"Midshipman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was Walter Gay. He lived with his uncle, honest old Solomon Gills, a maker of ship's instruments, who kept a little shop with the wooden figure of a midshipman set outside. Very few customers ever came into the shop, and, indeed, hardly any one else, for Old Sol, as the neighbors called him, had only ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... was sour. What else could happen with Lieutenant Commander Charles Augustus Chase in command! He was three classes up on me, but even though he was a First Classman at the time I crawled out of Beast Barracks, I knew him well. Every Midshipman in the Academy knew him—Rule-Book Charley—By-The-Numbers Chase—his nicknames were legion and not one of them was friendly. "Lieutenant Thomas Marsden reporting for ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... temperance. No man alive or dead had ever seen Captain Cuttwater the worse for liquor; at least so boasted the captain himself, and there were none, at any rate in Devonport, to give him the lie. Woe betide the midshipman whom he should see elated with too much wine; and even to the common sailor who should be tipsy at the wrong time, he would show no mercy. Most eloquent were the discourses which he preached against drunkenness, and they always ended with a reference ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Our house was near the water; and I was greatly in the habit of strolling along the wharves, whenever an opportunity occurred; Mr. Marchinton owning a good deal of property in that part of the town. The Cambrian frigate had a midshipman, a little older than myself, who had been a schoolmate of mine. This lad, whose name was Bowen, was sent in as the nominal prize-master of a brig loaded with coffee; and I no sooner learned the fact, than I began ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... (1792-1848).—Novelist, s. of a West India merchant, was b. in London. In 1806 he entered the navy as a midshipman under Lord Cochrane (afterwards Earl of Dundonald), and saw much service in the Mediterranean, at Walcheren, and in the Burmese War of 1824. He returned in 1830 as a Captain and C.B. The scenes and experiences through which he had passed were the preparation for and the foundation ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... {91}[104] ["A midshipman was appointed to guard the spirit-room, to repress that unhappy desire of a devoted crew to die in a state of intoxication. The sailors, though in other respects orderly in conduct, here pressed eagerly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the worst landlubbers I've ever seen," declared Cadet Midshipman Merriam, with severe dignity. "Rest, before ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... Chevalier strutting about in an adaptation of the smallest midshipman's uniform, and the centre of an admiring party, who were equally diverted by his consequential airs and by his accounts of his sports among the Moors. Happy fellow, he could adapt himself to any society, and was ready to be the pet and plaything ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the house into a club it became notorious for the high play which went on under the shadow of the palm-tree. Walpole, for example, tells the story of a gamble between an Irish gamester named O'Birne and a young midshipman named Harvey who had just fallen heir to a large estate by his brother's death. The stake was for one hundred thousand pounds, and when O'Birne won he said, "You can never pay me." But the youth replied, "I can, my estate will sell for the debt." O'Birne, however, had some scruples left, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... British were in a mood of victory. The boatswain of the Shannon, an old Rodney man, lashed the two ships together, and in the act had his left arm literally hacked off by repeated strokes of a cutlass and was killed. One British midshipman, followed by five topmen, crept along the Shannon's foreyard and stormed the Chesapeake's foretop, killing the men stationed there, and then swarmed down by a back-stay to join the fighting on the deck. Another middy tried to attack the Chesapeake's mizzentop ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... immense favorite with all hands; and even Mr. Brewster, who at first looked upon my advent on board with an unfavorable eye, was forced to acknowledge that I no more resembled a ship's cousin than a Methodist class-leader does a midshipman. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Clement Scott The Absent-Minded Beggar Rudyard Kipling For the Empire F. Harald Williams Wanted—a Cromwell F. Harald Williams England's Ironsides F. Harald Williams The Three Cherry-Stones Anonymous The Midshipman's Funeral Darley Dale Ladysmith F. Harald Williams The Six-inch Gun "The Bombshell" St. Patrick's Day F. Harald Williams The Hero of Omdurman F. Harald Williams Boot and Saddle F. Harald Williams The Midnight Charge Clement Scott Mafeking—"Adsum!" A. Frewen Aylward The Fight at Rorke's ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... of great powers. The boy whose strong arm could fling a stone across the Rappahannock; whose strong will could tame the most fiery horse; whose just spirit made him the umpire of his fellows; whose obedient heart bowed to a mother's yearning for her son and laid down the midshipman's warrant in the British Navy which answered his first ambitious dream; the student transcribing mathematical problems, accounts, and business forms, or listening to the soldiers and seamen of vessels in the river ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... the commander on the lee side of the quarter-deck grinned a grin that was reflected in the face of the signal-midshipman. Not a word of the song was lost, and the voice of the singer was the ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... of transports and merchantmen. As they were looking at it, the officer commanding the marines on board, who had talked a good deal to them upon the preceding day, came up to them. "I thought that you would be in a fix about clothes, my lads," he said. "You could not very well join in these midshipman's uniforms, so I set the tailor yesterday to cut down a couple of spare suits of my corps. The buttons will not be right, but you can easily alter that when you join. You had better go below at once and see if the things fit pretty well. I have told the tailor to ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... accounts at Cavendish's of the brilliant masquerades. Clive was greatly diverted at beholding Mr. Moss at one of these entertainments, dressed in a scarlet coat and top-boots, and calling out, "Yoicks! Hark forward!" fitfully to another Orientalist, his younger brother, attired like a midshipman. Once Clive bought a half-dozen of theatre tickets from Mr. Moss, which he distributed to the young fellows of the studio. But, when this nice young man tried further to tempt him on the next day, "Mr. Moss," Clive said to him with much dignity, "I am ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cost him little; and Dundas's object being answered, his pretensions also dropped through. Two years afterward, Lady Charlotte became the wife of Colonel Lennox, afterward Duke of Richmond, and in the course of years the mother of fourteen children; one of whom, Henry Adam, a midshipman, fell overboard from the Blake in 1812, and was drowned. According to Wraxall, the Duke of Richmond had to pay the penalty of what he calls "this imprudent, if not unfortunate marriage," being banished to the snowy banks of St. Lawrence ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... said the other midshipman. "Don't bother the poor fellow, Murray. Here, May, what do you fellows before the mast ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... pirate who was very troublesome in the South Atlantic in the early part of the last century. Eventually captured by Midshipman Hull Foot of the U.S. Navy in March, 1825, at St. Thomas Isle. Executed in Porto Rico by the terrible Spanish ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Peers, was a gayhearted, kindly young man, who had been brought home from sea at the age of twenty on the death of an elder brother. Some of the family had wished that he should go on with his profession in spite of the earldom; but it had been thought unfit that he should be an earl and a midshipman at the same time, and his cousin's death while he was still on shore settled the question. He was a fair-haired, well-made young lad, looking like a sailor, and every inch a gentleman. Had he believed that the Lady Anna was the Lady Anna, no earthly consideration would have induced him to ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... seventy years ago? Promotion depended almost entirely on interest. The service was entered at twelve or thirteen. After two years at sea, if the boy passed his examination, he mounted the white patch, and became a midshipman. At the end of four years more he had to pass a double examination, - one for seamanship before a board of captains, and another for navigation at the Naval College. He then became a master's mate, and had to serve for three years as such before he was eligible for promotion to a lieutenancy. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... said Mrs. Cole, "that we'll have high tea at half-past seven, and the children shall stay up afterwards and we'll have 'Midshipman Easy.'" ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... of it," I replied. "But I say, captain, I thought I was to come as a midshipman, and mess with the other young gentlemen ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... the bowsprit, cutlass in his fist, without waiting to see if his comrades were with him, and dropped to the forecastle of the Frolic. Lieutenant Biddle tried it by jumping on the bulwark and climbing to the other ship as they crashed together on the next heave of the sea, but a doughty midshipman, seeking a handy purchase, grabbed him by the coat tails and they fell back upon their own deck. Another attempt and Biddle joined Jack Lang by way of the bowsprit. These two thus captured the Frolic, for as they dashed aft the only living men on deck were the undaunted ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... effect on the sails and the ship. "If you keep her on her present course, she's all right, but if you try and bring her up any more she begins to shake. And, by the way, Penelope wants to be called at 4.30." Bowers' 'snotty,' who is Oates, probably makes some ribald remarks, such as no midshipman should to a full lieutenant, and they both disappear below. Campbell's snotty, myself, appears about five minutes afterwards trying to look as though some important duty and not bed had kept him from making an earlier appearance. Meanwhile the leading ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... brought the "day's doings" on again in lazy, luxurious Delhi. Over his morning coffee, Major Alan Hawke thankfully cried: "I am a very devil for luck! This old skinflint is opening his bosom and handing me a knife. By God! I'll have my pound of flesh!" He leaped from his couch as blithe as a midshipman receiving his first love letter from a fullgrown dame. There was great joy ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... we sent out our large cutter, manned with seven seamen, under the command of Mr. John Rowe, the first mate, accompanied by Mr. Woodhouse, midshipman, and James Tobias Swilley, the carpenter's servant. They were to proceed up the Sound to Grass Cove to gather greens and celery for the ship's company, with orders to return that evening; for the tents had been struck at two in the afternoon, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... The colonel, as is well known, a very elegant and generous young man, fell; and Captain Macnamara had thenceforwards a worm at his heart whose gnawings never died. He was a post-captain; and my brother afterwards sailed with him in quality of midshipman. From him I have often heard affecting instances of the degree in which the pangs of remorse had availed, to make one of the bravest men in the service a mere panic-haunted, and, in a moral sense, almost a paralytic wreck. He that, whilst his hand was unstained with blood, would ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... him with a great deal of amusement, but without the passion that I bestowed upon my favorite authors. I believe I had no critical reserves in regard to them, but simply they did not take my fancy. Still, we had great fun with Japhet in 'Search of a Father', and with 'Midshipman Easy', and we felt a fine physical shiver in the darkling moods of 'Snarle-yow the Dog-Fiend.' I do not remember even the names of the other novels, except 'Jacob Faithful,' which I chanced upon a few years ago and found ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... lot," he said to the young midshipman sitting by his side. "This pretty nearly makes up our complement; the press gang are sure to pick up the few hands we ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... Hastings, entered the army when young, but retired after having served some time in the Mediterranean. Frank was born on the 14th of February 1794, and was placed in the navy when about eleven years old. Hardly six months after he became a midshipman, he was present at the battle of Trafalgar on board the Neptune. An explosion of powder between the decks of the Neptune during the action, by which several men were killed and wounded, early directed his attention to the service of artillery on board ship; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... chicken? I've never been a midshipman myself. You can ask them if you like, when we go on board. For we are going on board, girls! Hurrah! We shall drive over to the Navy Yard, and there we shall get into boats, and then we shall row—I mean be rowed—out into the stream to the ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... day Clare kept to the captain's state-room; the next, he went on deck in a midshipman's uniform, which he wore like a gentleman ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... at St. Paul's to-day, with a knit woolen cap on his head. Dr. Minnegerode preached a sermon against the croakers. His son has been appointed a midshipman by the President. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... wind and backed her topsail. The cruiser went about, and passing to windward, backed her main-topsail just forward of the Swash's beam. Then the latter lowered a boat, and sent it, with a lieutenant and a midshipman in its stern-sheets, on board the brigantine. As the cutter approached, Spike went to the gangway ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... examination and enter the navy as cadets. The one-year-volunteer system (Einjaehriger Dienst) only partially obtains in the navy, for purposes, namely, of coast defence and other services on land. After two years the cadet becomes a midshipman, and with five or six other middies serves for a year or so on board ship, when he becomes a sub-lieutenant and is promoted by seniority to full lieutenant, captain-lieutenant (the English naval lieutenant with ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the deck, he found the mate of the watch had fallen asleep, and that the other midshipman was not ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... much as possible against future attempts of this kind I directed a stage to be built on the forecastle so that the cables should be more directly under the eye of the sentinel; and I likewise gave orders that one of the midshipman should ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... to Poopy, as the girl entered the church, and seated herself beside a little midshipman, who looked at her with a mingled expression of disgust ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... the procession of boats, borne on the current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The General was in one of the foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John Robison, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard to the officers about him. Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of his ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... saw Lieutenant Fox following me in full uniform, and with a young midshipman attending him. He came up to me, and, after ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... ship we came to the midshipmen's mess, and those young officers were at dinner, but we were taken in: they were lighted by a few candles fastened to the wall in sockets. Involuntarily I exclaimed, "Dining by candle-light at noon-day!" A midshipman, starting forward, said, "Yes', ma'am, and Admiral Lord Hood did the same for seven ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... to their rank, assigning the first division to the officer next in rank to the Executive Officer. In case of a deficiency of Watch Officers, the quarter-deck division may be assigned to an Ensign or Midshipman, who will act under the general supervision of the Executive Officer. When the number of officers on board of vessels having pivot-guns will permit, each pivot-gun will be placed under the special charge of a suitable officer of ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... alarmed the country, that a naval armament was prepared to chastise this indignity, Captain Suckling, having obtained the command of the Raisonnable, of sixty-four guns, one of the ships put into commission on the occasion, immediately ordered his nephew from school, and entered him as a midshipman. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... hats to him, and sailors and soldiers saluted respectfully. In this regard the Bailly himself could not have fared better. It was not due to the fact that the youth came of an old Jersey family, nor by reason that he was genial and handsome, but because he was a midshipman of the King's navy home on leave; and these were the days when England's sailors were more popular than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... than twelve years of age when I entered the British Navy as a midshipman, much against my good father's will, for I was his only child, and my mother died the day I first saw the light. But I was a wayward, unruly boy, and he feared I might take to bad courses if restrained. It was a time of stirring action, and before ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... small forts lay at the mouth of the harbor, but, as the seamen scrambled ashore, they were precipitately abandoned by the garrison of "coast-guards." Captain Jones, Midshipman Green, and six men rushed shouting upon one of these, capturing it without an effort; the other was taken by Lieutenant Wallingford and eight sailors,—while four were left behind as a boat-guard. A few pistols spattered, a few muskets rang; but, when the stout sea-dogs reached ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Crusoe. Aspirations for a naval career. His father's wish. John Flinders' advice. Study of navigation. Introduction to Pasley. Lieutenant's servant. Midshipman on the Bellerophon. Bligh and ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... little need be said. Corner, the first lieutenant, was a stout seaman, who bottled up his disapproval of his captain's behaviour until the commission was out. Hayward, the second lieutenant, was a time-server. He had been a midshipman on the Bounty at the time of the mutiny, and an intimate friend of young Peter Heywood who was constrained to cast in his lot with the mutineers, yet, when Heywood gave himself up on the arrival of the Pandora at Tahiti, his old comrade, now ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... through it, as you say, sir," returned Clinch, with a husky voice. "It does well enough for them that go through it, but it's death to them that stick. It's a feather in a midshipman's cap to be rated a mate; but it's no honor to be a mate at my time of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... roof to come down. The sixth and fifth know that "brave Broke" of the Shannon was no sort of relation to our old Brooke. The fourth form are uncertain in their belief, but for the most part hold that old Brooke was a midshipman then on board his uncle's ship. And the lower school never doubt for a moment that it was our old Brooke who led the boarders, in what capacity they care not a straw. During the pauses the bottled-beer corks fly rapidly, and the talk is fast and merry, and the big boys—at least all ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... pine-knot, and is reading one of the Marlborough articles to his mess, with extemporary paralellisms in favour of General Taylor, which the shade of the great Churchill must not venture to overhear. Swinging in his hammock, the midshipman holds Blackwood to the smoky lamp of the orlop, as he plunges and pitches around Cape Horn. Lounging in his state-room, and bound for Hong Kong, the sea-sick passenger corrects his nausea with the same spicy page, and bewitched with the flavour, forgets to sigh for Madeira, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... for the consequences, and resolved to try and play off the French for their clever finesse. He looked about for a match for the redoubtable French gamester, and soon got information of a party who might serve his turn. This was a midshipman at Moscow, named Cruckoff, who, he was assured, was without an equal in the MANAGEMENT of cards, and the knowledge of Quizze—then the fashionable court game—and that at which the Duke of Biran had lost his money. The chancellor ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... prepared to quit the schooner. Before doing so he addressed some words to the six seamen, who were to be left in charge as a prize crew, with one midshipman at their head. He directed them to follow the frigate until further orders, and also, until further orders, to leave the captain of the schooner unbound, and let him have the ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... asked his comrade, Curtis, to take his place at the telephone, but receiving no answer, he looked around, and saw poor Curtis with his face torn off by a piece of shell still bending over his telephone between two dead signalmen.... Lieutenant Meade turned away with a shiver, and, calling a midshipman to take his place, he left the conning-tower, which was being struck continually by ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... Vesuvius, which was captured by two French ships, when she was sent to the prisons of Dunkirk. Here she was incarcerated for eighteen months, but, having been discovered planning an escape with a young midshipman, she was confined in a pitch-dark dungeon for eleven weeks, on a diet of bread and water. An exchange of prisoners set her at liberty, and, hearing accidentally an American merchant captain inquiring in the streets of Dunkirk for ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... the higher emotions are not there? Or is it that they are damped down and covered over as too precious to be exhibited? Something of each, perhaps. I once met the widow of the man who, as a young signal midshipman, had taken Nelson's famous message from the Signal Yeoman and communicated it to the ship's company. The officers were impressed. The men were not. "Duty!" they muttered. "We've always done it. Why not?" Anything in the least highfalutin' ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sketches, part plan, part elevation, some of which survive for the amusement of posterity. He did a good deal of surveying, so that here we may perhaps lay our finger on the beginning of Fleeming's education as an engineer. What is still more strange, among the relics of the handsome midshipman and his stay in the gun-room of the Prothee, I find a code of signals graphically represented, for all the world as it would have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and gone out. The consequence was, that B— had to wait some time, and until the man came back. I have always had a great aversion to a valet when constantly moving about on the Continent, as a single man; and, although I do not now, as I used to do when a midshipman, brush my own clothes and black my own shoes, yet I like independence, in every thing, and infinitely prefer doing anything myself, to being waited upon; for, generally speaking, it is the master who ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... French Revolution, the Hermione frigate was commanded by Capt. Pigot, a harsh man and a severe commander. His crew mutinied, and carried the ship into an enemy's port, having murdered the captain and several of the officers, under circumstances of extreme barbarity. One midshipman escaped, by whom many of the criminals, who were afterwards taken and delivered over to justice, one by one, were identified. Mr. Finlayson, the Government actuary, who at that time held an official situation ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the day of parting came—of parting "for three eternal years," as they put it in their despair—Odalite cried as if her heart would break, and refused to be comforted; and Midshipman Leonidas Force, U. S. N., disgraced his uniform by crying a little for company. But then, "the bravest are ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Marryat's very respectably lengthy list of stories. Yet it is not without gaiety, and, as is ever the case with him, the man-of-war scenes are all alive. Captain Plumpton, and Mr. Markital the first lieutenant, and Edward Templemore the midshipman, are credible. Whenever Marryat has to introduce us to a man-of-war, he could draw on inexhaustible treasure of reminiscences, or of what is for the story-writer's purpose quite as good, of types and incidents which his imagination ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... General Kearney's letter, Commodore Stockton despatched Captain Gillespie to meet him, with a letter of welcome. The Captain was accompanied by Lieutenant Beale, Midshipman Duncan, ten seamen, Captain Gibson's company of riflemen (twenty-five men), and a fieldpiece; and on the 5th he reached the General's camp; when, having learned on his way that the insurgents were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... from the south-eastward had blown all day, and raised so much surf on the north side of the port, that our watering there was much impeded; a midshipman and party of men remained on shore with casks all night, and it was not until next evening [MONDAY 23 AUGUST 1802] that the holds were completed and pine logs got on board. The water was very good; it drained down the gully to a little beach between two projecting ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... a blithe, courageous young midshipman, was gayly chattering with his protectress. There he was laughing at her good-naturedly as she trembled for his sake, and chattering broken German as best he could. Wealth is a good thing, and health a better; but surely high spirited hope is worth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the home town, where would Midshipman Darrin be more naturally found than in the parlor at the home of his ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... "Repel boarders!" so many marines and blue-jackets rushed up from below that the French gave up the attempt. The musketry fire was still very hot from one ship to another; and the French snipers were as bad as ever. But those in the mizzentop from which Nelson was hit were all sniped by his signal midshipman, young Jack Pollard, who, being a dead shot, picked off the Frenchmen one by one as they leaned over to take aim. In this way Pollard must have hit ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... saw Hugh Branning letting down the bars and leading his pony out into the road. The only bridle-path through the woods led over the hill to the little house on the westerly slope, where lived Dame Ransom, Lucy's bowed and wrinkled grandmother. Mark wondered not a little where the midshipman had been; but as he still retained the memory of the old quarrel, he did not accost him, and presently thought no more of it. Reaching the house, he got some dry clothes and then went home with bounding steps. The earth was never so beautiful nor the sky so benign. The cloud ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... few leagues from the place where Laperouse first learnt what it meant to fight the British on the sea, another young officer who was afterwards greatly concerned with Australasian exploration had his introduction to naval warfare. It was in 1794 that Midshipman Matthew Flinders, on the BELLEROPHON, Captain Pasley, played his valiant little part in a great fleet action off Brest. Both of these youths, whose longing was for exploration and discovery, and who are remembered by mankind in that connection, were cradled on the sea amidst the smoke and ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... done? His friends made interest for him in the requisite quarters, and Harry was soon embarked for Bombay, as a midshipman in the East India service; in which office he was known as a "guinea-pig," a humorous appellation then bestowed upon the middies of the Company. And considering the perversity of his behavior, his delicate form, and soft complexion, and that gold guineas had been his ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... there stands the hero for whose sake we have chose this and no other of Nelson's glorious fights to place among the setting of our Golden Deeds. There he is, a little cadet de vaisseau, as the French call a midshipman, only ten years old, with a heart swelling between awe and exultation at the prospect of his first battle; but, fearless and glad, for is he not the son of the brave Casabianca, the flag-captain? And is not this Admiral Brueys' own ship, looking down in ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Dombey and Son, we see a certain maturity and even a certain mild exhaustion in his earlier farcical method. He never failed to have fine things in any of his books, and Toots is a very fine thing. Still, I could never find Captain Cuttle and Mr. Sol Gills very funny, and the whole Wooden Midshipman seems to me very wooden. In David Copperfield he suddenly unseals a new torrent of truth, the truth out of his own life. The impulse of the thing is autobiography; he is trying to tell all the absurd things that have happened to himself, and ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... lieutenant,—"there—shake the wind out of her sails for a moment, until the men get the canvas in"——whirl, a poor fellow pitched off the lee foreyardarm into the sea. "Up with the helm—heave him the bight of a rope." We kept away, but all was confusion, until an American midshipman, one of the prisoners on board, hove the bight of a rope at him. The man got it under his arms, and after hauling him along for a hundred yards at the least—and one may judge of the velocity with which he was dragged through the water, by the fact that it took the united strain of ten ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the ship had risen a little less—in fact, if Providence had been a little less watchful—disasters must have overtaken our ships; but when I hear these "dismal Jemmies" croak, it puts me much in mind of the midshipman, who, describing to his grandmamma the attack on Jean d'Acre, after recounting his prowess and narrow escapes, assured the old lady that Tom Tough, the boatswain's mate, had asserted with an oath, which put the fact beyond all doubt, ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Marryat was an East Anglian, and have we not a right to be proud of Marryat's breezy stories of the sea? Our youth has found such plentiful stimulus in Peter Simple, Frank Mildmay, and Mr. Midshipman Easy; generations of boys have read them with delight, generations of boys will read them. And not only boys, but men. One recalls that Carlyle, in one of his deepest fits of depression, took refuge in Marryat's novels with infinite advantage to his peace of mind. Speaking of Captain Marryat ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... netted canopy,[9.B.] The hoarse command, the busy humming din, When, at a word, the tops are manned on high: Hark, to the Boatswain's call, the cheering cry! While through the seaman's hand the tackle glides; Or schoolboy Midshipman that, standing by, Strains his shrill pipe as good or ill betides, And well the docile ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... think," continued Mr. Francis, "that I must sit down at my desk and write: 'Past Midshipman ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... of King George; and Mr. Tuckerman relates that, "when Prince Christian, King of Denmark, was in London, attending the marriage of his daughter to the Prince of Wales, Lord John Russell discovered the second son of Prince Christian in the uniform of a midshipman, and suggested his name as ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... really was, behind his plain face and non-committal manner, when the muffled slam of a door behind, startled her, followed as it was by a quick step upon the matted aisle. Then without further warning, a big, broad-shouldered boy, in the uniform of a British midshipman, thrust himself into the pew beside her, hot and breathless after running hard. Mrs. Loring guessed at once that this must be Carnaby de Tracy, the young hopeful and heir of Stoke Revel of whom Mr. Lavendar had so often spoken, but the startling ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... below there, Midshipman!" said Dick, in a commanding tone. "There is no use of that light. You are ...
— The Liberty Boys Running the Blockade - or, Getting Out of New York • Harry Moore
... and as I colored to the eyes, for some minutes he seemed uncertain how to proceed. At length, recovering himself, he went on: "Now for the other. This is a most loving epistle from a poor devil of a midshipman, written last night by a tallow candle, in the cock-pit, containing vows of eternal adoration and a lock of hair. I promised faithfully to deliver it myself; for the 'Thunderer' sails for Gibraltar next tide, and he cannot go ashore for an instant. However, as Sir Arthur's billet ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... were in high spirits. The agents of the Northwest Company, in instigating the expedition, had talked of immense booty to be made by the fortunate captors of Astoria. Mr. M'Donald had kept up the excitement during the voyage, so that not a midshipman but revelled in dreams of ample prize-money, nor a lieutenant that would have sold his chance for a thousand pounds. Their disappointment, therefore, may easily be conceived, when they learned that their warlike attack upon Astoria had been forestalled ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... casting themselves into the sea, everything had been lost in the way of ship's papers; the charts, the two logs—everything, in fact, that could indicate the latitude and longitude of the disaster. The first and second officers and a midshipman had shared the fate of the quarter-boat; of the fore-mast hands saved, not one, of course, could give the slightest hint as to the locality of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was given to Master-Commandant Richard Somers, who was of the same age as Decatur and Stewart, and had established a reputation for coolness and intrepidity in the operations of the fleet. Midshipman Henry Wadsworth, an uncle of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet, was the second in command. They were accompanied by another midshipman named Israel, who begged so hard to be allowed to go that he could not be refused, and ten of ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... exorcised my devil, and he has rarely come to trouble me since. Some future day, perhaps, I may be able to call Faraday's attention more decidedly. Pergo modo! "wie das Gestirn, ohne Hast, ohne Rast" (Das Gestirn in a midshipman's berth!). ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... sailed with John Byron to destroy the Louisburg fortifications. At the peace in 1763 Barrington had been almost continuously afloat for twenty-two years. He was next appointed in 1768 to the frigate "Venus" as governor to the duke of Cumberland, who remained with him in all ranks from midshipman to rear-admiral. In 1778 the duke's flag-captain became rear-admiral and went to the West Indies, while in conjunction with the army he took the island of Santa Lucia from the French, and repulsed the attempt ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... was made to our party by the appointment of Mr. Perceval Baskerville, one of the Dromedary's midshipman; but Mr. Hunter the surgeon, who had volunteered his services in the Mermaid during the last voyage, was superseded by Mr. A. Montgomery, who had lately arrived in charge of a ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... commissioner—he is away—ordered all the works and dockyard to be open to us, and the Government boat to attend upon us; saw the Nelson—just finished; and went over the Phaeton, and your brother showed us his midshipman's berth and his lieutenant's cabin. And now for the Block machinery, you will say, but it is impossible to describe this in a letter of moderate or immoderate size. I will only say that the ingenuity and successful performance far surpassed my expectations. Machinery so perfect appears to act ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... 1806. When nineteen years of age he secured a midshipman's warrant, and, as there was no naval academy at Annapolis then, was immediately assigned to a man-of-war. Within six years he was master of an American war vessel. Before starting on a voyage to the Pacific he sought information on the winds and currents, and ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... position under her lee. A quarter-boat was lowered, and in five minutes its oars were tossed at the packet's lee-gangway, when the commander of the corvette ascended the ship's side, followed by a middle-aged man in the dress of a civilian, and a chubby-faced midshipman. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... strong fire was kept up on the advancing column. Nat Turner was thrown from his mule, then they became panic-stricken, and were dispersed. For the bravery displayed by young Blount on that occasion, he received a midshipman's warrant in the United States Navy. I will now quote from G. P. R. James' book, called the "Old Dominion," in which he states that a "young mother with her infant fled to the Dismal Swamp for safety." It was several miles away, ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... Franklin was born in 1786. Intended by his parents for the Church, but bent on going to sea, he joined the Royal Navy when he was fourteen years of age, and served as a midshipman on the Bellerophon at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, afterwards taking part in Captain Flinders' voyage of discovery along the coast of Australia. His first voyage to the Arctic Regions was in ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... advice of his ministers and the latter of his wife Caroline. (36) George III. was emphatically a sovereign. (37) George IV. had tried ineffectually to get rid of his wife; her death at last released him. (38) William IV. had been a midshipman in the navy. (39) Victoria has certainly proved herself ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... after the fatal shot had been fired from The Redoutable that ship was captured, the man who killed Nelson having himself been shot by a midshipman on board The Victory. ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... this book is reminiscent of "The Lost Middy", by the same author, but I suppose that with a similar theme, a nosey midshipman taken prisoner by a gang of smugglers, there are bound to be other points of similarity. Anyway, it is a good fast-moving story, with lots ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... made no acquaintances there, others, English merchants, who had met George at the Opera and in the streets, but nowhere else. It is true, there was an exception to this, in the case of a hair-brained young midshipman; who stated that he had dined at George's regimental mess, and had there heard that George "had fallen in love with some young lady, and had fought with her brother or uncle, or a soldier-officer, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... continued fire was kept up b; the Victory's starboard guns on the Redoutable, for about fifteen minutes after Lord NELSON was wounded; in which short period Captain ADAIR and about eighteen Seamen and Marines were killed, and Lieutenant BLIGH, Mr. PALMER Midshipman, and twenty Seamen and Marines, wounded, by the Enemy's musketry alone. The Redoutable had been on fire twice, in her fore-chains and on her forecastle: she had likewise succeeded in throwing a few hand-grenades ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... it, with the two songs immediately following, forms part of a characteristic series from the pen of this roving soldier-actor. Parker was born in 1732 at Green Street, near Canterbury and was 'early admitted', he says, 'to walk the quarterdeck as a midshipman on board the Falmouth and the Guernsey'. A series of youthful indiscretions in London obliged him to leave the navy, and in or about 1754 to enlist as a common soldier in the 2Oth regiment of foot, the second battalion of which became ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... used up many tons of coal, she had strained her tubes, and, worse than all, her officers and crew had been hurried. Every one on the Haliotis was arrested and rearrested several times, as each officer came aboard; then they were told by what they esteemed to be the equivalent of a midshipman that they were to consider themselves prisoners, and ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... influence, he went to Woolwich, where for a few months he was under the instruction of Mr. Bonnycastle, the mathematician, as a preparation to enter the Royal Navy. He eventually went on Lord Hood's fleet as a midshipman, and was then promoted to the rank of lieutenant, after which he appears to have been able to shift ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... FENIMORE, an American novelist, born in Burlington, New Jersey; having a passion for the sea, he entered the navy as a midshipman in 1808, but in three years resigned his commission, married, and settled to literature; his novels, which are well known, achieved instant popularity, made him a great favourite with boys, in which he showed himself an expert ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... had many children, but four were dead, and three daughters were married and living in Edinburgh and Lerwick, and two sons had emigrated to Canada; while the youngest of all, a boy of fifteen, was a midshipman on Her Majesty's man-of-war, Vixen, so that only one boy and one girl were with their parents. These were Boris, the eldest son, who was sailing his own ship on business ventures to French and Dutch ports, and Thora, the only unmarried ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... waved his gold-banded cap to us, as the frigate rounded to, to the leeward of us,—and the glorious stripes and stars blew out clear against the hot sky. A light dingey was in the water before the main yard had been well swung aback, and a midshipman was urging the men, who needed no urging, to give way strong. I didn't know how weak I had got, till they were lifting me aboard the boat. An hour after, when I had had something to eat and was a little restored and had told my story, the officer of the deck was relieved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... "Late Midshipman John Travers (Chester), aged 16 years. He was mortally wounded early in the action, yet he remained alone in a most exposed post awaiting orders, with his gun's ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... married X——, a fair northerner who adores her; they are a loverlike and inseparable pair, the only one that will probably weep when the hour of parting comes. Then Sikou-San with Doctor Y——; and lastly the midshipman Z—— with the tiny Madame Touki-San, no taller than a boot: thirteen years old at the outside and already a regular woman, full of her own importance, a petulant little gossip. In my childhood, I was sometimes taken to the Learned Animals Theater, and I remember ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Charles Morris, one of the eminent officers of the early U. S. Navy. He made a remarkable record in the War with Tripoli, his earliest achievement being on the occasion of the recapture and destruction of the frigate Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli in 1804. Midshipman Morris, then nineteen years old, volunteered for the service and was the first to stand on the deck of the Philadelphia and commence the work of destruction. At the beginning of the War of 1812 he held the rank of lieutenant—and became executive officer of the Constitution, Captain Isaac ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... lancets make a gash in the flesh, painless but blood-letting. All these insects are most abundant in the latter part of the rainy season, when the Maranon is almost uninhabitable. The apostrophe of Midshipman Wilberforce was prompted by sufferings which we can fully appreciate: "Ye greedy animals! I am ashamed of you. Can not you once forego your dinner, and feast your mind with the poetry of the landscape?" Right welcome was the usual afternoon squall, which ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... women scowled and snorted. The girls looked sympathetic: more than one midshipman had found favour in ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... made such a book as shall become the heroic text of every midshipman in the Navy, and the association of Nelson and Southey will not, I think, be ungrateful to you. If it be worth your attention in this way I am disposed to think that it will enable me to treble the sum I first offered as ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... noise on deck. Something was whispered to the captain, who left us in consternation. Happily for us, an English sloop of war, the Hawk, was cruising in those parts, and had signalled the captain to bring to; but the signal not being promptly answered, a gun was fired from the sloop and a midshipman sent on board our vessel. He was a polite young man, and gave me hopes that the lancha, which was laden with cacao, would be given up, and that on the following day we might pursue our voyage. In the meantime he ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt |
