"Bowsprit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were carefully disposed of in its capacious sides. They had but just moored off when the vessel struck again, making another breach for a swifter flood, both shocks coming within fifteen minutes of each other. The bow snapped from the foremast, the bowsprit flew through the air up to the foretopmast, and the funnel, toppling overboard, dragged in its rear the starboard paddle-box and boat. The second boat had reached the waves bottom upmost, and notwithstanding there was ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... that bijouterie outside." And she exhibited with glistening eyes the bridal offerings of the poor fisherwomen and country folk of Kilronan. They were fearfully and wonderfully made. Here was a magnificent three-decker battleship, complete from pennant to bowsprit, every rope in its place, and the brass muzzles of its gun protruded for action. Here was a pretty portrait of Bittra herself, painted by a Japanese artist from a photograph, surreptitiously obtained, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... to rejoice in her freedom, tossing her bowsprit in the air as she cast off from the tug; and then, heeling over to leeward as she felt the full force of the breeze on her quarter, she gave a plunge downwards, ploughing up the water, now beginning to be crested with little choppy waves as the ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... or two trysails were all the canvass displayed, and they rather served to steady the ship than to aid her progress; while for days together, stripped to her naked spars, she was compelled to push her bowsprit into the wind's very eye by the force of her engines alone. And that wind, though no hurricane, had a will of its own; while the waves, rolled perpetually against her bow by so long a succession of easterly winds, were a decided impediment to our progress. ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Skipper swore with a "Yeave-ho-ho!" And the crew replied "Hi-hi!" And then, with a cheerful "Heave-ho-yo," They pumped the bowsprit dry. "Three cheers!" the Mate cried with a sneeze "Hurrah for this old boat! She sails two knots before the breeze, But on the bar, by Jingo, she's The fastest ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... cordage, all before it, in its course. It passed, but the vessel rose not. Her deck remained buried in a sheet of foam, and she seemed settling down by the head. There was a frightful pause. First, however, the bowsprit and the butts of the windlass began to emerge—next the forecastle—the vessel seemed as if shaking herself from the load; and then the whole deck appeared, as she went tilting over the next wave. 'There are still more mercies in store for us,' ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... 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, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... from time to time. During the space of three bells, we have our hands pretty full, and then the mate bawls: 'For'ard there! In with jib; lay out, men!' The vessel is buried to her bight-heads every plunge she takes, and sometimes the solid sea pours over her bowsprit as far as the but-end of the flying jib-boom. But to hear is of course to obey; and while some of our messmates spring to the downhaul of the jib, and rattle it down the stay, we and another man get out along the bowsprit, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... 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 Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... this," he said. "Several years ago I made a bad break and, about a year later, they got on to me and I had to cut and run. In a month the law of limitation lets me loose and I can go back. And you can bet I'm going back. I will be on the bowsprit of the first boat. I've had all I want of the 'fugitive-from-justice' game, thank you, and I have taken good care to keep a clean bill of health so that I won't have to play it again. They've been trying to get me for several years—especially the Pinkertons. They have chased me all over Europe. ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... been struck, and fifty men placed hors de combat. The English admiral had given orders to separate the Redoutable from the Bucentaure; but Captain Lucas, who commanded the former vessel, profited by a slight breath of wind, and his bowsprit touched the stern of the Bucentaure. Nelson then engaged the Redoutable, dashing against it with a shock so violent that both vessels were thrown out of the line; the Bucentaure and the Santissima-Trinidad were also surrounded ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... morning, 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
... orders were always ready to meet any emergency that might arise. Very different was the case with Ithuel. The Proserpine was his bane; and, even while eating his breakfast, which he took on the heel of the bowsprit, expressly with that intent, his eye was seldom a minute off the frigate, unless it was for the short period she was shut in by the land. It was impossible for any one in the lugger to say whether her character was or was not known in Porto Ferrajo; but the circumstance of the blue-lights ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... drenched the sailors. 