run of being searched? But suppose that there is a man-of-war in port. What is to secure the master of the merchantman against her [the man-of-war's commander's knowing all about his [the merchant-man's] intention, or suspecting it in time to be upon him [the merchant-man] before he shall have run a league on his way to Texas?" Consul Trist to ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... an hour later that the vessel, which those in the little boats some time before had made out to be a British merchantman, sighted them. Immediately small boats were lowered over the side and ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... few blacks, and the officers, kept the deck. The same expedient was likewise adopted, in part, by Captain Price, of the Volcano; and in order to give to his ship a still greater resemblance than it already had to a merchantman, he displayed an old faded scarlet ensign, and drew up his fore and mainsail in what sailors term ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... the sailor. "She is following him as a pirate follows a merchantman. Then, when she has lost sight of him, she will be in despair at not knowing who it is she is in love with, and whether he is a marquis or a shopkeeper. Really these young heads need an old fogy like ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
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