"Bowsprit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that in sixteen minutes the mizzenmast of the Guerriere went by the board, and her mainyard in the slings, and the hull, rigging, and sails were completely torn to pieces. The fire was kept up for fifteen minutes longer, when the main and foremast went, taking with them every spar except the bowsprit, and leaving the Guerriere a complete wreck. On seeing this Hull ordered the firing to cease, having brought his enemy in thirty minutes after he was fairly alongside to such a condition, that a few more broadsides must have carried ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... A few seconds later the light of a lantern was flashed down upon him. Then a figure crawled out on the spar projecting above his head, seized him by the collar, and lifted him from the bobstay to which he was clinging on to the bowsprit. A minute later he was standing ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... self-command, he aroused himself, at once, to his duty, and gave his orders coolly and with judgment. The first step was to endeavour to save the captain. The jolly-boat was lowered, and six men got in it, and passed ahead of the ship, with this benevolent design. Mark stood on the bowsprit, and saw them shoot past the bows of the vessel, and then, almost immediately, become lost to view in the gloomy darkness of the terrible scene. The men never reappeared, a common and an unknown fate thus sweeping away Captain Crutchely and ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... the strong current caught our bow and carried us into the bank, causing us to collide with and considerably damage two schooners, as well as the balcony of one of the numerous wooden houses standing on piles in the river. The bowsprit of one of the schooners was completely interlaced with the stanchions, ropes, and railings of our gangway, and it must have been a good stick not to snap off short. The tide was now much higher than when we came up, but the temperature had been ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the brain, how quickly do they yield to your power! Then Curiosity comes swimming by, making signs to her companions to follow; they plunge into the current. Imagination sits dreaming on the bank. She follows the torrent with her eyes and transforms the fragments of straw and reed into masts and bowsprit. And scarcely has the transformation taken place, before Desire, holding in one hand her skirt drawn up even to her knees, appears, sees the vessel and takes possession of it. O ye drinkers of water, it is by means of that magic spring that you have so often turned ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... just before passing Hellgate, at the head of East River, New York. On the passage down Long Island Sound she met with an accident. She ran into the schooner Resurrection, which was lying becalmed across her course, carrying away most of the schooner's bowsprit, but doing no serious damage. This, however, was not the worst. On arriving in New York, it was found that one of the passengers was missing! He had fallen overboard during the night, possibly at ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... a tolerably good beginning at thinking of all the mean actions I had wrought in the flesh, when I saw projecting beyond the crest of the wave a ship's bowsprit, with a man sitting on it, reading a newspaper! ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... That yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit steeved that way, she's the Hope of Prague. Nick Brady's her skipper, the meanest man on the Banks. We'll tell him so when we strike the Main Ledge. 'Way off yonder's the Day's Eye. The two Jeraulds own her. She's from Harwich; fastish, too, an' hez good luck; but Dad he'd find fish in a graveyard. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... an hour we were sent on board the enemy's vessels. I was carried to the Royal George, but Mr. Trant was taken on board the Wolfe. The Growler had lost her bowsprit, and was otherwise damaged, and had been forced to strike also. She had a man killed, and I believe one or two wounded.[8] On board of us, not a man, besides myself, had been touched! We seemed to have ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... wind slapped it from side to side with such angry vehemence that it would not run down on the stay. Harry dropped the helm, and holding it down with the pressure of his leg, seized the down haul and brought the jib, flapping and pounding, down to the bowsprit. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... her jibboom, which knocked him over into the moat and broke two of his ribs, and it was also maintained with equal truth that when she came to the wharf it was found she had brought away a small brass gun on her bowsprit, into which she had thrust it like the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... boats, and all pushed off from the doomed ship save a single craft, less crowded than the others, which waited, its occupants gesticulating angry dismay, for the one man who had not left the Star. He stood erect upon her bowsprit, a dark figure outlined against ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... rapid tide was met by the equally rapid stream of Burra Sound from the south side of Graemsay island. They formed a wide, swift current of broken water, which swirled and eddied about with a rough irregular motion. As our boat passed the bowsprit of the Lydia, my father turned her head towards the ship, and my uncle Mansie was alert and ready to catch the coil of rope that was at that moment thrown down to us ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... boatswain of the yard, assistance will be given to gammon the bowsprit, preparatory to its being clothed, which is the technical term for rigging that important spar. One of its principal offices is to support the foremast and fore-topmast, by means of their stays, as the slanting ropes are called which stretch forwards and ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... of bed, and after a dreary breakfast, with crumpled company, in the midst of confusion, were hustled on board a steamboat and lay wretched on deck until you saw France lunging and surging at you with great vehemence over the bowsprit. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... we started. It was a fearful moment; the wind freshened, and whistled through our rigging, and the night was so dark, that we could not see our bowsprit. We had only our foresail set; but with a strong flood-tide and a fair wind, with plenty of it, we passed between the advanced frigates like an arrow. It seemed to me like entering the gates of hell. As we flew rapidly along, and our own ships disappeared ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... on the 14th of January, 1769, entered the Strait of Le Maire, at which time the tide drove the ship out with so much violence, and raised such a sea off Cape St. Diego, that she frequently pitched, so that the bowsprit was under water. On the next day, the lieutenant anchored, first before a small cove, which was understood to be Port Maurice, and afterward in the Bay of Good Success. While the Endeavour was in this station, happened the memorable adventure of Mr. Banks, Dr. Solander, Mr. ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... share of a plough gone mad, and the yielding water it turned up curled over and fell white with foam, as the ploughed soil, heavy and brown, rolls and falls in a ridge. At each wave they met—and there was a short, chopping sea—the Pearl shivered from the point of the bowsprit to the rudder, which trembled under Pierre's hand; when the wind blew harder in gusts, the swell rose to the gunwale as if it would overflow into the boat. A coal brig from Liverpool was lying at anchor, waiting for the tide; they made ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Vesuvius's stern by a kind of shoreline. This done, the officer in charge presented himself on board with the clockwork under his arm, and in his hand a letter for Captain Crang, the first result of which was an order to dress ship. Within half an hour the Vesuvius's crew had adorned her from bowsprit to trucks and from trucks to stern with bunting, as if for a Birthday; though, as Mr. Jope observed, with a glance at the catamaran astern, the preparations pointed rather to a funeral. Mr. Jope, as third officer of the ship, betrayed some soreness that his two superiors had not ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... foggy night, when we were about three days out, our vessel collided with a derelict—a great, heavy, helpless mass, as dull and colorless as the darkness in which she was enveloped. We struck her almost head on, and her stump of a bowsprit was driven into our port bow with such tremendous violence that a great hole—nobody knew of what dimensions—was made ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... manned the gun Armorial. What cheerings did you share, Impulsive in the van, When down upon leagued France and Spain We English ran— The freshet at your bowsprit Like the foam upon the can. Bickering, your colors Licked up the Spanish air, You flapped with flames of battle-flags— Your challenge, Temeraire! The rear ones of our fleet They yearned to share your place, Still vying with the Victory Throughout that earnest race— The ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... on the solid rock-filled reach, the wharfinger's office at its head and a stone warehouse blocking the end, where the Nautilus lay with her high-steeved bowsprit pointing outward. The harbor was slaty, cold, and there was a continuous slapping of small waves on the shore. Darkening clouds hung low in the west, out of which the wind cut in flaws across the open. The town, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... lumbering behind us in a cart, through stone gaps and track-ways, from headland to headland.—The maddening excitement of expectation as she ran wildly towards the cliffs at our feet, and then sheered off again inexplicably;—her foremast and bowsprit, I recollect, were gone short off by the deck; a few rags of sail fluttered from her main and mizen. But with all straining of eyes and glasses, we could discern no sign of man on board. Well I recollect the mingled ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... best with it, of course, and dug up a stretch of storm canvas about the size of a leg-o'-mutton sail and lashed that to the jury foremast and the stump of the bowsprit. With that gale cuttin' off our ears, it was all the sail she could carry. Bill, we had him lashed near the tiller we'd rigged up, not havin' a wheel, and by-n-by, most of us was wishin' we was lashed. But the old hooker stood up ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... was fairly good ground and easy working, and the shell large. We did good business for a while, until one day I got a proper start. The life-line fouled on something, and I found that it had taken a turn round the bowsprit of a wreck. I got on top pretty quick, and, having had a talk with my mate, went down again. Very soon I knew the boat. It was the ——, and she had belonged to a man I had known very well. The strange part about the business was that the boat had been ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... early morning we had warped into dock at Hoboken, the Rotherhithe—and, in some respects, Rosherville—of New York, being situated on the opposite side of the river; and here, the Herzog von Gottingen lay, with her bowsprit jammed into a coal shed and her decks, aforetime so white and clean, all bespattered with dirt, and encumbered with hawsers and cables. These latter coiling and uncoiling themselves here, there, and everywhere, like so many writhing sea-serpents, and, tripping you ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... know not why, but something in my heart Has always whispered, "Westward seek your goal!" Three times they sent me east, but still I turned The bowsprit west, and felt among the floes Of ruttling ice along the Greenland coast, And down the rugged shore of Newfoundland, And past the rocky capes and wooded bays Where Gosnold sailed,—like one who feels his way With ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... in these days would be regarded as preposterous. She carried the usual fore and after castles, the latter surmounting the after extremity of her lofty poop. She was rigged with three masts in addition to the short spar which reared itself from the outer extremity of her bowsprit, and upon which the sprit topsail was set, the fore and main masts spreading courses, topsails, and—what was then quite an innovation—topgallant sails, while the mizen spread a lateen-shaped sail stretched along ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... Mariners who paid this courtesy to the Heer of the Donder Berg were never molested by his imps, though skipper Ouselsticker, of Fishkill,—for all he had a parson on board,—was once beset by a heavy squall, and the goblin came out of the mist and sat astraddle of his bowsprit, seeming to guide his schooner straight toward the rocks. The dominie chanted the song of Saint Nicolaus, and the goblin, unable to endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy parson's singing, shot upward like a ball and rode off on the gale, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... o'clock, the signal for departure was given; four of the boats stood out to sea, the raft was still along side of the frigate, where it was moored: the captain's barge was under the bowsprit and the barge near our machine, on which it had just embarked some men. At length we were ordered to depart; but whether from a presentiment of what was to happen to us, or whether Mr. Correard ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... unfriendly archipelago, trying to make up their minds to land now on Brava, now on St. Jago. Some of the ships grated on the rocks, all lost anchors and cables; one pinnace, her crew being asleep and no one on the watch, drove under the bowsprit of the 'Destiny,' struck her and sank. When they did effect a landing on Brava, they were soaked by the tropical autumnal rains of early October. Men were dying fast in all the ships. In deep dejection Raleigh gave the order to steer away ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the bowsprit, which having lost its principal support swayed upward, in peril of being torn away by the sagging jib. Vane first rounded up the boat into the wind and then followed him; and for several minutes they had a savage struggle with the madly-flapping sail before they flung it, bundled ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... of the Emma an elevated grating over the heel of her bowsprit whence the eye could take in the whole range of her deck and see every movement of her crew. It was a spot safe from eaves-droppers, though, of course, exposed to view. The sun had just set on the supreme content of Carter when Jorgenson ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Gervaise saw that his ships bore up nobly against the fierce strife. Each vessel showed the same canvass; viz.—a reefed fore-sail; a small triangular piece of strong, heavy cloth, fitted between the end of the bowsprit and the head of the fore-top-mast; a similar sail over the quarter-deck, between the mizzen and main masts, and a close-reefed main-top-sail Several times that morning, Captain Greenly had thought he should be compelled to substitute a lower surface to the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the Arabella's forward guns, which had meanwhile been reloaded, fired again at the Milagrosa, and this time smashed her bowsprit into splinters; so that for a moment she yawed wildly to port. Don Miguel swore profanely, and then, as the helm was put over to swing her back to her course, his own prow replied. But the aim was too high, and whilst one of the shots tore through the Arabella's shrouds and scarred her mainmast, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Minister who can make a successful speech need trouble himself little about an unsuccessful expedition. This is the talent which has made judges without law, and diplomatists without French, which has sent to the Admiralty men who did not know the stern of a ship from her bowsprit, and to the India Board men who did not know the difference between a rupee and a pagoda, which made a foreign secretary of Mr. Pitt, who, as George the Second said, had never opened Vattel, and which was very near making a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. Sheridan, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... after wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon shows .. her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep. Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... he hesitated, evidently afraid that some "unsonsy" thing was behind him. His voice sunk down to a tremulous whisper. "They said that old split-feet brought a whole bevy of little devilkins with him that cleared decks in the twinkling of a bowsprit." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Clowes, "and no doubt sent to convoy the transports we have been awaiting. Yes; there comes another. 'T is the fleet, beyond question," he continued, as the first vessel having opened from the land, the bowsprit of a second began ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... not stop, for it is almost impossible to start again. The captain in the meanwhile crowded her with sail; fifteen sails in all, every stay being gratified with a stay-sail, a boat-boom sent aloft for a maintop- gallant yard, and the derrick of a crane brought in service as bowsprit. All the time we have had a fine, fair wind and a smooth sea; to-day at noon our run was 203 miles (if you please!), and we are within some 360 miles of Sydney. Probably there has never been a more gallant success; and I can say honestly it was well worked for. No flurry, no high words, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... get off! And as for the brakes, they can beat any mule driver in cursing. Then, after a time, it got rather monotonous, and I took a short sea trip for my health. But, by Jove, every blessed inch of the whole ship—from the screw to the bowsprit—had something to say, and the bad language used by the garboard strake when the ship rolled was something too awful! You don't happen to know what the ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... Cove to save the life of a mother of seven—the Cuddy Cove men had without a moment's respite pulled twelve miles against a switch of wind from the north and were streaming sweat when they landed—once, when the doctor was thus about his beneficent business, a woman from Bowsprit Head brought her child to be cured, incredulous of the physician's power, but yet desperately seeking, as mothers will. She came timidly—her ailing child on her bosom, where, as it seemed to me, it had lain complaining since she gave ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... tomahawked at his door-sill, and his father had helped to chase beyond the mountains the whooping savages that carried the scalps of his friends at their girdle. The year his brother was born, John Maynard's ship had sailed up the James River with the bloody head of Blackbeard hanging to the bowsprit. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... exported in this direction) chiefly found its way into Scinde and Beloochistan; or by country vessels of a peculiar build, with a disproportionately lofty poop, and an elongated bow instead of a bowsprit, which carried on an uncertain and desultory traffic with Bombay and some of the Malabar ports. To avoid the dangerous sandbanks at the mouths of the Indus, as well as the intricate navigation through the winding streams of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the Irene rested in a solid mass of lily pads, with her bowsprit extending over the border of the Everglades, which stretched out eastward, a great, grassy, overflowed meadow, dotted with keys, to the horizon. A slough of clear water, deep enough to float the little power-boat, zigzagged out into the Glades, and the captain, with Mr. Barstow, Molly and Dick ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... then there would come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling waters, and then I fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on the bottom. Her masts had all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos of cordage floated and swung in the waves that broke over her. But her bowsprit remained entire, and shot out into the foamy dark, crowded with human beings. The first rocket had missed. They were preparing to fire another. Roxton stood with his telescope in his hand, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... have my bowsprit always wet, and my quarter-deck always dry. But it is no use wishing for what ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... of muchwas appears at the mouth of the creek. A long line of red and white flags extends from the top of the mainyard to the helm and streamers flutter from the mastheads. A monster bouquet of marigolds is mounted on the bowsprit, branches of trees are stuck about in all possible situations, and three or four large fishes hang from the bow, trailing their tails in the water. With the exception of the man at the helm, who sits stolid, minding his business, and one youth who plays ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... The two sloops rolled till the muzzles of their guns dipped in the sea; but both crews cheered heartily and fought on till, as the Wasp rubbed across the bow of the Frolic, her jib boom came in between the masts of the Wasp. A boarding party then leaped upon her bowsprit, and as they ran down the deck were amazed to see nobody save the man at the wheel and three wounded officers. As the British were not able to lower their flag, Lieutenant Biddle of the Wasp hauled it down. Scarcely had this been done when the British frigate ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... also brought a great number of bolts and other iron-work, a companion ladder, windlass, pump, bowsprit bits, bell, a torn jib, a quantity of cordage, and whatever else we could lay our hands upon, that might have the most remote chance of being of future ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... considerable masses of the same metallic substance, attached generally to pieces of the cement. After examining and puzzling myself over this strange scene for some time, my next care was to seek traces of the ship and of her crew; and before long I saw just outside the coral reef what had been her bowsprit, and presently, floating on the sea, one of her masts, with the sail attached. There could be little doubt that the shock had extended to her, had driven her off the reef where she had been fixed into the deep water outside, where ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... miserable we probably would have quarrelled. As it was, we merely humped over, and motioned the astonished Manuel to return to the shore. Our boat's head turned, we dropped down under the bow of the ship. In order to avoid the sweep of the seas Manuel held us as closely as possible under the bowsprit. We heard a hail above us. Looking up we saw Yank ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... satiny sand of the beach to the water's edge, and now could see that there were three people in the yacht,—a little round man with big spectacles at the rudder, a taller one, young and trim-looking in his tourist costume, who stood boldly out on the bowsprit, while a beautiful woman with blond hair leaned gracefully back ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... night on the floe. Just at daybreak I went over to the 'Endurance' with Wild and Hurley, in order to retrieve some tins of petrol that could be used to boil up milk for the rest of the men. The ship presented a painful spectacle of chaos and wreck. The jib-boom and bowsprit had snapped off during the night and now lay at right angles to the ship, with the chains, martingale, and bob-stay dragging them as the vessel quivered and moved in the grinding pack. The ice had driven over the forecastle and she was well down by the head. We secured two tins of petrol with ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... side, Where new-launch'd ships of infant-sailors ride: Rodneys in rags here British valour boast, And lisping Nelsons fright the Gallic coast. They fix the rudder, set the swelling sail, They point the bowsprit, and they blow the gale: True to her port, the frigate scuds away, And o'er that frowning ocean finds her bay: Her owner rigg'd her, and he knows her worth, And sees her, fearless, gunwale-deep go forth; Dreadless he views his sea, by breezes curl'd, When inch-high billows vex the watery world. ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... the picture. Christopher in the prow of the caravel (in the movies a prow is made by putting two little board fences together and propping up a bowsprit lengthwise over them). Columbus sits up, peers intently into the darkness, his hand to his brow—registers a look. Do I see America? No. Lies down, shuts his eyes and falls into an instantaneous movie sleep. His face fades out slowly to music, which means that he is going to dream. Then on ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... They probably decided to leave the commanders to settle such questions among themselves. The four vessels sailed from Rochelle on the 24th of July, 1684. They had advanced but about one hundred and fifty miles when a violent tempest overtook them. The Joli lost her bowsprit. Consequently the little squadron returned to Rochefort. Having repaired damages, the fleet again set sail, on the 1st ...
— 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
... opportunity, and, if possible, heave the ship to before dark. As a preliminary to this manoeuvre. I ordered the fore-topmast staysail to be hauled down; and this having been accomplished without damage to the sail, two of the men—Barr and the Swede—lay out upon the bowsprit to stow it, under the direction of the mate. This, at the moment that the order was given, seemed a perfectly simple affair, and entirely free from danger; it unfortunately happened, however—just at the moment when the sail had been made ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... three-fourths immerged; besides the three masts and the bowsprit, to which the whale-boat was suspended, the poop and the forecastle are the only por- tions that now are visible; and as the intervening section of the deck is quite below the water, these appear to be con- nected only by ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... object, a one-decked, single-masted vessel, with a long bowsprit, and a huge lateen sail like a wing, and the children fell in love with her at first sight. Estelle was quite sure that she was just such a ship as Mentor borrowed for Telemachus; but the poor maids were horribly frightened, and Babette might be heard ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knew clearly the use of each rope and pulley; he knew precisely the necessary amount of ballast to be taken, and the proper place for stowing it; he discoursed learnedly on knots and hitches, and aroused our sympathy by his laments on the absence of a bowsprit and foresail. Hutton was sent ashore to buy provisions. Charlie was set to baling out the boat. I occupied myself with mopping the seats, and generally "swabbing her up," as Hall called it, so that in due time we were ready ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... to indicate that she was the aggressor. The Dane and myself hurried aboard our respective schooners, but when I reached the Esperanza, my crew were weighing anchor, while the quarter-deck was strewn with fire-arms. The mate stood on the heel of the bowsprit, urging his men to alacrity; the sailors hove at the windlass with mingled shouts of passion and oaths of revenge; on a mattress lay the bleeding form of my second officer, while a seaman groaned beside him with a musket ball ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... but the waves from the open sea came roaring in and broke over the Daisy. The bowsprit dipped under the anchor chain, and the whole bulwark on the weatherside was carried away. The next sea swept into the open and now sinking boat. By frantic efforts they heaved up the anchor and the next wave swung the Daisy ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... moon was already rising bathed in silvery light, when Tonio Kroeger's ship reached the open sea. He stood by the bowsprit, his mantle shielding him from the steadily freshening breeze, and looked down into the dark roving and surging of the strong, smooth wave-bodies below him, as they rocked about each other, met each other with a splash, separated ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... was also gone; but the wreckage of this had been cut away and had gone adrift, leaving only the heel in the cap, and the ragged ends of the topmast shrouds streaming from the rim of the top. She had been a very smart-looking little vessel in her time, painted black with false ports, and under her bowsprit she sported a handsomely-carved half-length figure of a crowned woman, elaborately painted and gilded. She carried a short topgallant forecastle forward, and a full poop aft, reaching to within about twenty-five ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... flight—certainly her prow appeared to lift itself from the water. Suddenly there was a sound of something snapping—a sound that could be heard even through the yell of terror from the soldiers in the boat. It was the bowsprit which had gone, leaving the jib flying loose like ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... or bad breeding instead of merely inquiring about the existence of physical symptoms over which they admittedly had no control whatever. The security of a harbour, with a railway station not fifty yards from the yacht's bowsprit, had restored them, by dint of calming secret fears, to their customary condition of righteousness and rectitude. Several days of gusty rainstorms had elapsed at Ostend, and the passengers had had the opportunity to study the method of managing a yacht, and to visit the neighbourhood. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... he was near the dock, where a big ship pushed its bowsprit out over the street. Men were unloading bags and boxes from the boat. He ran down and asked the mate if he could help. "Yes!" was ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... eye looking round into the darkness, seeming to open and shut sleepily—grew brighter and brighter. It was right ahead! it rose as they approached it until it stood right above the bowsprit. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... When the bowsprit touched the rata-branches, which drooped like a curtain into the water, Mr. H—— made a signal to lower the mast, and parting the thick, blossom-covered foliage before us, with both hands, the way the boat had on her sent us gently ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... the old gentleman, as soon as they had pulled out past Castle Cornet, and had hoisted the masts and two rather dirty sprit sails, and had run out the bowsprit and a new clean jib with a view to putting the best possible face on matters, and were beginning to catch occasional puffs of a soft westerly breeze and to wallow slowly along,—"Ee see, time's o' consekens to me and my son. We got to arn ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... sagging jib. Vane first rounded up the boat into the wind and then followed him; and for several minutes they had a savage struggle with the madly-flapping sail before they flung it, bundled up, into the well. Then they ran in the bowsprit, and Vane felt glad that, although the craft had been rigged in the usual western fashion as a sloop, he had changed that by giving her a couple of headsails in place ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... we found that we were now fighting not for glory, but for life itself; for, on looking round, we saw to our horror that the grapnels had been loosened, and thus all retreat cut off. Our vessel was no longer lying alongside of the brig, but across its bows, so that the bowsprit of the latter crossed its deck. We could not, therefore, reach it, since the Spaniards had possession of the forecastle of their own vessel. At this critical moment we received unexpected aid in the shape of a shower of grape shot from our schooner, which swept away many of the negroes, besides ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... frigate had been obliged to put into Plymouth for repairs, and, on the 22nd Sept., 1796, was lying alongside of a sheer-hulk taking in her bowsprit, within a few yards of the dockyard jetty. The ship, being on the eve of sailing, was crowded with more than an hundred men, women, and children, above her usual complement. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon that a violent ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... men scrambled from the trucks and began to haul out of them all the essentials of a shipyard. Wheel, rudder, masts, spars, bowsprit, quantities of rope and cable followed—in fact, every conceivable thing necessary to convert the Jasper B. from a hulk into a properly rigged schooner. Cleggett, with a pith and brevity characteristic of the man, had given his ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... no incident occurred, but upon the Plata, during a storm, the Etoile was run down by a Spanish vessel, which broke her bowsprit, her beak head, and much of her rigging. The damages and the shock increased the leak of the ship, and forced her to return to Encenada de Baragan, where repairs were more easily managed than at Montevideo. It was impossible therefore to leave the river until ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the jib was still attached, and hauling on this had got the block down and in readiness for fastening on the new jib. The sheets were hooked on, and then while one hand ran the sail out with the out haul to the bowsprit end, the other hoisted with the halliards. By this time the boat was close to the broken water. As the sail filled her head payed off towards it. The wind lay her right over, and before she could gather way there was ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... shouted the Captain. "Never mind, Dolly, don't give way to temper, and curl up that bowsprit of yours with such a confounded ugly twist. There may be a chance yet. Let me see. I don't think that you are fifty-four. My nurse, Betty Holt, was called an old maid for thirty years, and married ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... in such cases, that the waves ran as high as the masts; and such was their violence that a transport, dashing against the ship "Amazone," immediately went down, with all on board. The crew of the "Prince d'Orange," half blinded by wind and spray, saw the great ship "Caribou," without bowsprit or main-topmast, driving towards them before the gale, and held their breath in expectation of the shock as she swept close alongside and vanished in the storm. [Footnote: Journal historique du Voyage de la Flotte commandee par M. le Duc d'Enville. ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... its chief purpose was. We also told him of the beautiful significance of the occasion, what happy thoughts it inspired, and how much sentiment was attached to it. Then we told him to get busy. We were in a Thanksgiving mood, being grateful that we were not riding around on the bowsprit of the rhino, and also because our relatives and friends at home were well at last reports, ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... ere," he continued, smacking the bulwark, "is His—Majesty's—ship—Tremendous, well known and respected between the Lizard and the Nore. Not lookin her sauciest just now, I grant you: shrouds tore to tatters, mizzen spliced, bowsprit splintered, plugged fore and aft, and alf her weather bulwark carried away. But that's ex tempore, as the sayin is. We only put in at dawn to refit, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... a short canal, they glide into the centre of the court-yard. The water here is very deep, and we were sailing so close to the shore, that the mainyard scarcely cleared the houses. Indeed, instances have occurred, where the inhabitants have been surprised by the visit of a bowsprit pushing its way through the wood-work, and carrying off the ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... a hundred feet distant. Old Trull and Bonney caught up the pike-poles to fend off with. "The Curlew" drove on. The vast shadowy shape seemed to approach. A chill came with it. A few seconds more, and the bowsprit punched heavily against the ice-mountain. The shock sent the schooner staggering back like a pugilist with a "blimmer" between the eyes. Had we been sailing at our usual rate, it would have stove in the whole bow. The storm immediately forced us forward again; and the bowsprit, again ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... second mate and Jack Reeves started on this mission of mercy, and were soon followed by nearly all the crew. Upon reaching the forecastle we found the body of a man lying across the heel of the bowsprit, jammed against the windlass pawl. The insensible form was lifted from its resting place, and, by the captain's order, finally deposited in the cabin on the transom. The skipper, steward, and myself, remained below to try ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... violently against Ridgeway's side, and, with the instinct of a drowning man, he grasped for the object as it rushed away. A huge section of the bowsprit was in his grasp and a cry of hope arose in his soul. With this respite came the feeling, strong and enduring, that he was not to die. That ever-existing spirit of confidence, baffled in one moment, flashes back into the hearts of ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... cheerily! Anchor weighed. Ship in full sail. Her sturdy bowsprit pointing true to England. America a cloud upon ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... out, and the foresail went up, the Osprey glided on with accelerated speed, and the end of the bowsprit was but a few yards from the starting line when ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... of tunny-fish, (fish four and five feet long, and belonging to the dolphin tribe,) were seen tumbling about the ship. A harpoon was quickly procured, and one of the sailors sent out with it on the bowsprit; but whether he had bad luck, or was unskilled in the art of harpooning, he missed his mark. The most wonderful part of the story, though, was that all the fish disappeared as if by magic, and did not appear again for some days; it seemed as if they had ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... happening. Almost as soon as we pass through the Golden Gate and head south we'll pick up with the flying fish. We'll be having them fried for breakfast. We'll be catching bonita and dolphin, and spearing porpoises from the bowsprit. And then there are the sharks—sharks ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... lying flat across the bowsprit and the mast, he put his arms under the girl's shoulders and literally pulled her to his side. Hand in hand they slowly worked their way up among ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... Mizzenmast. A1. Mizzentopmast. A2. Mizzentopgallant and royalmast. B. Mainmast. B1. Maintopmast. B2. Maintopgallant and royalmast. C. Foremast. C1. Foretopmast. C2. Foretopgallant and royalmast. D. Spanker boom. E. Spanker gaff. F. Bowsprit. G. Jib boom and flying jib ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... out canvas from below. Nobody seemed to tell me what was the matter. The Hebe Maitland's hull was any kind of a dingy black, but the rails, canvas, tarpaulins, and companion were all white. By the end of the day almost everything had modified. They'd got a kind of fore-shortening out of the bowsprit, and another set of canvas partly up that was dirty and patched. The boats were shifted and recovered, cupola taken off the cabin, and the whole look of the ship altered in mid-sea. Then Clyde came out ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... voice that seemed to mingle with the wailing tones of the deep! The little swinging lantern beneath the bowsprit played on his bearded face as he bent farther forward, and, with growing wonder not unmixed with fear, now made out something dark clinging to one of the steel lines that ran from the projecting timber to the ship. It took the lookout a ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... always harpooned from the end of the bowsprit of a sailing-vessel. It is next to impossible to approach them in a small boat. All vessels regularly engaged in this fishery are supplied with a special apparatus called a "rest," or "pulpit," for the support of the harpooner as he stands ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... but the sea was still very rough. One could not promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the bowsprit was taking a deadly aim at the sun in midheaven, and at the next it was trying to harpoon a shark in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird sensation it is to feel the stem of a ship sinking swiftly from under you and see the bow climbing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the stern, and also on the bowsprit," replied the skipper of the Goldwing. "It isn't a ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... first pulled back, in order to hide the vessel entirely in the side scenes. It begins to make its appearance before the vessel itself gets under way. Light silken cordages connect the mast, the bowsprit, and the small mast ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... were glad to see their officers, who told them the time for some sort of action was rapidly approaching. Then they went to the bow of the vessel, where they found that she was anchored, though the chain had been hove short. The hawser by which she was to be towed to sea was made fast to the bowsprit bitts, and led to the stern of the steamer, where it was ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... actions produced, gave rise to many reflections on the evils of divided responsibility. On the night in question some mysterious spell seemed to bind us to the shores of Prince Edward Island. In an attempt to get the steamer off she ran stern foremost upon the bowsprit of a schooner, then broke one of the piles of the wharf to pieces, crushing her fender to atoms at the same time. Some persons on the pier, compassionating our helplessness, attempted to stave the ship off with ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... was yet speaking, a flash of lightning almost blinded them, and the little schooner received a shock which told of disaster. Next moment the roar of reverberating thunder drowned the crash of timber as the topmast went overboard, carrying the bowsprit and its gear ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... seventeen days of our voyage the weather was generally fine. Upon the western edge of the Banks we had a few days' calm, which taking advantage of, I turned my morning shower-bath into a plunge from the bowsprit, and had a delicious swim round the ship. The passengers, however, got wind of my fun, and in obedience to the kindly meant remonstrances of one or two of them, I forbore a pleasure which never occurred to me to be perilous, for I have practised it in many parts of the ocean, always ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... bowsprit of a large ship was over him; he threw up his arms instinctively and caught at something; he felt his feet drawing over the skipper's head, and that he thumped it with his boots. He knew no more. The great ship crushed and plowed the Bonita into ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... that unapproached seat Of peace, where rest the Christians whom the hate Of Moorish pride pursued? Whate'er it be, Zarco, thy holy courage bids thee on To burst the gloom, though dragons guard the shore,[184] Or beings more than mortal pace the sands. The favouring gales invite; the bowsprit bears Right onward to the fearful shade; more black The cloudy spectre towers; already fear 120 Shrinks at the view aghast and breathless. Hark! 'Twas more than the deep murmur of the surge That struck the ear; whilst through the lurid gloom ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... mien about the deck and among the watch, that spoke of the silent yet potent arm of authority. The men spoke to each other now and then, but it was in an under tone, and there was no open levity. A few men were lounging about the heel of the bowsprit on the forecastle, one or two were busy in the waist coiling cable; an officer of second or third caste a quiet, but decided character, to judge from his features, stood with folded arms just abaft the mizzen-mast, and a youthful ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... more steam if you can, sir. With your leave, I mean to post myself under the bowsprit, and, if we get within harpooning distance, I shall throw ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... some distance on either hand were white masses of foam where the sea was breaking on the sands. He went up to the bow and looked ahead through the darkness, then he went back to his uncle. "I caught sight of a light right over the bowsprit." ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... the ship made a strange, musical noise under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all still. It seemed a pity to go to work at such a time; and if we could only have sat in the windlass again; or if they would have let me go out on the bowsprit, and lay down between the manropes there, and look over at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should have been almost happy ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... wood called dongon, [45] which is very strong, and of a yellowish color. From it are made stringer-plates, chocks of the bowsprit, coamings of the hatchways, strakes and stanchions for the decks. If all these woods are cut at the conjunction and decrease of the moon, and seasoned, as above stated, for one year, the ship will last much longer; for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... part, the main-boom sweeps from one side to the other, carrying your hat overboard in its passage, and dipping the gunwale deep under water. Agitated by this significant gesture, you steer straight for the wharf. In attempting to round-to, the bowsprit comes in contact with the piles and renounces its allegiance to the bow. The boat drifts away from the landing, and finally deposits you high ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... tack right under the Spaniard's stern. The Spaniard, astounded at the quickness of the manoeuvre, hesitated a moment, and then tried to get about also, as his only chance; but it was too late, and while his lumbering length was still hanging in the wind's eye, Amyas's bowsprit had all but scraped his quarter, and the Rose passed slowly across his stern at ten ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... on deck to relieve Hansen at eight bells, in the commencement of the forenoon watch, found Lund in the bows as he walked forward, waiting for the bell to be struck. The giant leaned by the bowsprit, his spectacled eyes seeming to gaze ahead into the gray of the northern sky, and it seemed to Rainey as if he were smelling the wind. The sun shone brightly enough, but it lacked heat-power, and the sea had gone ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... hermaphrodite, or brig forward and schooner aft. Her foremast and bowsprit were immensely strong and heavy, and her mainmast was so long and tapering, that the wonder was how the few shrouds and stays about it could support it; it was the handsomest stick we had ever seen. Her ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... predicted, the Seabird put her bowsprit under pretty frequently in the Solent; the wind was blowing half a gale, and as it met the tide it knocked up a short, angry sea, crested with white heads, and Jack Harvey agreed that she had quite as much sail on her as she wanted. The cabin doors were bolted, and all made snug ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... shifted again from N.W. to S.W. and for about an hour blew, if possible, stronger than ever. This wind made the ship come up with her head right against the vast sea which the north-west wind had raised, and at every pitch which she made against it, the end of the bowsprit was under water, and the surge broke over the forecastle as far aft as the main-mast, in the same manner as it would have broke over a rock, so that there was the greatest reason to apprehend she would founder. With all her defects she was indeed a good sea-boat, and if ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Frenchmen are there, but these, for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, go to the fore-cabin of the ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that the name for that part of the vessel which is in the region of the bowsprit?) lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale, and wet; and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. I never could fancy the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... city, and Mars of his walling; But while I'm afloat, I'll stick to it that mine Beats yours into rope-yarn in spite of your bawling, Just as snuffy old Tiber is flogged by the brine; And he who the difference cannot discern Is a lob-sided lubber from bowsprit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of grass, about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering vainly at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with his trunk thrown out as rigid as a ship's bowsprit, and trumpeting like the trumpet of doom. On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious speed with some sharp object ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... good marksman, he had some experience in the use of arms, and felt fully competent to cut off the bloodhounds before they could pounce upon their human prey. Leaving Cyd at the helm, he went forward and stationed himself at the heel of the bowsprit. ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... only feebly from a few forward guns; then, the vessels being close together, and the British forging slowly ahead, threatening to cross the American's stern, the helm of the latter was put up. As the "Constitution" turned away, the bowsprit of the "Guerriere" lunged over her quarter-deck, and became entangled by her port mizzen-rigging; the result being that the two fell into the same line, the "Guerriere" astern and fastened to her antagonist as described. (5) In her crippled condition ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit and you think you are there—roll, roar, wash!—Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be specially commended to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it dives under ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... of them musical. There were swift actions, too: a Kanaka crawled out upon the bowsprit to make taut a slack stay, while two others with pulley-blocks swarmed aloft. Occasionally the canvas snapped as the wind veered slightly. The sea was no longer rolling brass; it was bluer than anything he had ever seen. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... spare time, I used to lie in the net under the bowsprit, and read. From there I could look back on the entire ship as it sailed ahead, every sail spread, a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... and began firing, one on the Caesar's quarter and one astern. Soon the three other ships, two of which Wright styled the Admiral and Vice-Admiral, came up. The Admiral ranged up on the quarter and tried to board, but was obliged to sheer off, with the loss of many men and a bowsprit shot away. The Vice-Admiral tried to board at the bow, but with no better success, losing a foreyard and mizzen-mast. For five hours the engagement lasted, but the small-arm men in the Caesar's tops fired ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... A.M. of April 12th, De Grasse's flag-ship, the Ville de Paris, and the seventy-four-gun ship Zele, crossing on opposite tacks, came into collision. The former received little damage, but the Zele lost her foremast and bowsprit. De Grasse then ordered her into Guadaloupe, in tow of a frigate. When day broke, about five o'clock, these two were only about six miles from the British rear, under Hood, whose division had been shifted from the van in consequence of ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... the rest, she was very narrow forward, as I think I said—everybody said she'd never stand the strain of her fore-rigging when they got to driving her on a long passage. And she carried an ungodly bowsprit—thirty-seven feet outboard—easily the longest bowsprit out of Gloucester. Topmasts to match, and there was some sail to drive a vessel. But she had the hull for it, full and yet easy, with the greatest beam pretty well aft of the mainmast, ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... from Liverpool to Yarmouth, U. S., "encountered heavy gales from W.N.W. to W.S.W., in lat. 43 deg. N., long. 34 deg. W., in which we lost jib, foretopmast, staysail, topsail, and carried away the foretopmast stays, bobstays and bowsprit, headsails, cut-water and stern, also started the wood ends, which caused the vessel to leak. Put her before the wind and sea, and hove about twenty-five tons of cargo overboard to lighten the ship forward. Slung myself in a bowline, and by means ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sky-sails excepted, have four sides, as have also the sprit-sails on the bowsprit, jib-boom, &c.; and all, except the sail last mentioned on the mizen, usually lie across the ship, or in planes forming considerable angles with the axis or central line of the ship. There are a number of sails which lie in the same plane with the keel, being ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... but a fortnight, and then sailed in a Dutch ship, from Elsineur to Amsterdam. Scarcely had we put to sea, before a storm arose, by which we lost a mast and bowsprit, had our sails shattered, and were obliged to cast anchor among the rocks of Gottenburg, where ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... sailed on the twenty-fourth of July; but the "Joly" soon broke her bowsprit, and they were forced to put back. [Footnote: La Salle believed that this mishap, which took place in good weather, was intentional.—Memoire autographe de l'Abbe Jean Cavelier sur la Voyage de 1684, MS. ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... vessel is crowded to the full as much as the genteeler quarter. There are four carriages, each with piles of imperials and aristocratic gimcracks of travel, under the wheels of which those personages have to clamber who have a mind to look at the bowsprit, and perhaps to smoke a cigar at ease. The carriages overcome, you find yourself confronted by a huge penful of Durham oxen, lying on hay and surrounded by a barricade of oars. Fifteen of these horned monsters maintain ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... attacks. It was plain that this situation of affairs could not last: there was no sign of succour on the sea, and when Captain Cock looked aloft he could not but admit that in the crippled condition of his ship all chance of running her ashore was gone. The Townshend was in fact a mere wreck. Her bowsprit was shot in pieces. Both jib-booms and head were carried away, as well as the wheel and ropes. Scarcely one shroud was left standing. The packet lay like a log on the water, while the privateers sailed round her, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... punished for the theft, he bore the chastisement he received with the patience of a dog. His chief companion was a terrier, with whom he would play all sorts of tricks—tumbling and rolling over the animal in the most amusing manner, without hurting it. He would also frequently run out on the bowsprit, and climb about the rigging with the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... cottage interior, the usual first flat, with the cloak upon the nail, the rosaries of onions, the gun and powder-horn and corner-cupboard; here is the inn (this drama must be nautical, I foresee Captain Luff and Bold Bob Bowsprit) with the red curtain, pipes, spittoons, and eight-day clock; and there again is that impressive dungeon with the chains, which was so dull to colour. England, the hedgerow elms, the thin brick houses, windmills, glimpses of the navigable Thames - England, when at last I came to visit it, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... called, and it seemed, as he looked at their meaningless gesticulations, that the bowsprit of the vessel now pointed higher than before. The appalling story thus told to him had barely got home when he saw a change in the conduct of the seamen. They ceased to cry and wave; they looked no longer at him but in the direction whence he had come, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... morbidly sensitive about appearances, used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to. They knew it was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman about ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... you see,' he continued, giving her all sorts of chances of escape, 'the mast would be at the bow. And if it is a cutter, you would still have to put the mast farther forward, and give her a boom and a bowsprit. Or if it is a yawl, then you would have a ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... with him to where they could get a good view of Captain Banes's brig, whose taut rigging and shapely sides began to show plainly now in the early morning, a flash of sunlight seeming to have fallen just beneath the bows on the head of the white painted figurehead beneath the bowsprit; but it proved to be only the gilded Phrygian cap which the carvers had formed, while as they walked up, admiring the trimness of the well-kept vessel the while, there was another gleam of sunlight, but only ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... The masts and smokestacks branched off at divergent angles, giving the ship a rather drunken aspect. At high tide the masts and deck-house were swept off; the bow went, and the boat collapsed and bent. By evening nothing was left except the bowsprit rocking defiantly among the breakers, a broken skeleton, the keel and ribs, and the big boiler tumbling and squirting ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the forecastle deck and made for me, half mad from the disease, but wholly mad from his mental state. There was no escape except out the head-gear, and I went that way, with him after me. Out the bowsprit, on to the jib foot-ropes, and out toward the end I went, hoping to reach the martingale-stay and slip down it to the back-ropes. I did so, but he scrambled down, tumbling and clutching, and gripped me just abaft the dolphin-striker. His face was twisted in ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... over the ferry and back, for old acquaintance' sake; the current is so lazy, it seems incredible that the same waters are almost impassable at some seasons. I succeed in wrecking a whole armada of floating leaves with stems like a bowsprit. A few beetles take passage in these gilded barges—no doubt, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... fruit. Conclude to utilize the wrecked part of the life-boat as part of the new boat. Size of the new vessel. Its size and weight What is a ship. A brig, a sloop. Single masters. The sails. Different parts of the masts. The bowsprit and boom. The ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... imagination had been sleeping for a quarter of a century in the Mattapoisett graveyard, but when our anchor rumbled down off Tawi Tawi, when, steaming across Makassar Straits, we picked up the Little Paternosters, when our tiny vessel poked her bowsprit up the steaming Koetei into the heart of the Borneo jungle, I knew that, though invisible to human eyes, he was standing beside me on ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... could speak, away flew a large stone, with great force, and, crashing through the mainsail of the little vessel, broke both masts and the bowsprit ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... Their futile rage and struggles, the cries and prayers of the maidens, the music—now changed in tone—the waters—all made a scene beyond description, and the audience applauded wildly. Then suddenly the sail was loosed, and out of it sprang to the bowsprit a rosy, silver-winged boy, with bow and arrows and quiver; the oars began to move, the sail filled, and the boat glided away, as if under the guidance of the god, to a little island. Thither, after signals of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... in silence, disposed in the form of a wedge, of which the admiral's galley formed the point. Joyeuse himself had taken his first lieutenant's place, and was leaning over the bowsprit, trying to pierce the fogs of the river and the darkness of the night. Soon, through this double obscurity, he saw the pier extending itself darkly across the stream; it appeared deserted, but, in that land of ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... and by S. We soon perceived it was a large vessel, and that she bore up to us, but could not at first know what to make of her, till, after coming a little nearer, we found she had lost her main-topmast, fore-mast, and bowsprit; and presently she fired a gun as a signal of distress. The weather was pretty good, wind at NNW. a fresh gale, and we soon came to speak with her. We found her a ship of Bristol, bound home from Barbadoes, but had ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... were cut away, Both main and mizen; first the mizen went, The main-mast followed: but the ship still lay Like a mere log, and baffled our intent. Foremast and bowsprit were cut down, and they Eased her at last (although we never meant To part with all till every hope was blighted), And then with violence the old ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... fastened a rather small rope on to each harpoon, in the way a rope ought to be fastened to a harpoon, and two of the sailors took the two harpoons and went down under the bowsprit, in among the chains that go from the end of the bowsprit to the stem of the ship. They went there so as to be near the water. They might get wet there, but they didn't care about that. And the other end of the rope, that was fastened to each harpoon, was made fast up on deck, ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... fairy rigging shone Richly as a rainbow seen Where the moonlight floats upon Gossamers of gold and green: All the tiny spars were bright; Beaten gold the bowsprit was; But our pilot was the night, And our ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... to be cut off, and hung at the bowsprit end; with which he sailed to Bath Town to get his wounded men cured, and then began to rummage the Pirate Sloop, aboard which they found several Letters of Correspondence betwixt the Governor of North Carolina, his Secretary, and some Traders of New York and Blackbeard. ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... lying alongside, and there is not another craft outside her. The boat is fastened to her bowsprit, and I can take off my boots and get on board and drop into her, without difficulty; and push her along to the foot of some stairs which are but ten yards away. Of course, we will have the water and food and that bundle of old nets ready, ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... of the culprit, and viewing the supineness of the men, who were totally regardless of his repeated injunctions to veer the cable quickly, began to be indignant; and when the master repeated, "If you do not veer away at once, we shall lose the bowsprit and all the masts," he called to the officers in the waist "to start the rascals down to the cable:" but, as it may be supposed, their unarmed endeavours would not have been successful, had he not, as the ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross |