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 ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... knocked aside by huge billows, as though the poor little tug were a walnut-shell; again and again do we recover ourselves, and blunder bravely on, sometimes with but one paddle in the water, sometimes burying our bowsprit in a big green wave too high to climb, and dashing right through it as fast as if we shut our eyes and went at everything. The spray flies high over our heads, G—— and I are drenched over and over again, but we shake the sparkling water off our coats, for all the world like Newfoundland ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... her adversary's bows, raking with her port guns. The mizzen-mast of the Guerriere, dragging in the water, had by this time pulled her bow round till the wind came on her starboard quarter; and so near were the two ships that the Englishman's bowsprit passed diagonally over the Constitution's quarter-deck, and as the latter ship fell off it got foul of her mizzen-rigging, and the vessels then lay with the Guerriere's starboard bow against the Constitution's port, or lee quarter-gallery. [Footnote: Cooper, in "Putnam's Magazine." i. 475.] ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... had been fired; and, judging by the yells of the natives, the display must have created a strong sensation. Immediately after the salute, the anchor was weighed, and we commenced dropping down the river with the ebb tide; but we soon grounded on the mud, and we remained all night with the bowsprit in the bushes which grow on ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... The two boats were now almost bowsprit to bowsprit. As for Noddy, the freckles stood out on his pale, frightened face like spots ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... opposite 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' bowsprit had all but scraped his quarter, and the Rose passed slowly across his stern ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... a frigate," announced 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 ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... slowly, and while she gathered way, was drifting straight down upon an Italian barque that two hours ago had lain more than a cable's length from us. . . . I thought our lower yard—we heeled so—would have smacked against her bowsprit-end; and from the outcries on board the Italian I rather fancy her crew expected it. But we shaved her by a yard or so, as Link pushed me away from the wheel and took charge. A moment later she had dropped behind us into the night, and we ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... too sure," warned Captain Barrington. "I hope we are, but the vessel will have to be examined before we can be certain. In any event our foremast and bowsprit are sad wrecks." ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... below before away went the foretopmast staysail, blown to ribbons. This was a small sail, which we could manage in the watch, so that we were not obliged to call up the other watch. We laid upon the bowsprit, where we were under water half the time, and took in the fragments of the sail; and as she must have some headsail on her, prepared to bend another staysail. We got the new one out into the nettings; seized on the tack, sheets, and halyards, and the hanks; manned ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... almost 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 ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... 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 ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... of islands where either the bowsprit or the boom was continually getting caught in the shrubbery and rocks, until he came to island No. 18. Here was ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... the dark. And as he sprang for it, his boat was crushed by the brigantine's fore-foot and went down under his very boot-soles. At the same time he let out a yell, and two or three of the crew ran forward and hoisted him up to the bowsprit and in on deck, safe ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... our three jury lower-masts, we hoisted up the foreyard to the main, to act as our mainyard, and did likewise with the topsail-yard to the fore, and after that, we sent up the t'gallant-yard to the mizzen. Thus we had her sparred, all but a bowsprit and jibboom; yet this we managed by making a stumpy, spike bowsprit from one of the smaller spars which they had used to shore up the superstructure, and because we feared that it lacked strength to bear the strain of our fore ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... checked in her 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 a ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... in the bows 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 ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the westward, with sea getting up. Saw Revolutionnaire to leeward. On examination, found the cut-water so much shook I determined to run on to Baia and secure the bowsprit; made signal to prepare to anchor, and bore up little after 8 A.M. Anchored in fifteen fathom water. The Revolutionnaire was examined also, when I found her mainmast was sprung; sent the master and carpenter ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... the deck right under the lamps, stripped to the waist, tattooed like a cannibal chief all over his powerful chest and enormous biceps. Between the blue and red patterns his white skin gleamed like satin; his bare back was propped against the heel of the bowsprit, and he held a book at arm's length before his big, sunburnt face. With his spectacles and a venerable white beard, he resembled a learned and savage patriarch, the incarnation of barbarian wisdom serene in the blasphemous turmoil ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... could see, were in the utmost confusion; and not being aware of our design, their ship having fresh way, ran their bowsprit into the fore part of our main shrouds, as that they could not easily get clear of us, and so we lay locked after that manner. The enemy could not bring above five or six guns, besides their small-arms, to bear upon us, while we played ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... 600 men, called the Malabar, which they chased, kept company with her all night, and took in the morning, with the loss of only their boatswain, and two or three men wounded. In taking this ship, they damaged their own so much, by springing their foremast, carrying away their bowsprit, and beating in part of their upper works that they did not think her longer fit for their use. They therefore filled her away with prisoners, gave them provision ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... 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 mark him; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... spring, together with stains and thorny scratches. I haul myself 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, for ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... owner had 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 ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... of habit. Why, people never think of the danger, but every time they run up or downstairs they risk a severe fall; and I once knew of a sailor lad, accustomed to go aloft and climb over the bulwarks into the main chains or the rigging under the bowsprit, who would pull all the clothes off his bed of a night and make them up on the floor, because he was afraid of tumbling out of bed in the night. Hah! we are getting near the end of the lake. Why, Saxe, it does look ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... 'In course, he has been to sea afore this, and weathered many a gale. But so has the cook. That don't make a man a sailor. You ask him how to send down a to'-gallant yard or gammon a bowsprit, or even mark a lead line, and he'll stare at ye like Old Nick, when the angel caught him with the red-hot tongs, and questioned him out of the Church Catechism. Ask Sam there if ye don't believe me. Sam, what do you think of this Wylie ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... a time. The ship rolled easily; now and then she dipped her bowsprit with a soft swish of spray; a school of dolphins played astern, and the last of the land birds that had followed us out flew in ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... heard it—that 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 Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... 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
... [P.M.] we had some twelve miles lifted, when I went to the bows; the kinks were exceedingly tight and were giving way in a most alarming manner. I got a cage rigged up to prevent the end (if it broke) from hurting anyone, and sat down on the bowsprit, thinking I should describe kinks to Annie:- suddenly I saw a great many coils and kinks altogether at the surface. I jumped to the gutta-percha pipe, by blowing through which the signal is given to stop the engine. I blow, but the engine does ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the bowsprit, and he pushed with the boat-hook, while the wind veered round a little as if on purpose and helped with the sail; so presently the boat was free and began to drift out ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Blackbeard, was a terror to Virginians and Carolinians until Spotswood, of "Horseshoe" fame, took the matter in hand, and sent after him lieutenant Maynard, who, slaying the pirate in hand to hand conflict, returned with his head at the bowsprit.[1] Lapse of time has cast a romantic and semi-mythologic glamor around these depredators, and it is in many instances at this day extremely difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. The unprotected situation of many settlements along the seaboard colonies rendered them an easy prey to rapacious ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... low-lying rock on the left-hand side of the opening,—a favorite haunt of the seal. "I took farewell of the Betsey there last winter," he said. "The night had worn late, and was pitch dark; we could see before us scarce the length of our bowsprit; not a single light twinkled from the shore; and, in taking the bay, we ran bump on the skerry, and stuck fast. The water came rushing in, and covered over the cabin-floor. I had Mrs. Swanson and my little daughter aboard with me, with one of our servant-maids who had become attached ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... I should. I'd have my bowsprit always wet, and my quarter-deck always dry. But it is no use wishing for what we ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... above a thousand men on board his flag-ship. The vessel was illuminated with coloured lanterns. In the midst of the festivities, Constantine Kanaris, a Psarian captain, brought his fire-ship unobserved right up to the Turkish man-of-war, and drove his bowsprit firmly into one of her portholes; then, after setting fire to the combustibles, he stepped quietly into a row-boat, and made away. A breeze was blowing, and in a moment the Turkish crew were enveloped in a mass of flames. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... head swung a hammock from which hung a leg; other hammocks hanging in the semi-gloom called up suggestions of lemurs and arboreal bats. The swinging kerosene lamp cast its light forward past the heel of the bowsprit to the knightheads, lighting here a naked foot hanging over the side of a bunk, here a face from which protruded a pipe, here a breast covered with dark mossy hair, here ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... with long ironshod bamboos sheer the vessel off the rocks as foot by foot it is drawn past the obstruction. Contrast with this toilsome slowness the speed of the junk bound down-stream. Its mast is shipped; its prodigious bow-sweep projects like a low bowsprit; the after deck is covered as far as midships with arched mat-roof; coils of bamboo rope are hanging under the awning; a score or more of boatmen, standing to their work and singing to keep time, work the yulos, as looking like a modern whaleback the junk ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... rope of 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 a tremendous crash. The Susan had struck on the sands. The next wave lifted ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... Mr. Preston and young Mr. Northcote —noticeable among this menial, work-a-day crowd. Ginger loved the upper circles, and now he romped the polka in the most approved London fashion, his elbows advanced like a yacht's bowsprit, and, his coat-tails flying, he dashed through a group of tradespeople who were bobbing up and down, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... mode of conveyance the opium of Malwa and Marwar (vast quantities of which are 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 the Delta, (the course of which, as in the Mississippi, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... where the 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 ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... betting, that comes sheering through the water, with white foam at her bows? Surely she is more than her time allowance ahead? And on this tack will she get clear round the ruddy little lightship, or is there not a danger of her carrying off a bowsprit? With what an ease and majesty she comes along, scarcely dipping to the slight summer waves, while they on board notice that she has put out her long spinnaker boom, ready to hoist a great ballooner as soon as she is round the lightship and running home before the wind. The ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Two days afterwards in latitude 27 deg. 52' N., longitude 84 deg. 34' W., a vessel was found in 65 fathom of water, with her anchor down, burned to her main deck and on fire aft. She was dismasted and her bowsprit had gone. Eric was sent in charge of one of the boats to run a line. The sea was comparatively smooth, so that the Miami made fast alongside her stern and put two lines of hose aboard. The cutter's heavy pumps were attached and in fifteen minutes ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... your 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 to stern. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... were cut away, Both main and mizen; first the mizen went, The main-mast follow'd: 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... sea you never can tell, and you must take every inch the gods allow you. You will need that and more very often before evening. Now, as I put my head out I saw that I could not yet start, for there was a thick white mist over everything, so that I could not even see the bowsprit of my own boat. Everything was damp: the decks smelt of fog, and from the shore came sounds whose cause I could not see. Looking over the iron bulwarks of the big English cargo ship, alongside of which I was moored, was a man with his head upon his folded arms. He told me that he thought ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... one of the servants board it without delay and tell him what he found there. The man, though with difficulty, made his way on board and found the young lady, with what little company she had, crouched, all adread, under the heel of the bowsprit. When they saw him, they besought him, weeping, of mercy again and again; but, perceiving that he understood them not nor they him, they made shift to make known to him their ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the light on Fire Island head draws near, As, trumpet-winged, the pilot's shout From his post on the bowsprit's heel I hear, With the welcome call of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... maimed them in one of their masts in passing, and their bowsprit broke short when it touched our stern. I doubt if we ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... ran 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 ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... the ordinary course of their duty, and there was no intimation or suspicion of it being intended as a "work-up" job, as they called it. The main and mizen stays stretched from mast to mast; the fore stays were more perpendicular, as they stretched from the masts to the jib-boom and bowsprit. It was usual to have a boatswain's chair to sit and be lowered down in while tarring these stays. Some mates disdained pampering youths with a luxury of this kind, so disallowed it, and caused them to sit in a bowlin' bight ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... My readers will recall the fact that Washington Irving, as far back as a century ago, chronicled the pleasure that one felt during an Atlantic voyage in idle day dreams while lying prone upon the bowsprit and watching the dolphins leaping in the crystalline foam. Since his time so many gifted writers have attempted to do the same thing that on the large Atlantic liners the bowsprit has been removed, or at any rate a notice put up: "Authors are requested not to lie prostrate ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... the figures of the two sailors had vanished its personality took fuller life, grim, dark, close, like the interior of a grimy hand clutching the lives of all those sleepers. The beams shewed like the curved fingers, and the heel of the bowsprit like the point of the in-turned thumb, a faint soul-killing rock of kerosene filled it, intensifying, after the fashion of ambergris, all the other perfumes, without losing in power. Bilge, tobacco and humanity, ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which the bolt-rope of 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 a tremendous crash. The Susan ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... He then mann'd his Bowsprit, brought his Sprit-sail Yard fore and aft, and resolved to board the other, which the Dutch perceiving, and terrified with the unhappy Fate of their Comrade, thought a farther Resistance vain, and immediately struck. ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... the hot leagues o' the great sand sea," said he, patting her head. "Ah! thy neck shall be as the bowsprit; thy dust as ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... Scotch express. Personally, I do not care for any of these; my vote goes for the desert-island story. Proud Lady Julia has fallen off the deck of the liner, and Ronald, refused by her that morning, dives off the hurricane deck—or the bowsprit or wherever he happens to be—and seizes her as she is sinking for the third time. It is a foggy night and their absence is unnoticed. Dawn finds them together on a little coral reef. They are in no danger, for several liners are ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... 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 so well ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... in Copenhagen 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
... to the jetty gradual she was hauled: Then one the tiller took, And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled; And one the canvas shook Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called And cursed ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... later, the ships of all seafaring nations arrive; and there, at its destined hour, the ship of my choice will let go its anchor. I shall take my time, I shall tarry and bide, till at last the right one lies waiting for me, warped out into mid-stream, loaded low, her bowsprit pointing down harbour. I shall slip on board, by boat or along hawser; and then one morning I shall wake to the song and tramp of the sailors, the clink of the capstan, and the rattle of the anchor-chain coming merrily in. We shall break out the jib and the foresail, the white houses ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... then, 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 the wreckage to ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... had any 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 ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... practically a right angle; and her stern was cut almost straight across, with only enough overhang to give the rudder room. Furthermore, her masts had no rake. They stood up stiff and straight as sore thumbs; and the bowsprit, instead of being something near horizontal, rose toward the skies at an angle close to forty-five degrees. This bowsprit made the Nathan Ross look as though she had just stubbed her toe. She carried four boats at the davits; and two spare craft, bottom up, on the boathouse ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... on your 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 and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... counterweights to measures of coal swinging up, which were then rattled over the side into barges; here, at her moorings was to-morrow's steamer for Rotterdam, of which we took good notice; and here to-morrow's for Hamburg, under whose bowsprit we crossed. And now I, sitting in the stern, could see, with a faster beating heart, Mill Pond Bank and Mill ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... during the battle, and Maynard sailed away from the scene of his victory with the corsair's head fixed upon his bowsprit. The captured offenders were carried to Williamsburg, Virginia, and there tried and executed, as they deserved ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... harmony in the 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 long poles, but this well-meant attempt failed, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... clipper-ships that I had been accustomed to I could hardly imagine. She was one of a class characterized by sailors as "built by the mile, and cut off in lengths as you want 'em," bow and stern almost alike, masts standing straight as broomsticks, and bowsprit soaring upwards at an angle of about forty-five degrees. She was as old-fashioned in her rig as in her hull; but I must not go into the technical differences between rigs, for fear of making myself tedious. Right in the centre of the deck, occupying ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... starting. He 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 to ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... one; plump—went the other. The old chains rattled out, and a little red cloud of rust rose up on either side of the bowsprit. ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... 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, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Cuddy 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
... dropped, 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, ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock |
