"English Channel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... experienced a dreadful storm which swept away our paddle-boxes and stove our lifeboats; and ran aground besides, near Halifax, among rocks and breakers, where we lay at anchor all night. After we left the English Channel we had only one fine day. And we had the additional discomfort of being eighty-six passengers. I was ill five days, Kate six; though, indeed, she had a swelled face and suffered the utmost ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... of the many enthusiastic young Spaniards who sailed in the Great Armada. He had been disappointed in some love affair. He was an earnest Catholic. He wanted distraction, and it is needless to say that he found distraction enough in the English Channel to put his love troubles out of his mind. His adventures brought before him with some vividness the character of the nation with which his own country was then in the death-grapple, especially the character of the great English seaman to whom the Spaniards universally attributed their defeat. ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... by a German submarine, crew being saved; British steamer Glenlee is sunk by a German submarine, crew being saved; Portuguese steamer Cysne is sunk by a German submarine off Cape Finisterre, crew being saved; German submarine U-24 sinks British steamer Ethiope in the English Channel; ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... church on holy days in one of those precious pulpits, splendid in velvet and jewels, to the discomfiture of the other painters' wives,—we do not know; but whatever was the cause of her oft-recurring outbreaks, they made him not unwilling to put France and the English Channel between himself and her, his children, and the home of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... help. I've never had typhoid or pneumonia. I could go about exposing myself to all sorts of things after a year or two. Flying machines, too, and long distance swimming. I might even try to swim the English Channel. North Pole expeditions, African wild game hunts,—all that sort of thing, Anne. I'll promise to do everything in my power to make life as short as ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... expected to discontinue operations of the submarines against merchantmen on account of the unfriendly feeling aroused in neutral nations, particularly the United States. On the 19th of May, 1915, came the news that the British steamship Dumcree had been torpedoed off a point in the English Channel. A torpedo fired into her hull failed to sink her immediately, and a Norwegian ship came to her aid, passing her a cable and attempting to tow her to port. But the submarine returned, and fearing attack, the Norwegian ship made off. A second ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... the Bay of Biscay and English Channel, between Belgium and Spain, southeast of the UK; bordering the Mediterranean ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... the 6th May at Fernando Noronho, [in lat. 3 deg. 28' S. off the coast of Brazil,] where we remained six days to take in water, and to refresh ourselves. The 13th of the same month we departed, shaping our course for the English channel, and arrived at Middleburgh, in Zealand, on the 29th ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... notably with the adventurous side of ballooning, the most famous of his aerial exploits being, perhaps, that of crossing the English Channel alone from Dover on March 23rd, 1882. Outwardly, he made presence of sailing to Paris by sky to dine there that evening; inwardly, he had determined to start simply with a wind which bid fair for a cross-Channel trip, and to take whatever chances ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... humanity, idol of the tourist, and enemy of navigation. B. discovered a method of crossing the English Channel without ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... of the Armada, too, had distracted men's minds wonderfully in another direction. News had come in already, she was informed, of an engagement or two in the English Channel, all in favour of its defenders. More than that was not known. But the beacons had blazed; and the market-place of Derby had echoed with the tramp of the train-bands; and it was not likely that at such a time ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... little higher, so as to extend our horizon, we saw coming down the English channel, behind the British fleet, the black ships of Russia. Side by side, or following one another's lead, these war fleets were on a peaceful voyage that belied their threatening appearance. There had been no thought of danger to or from the forts and ports of rival nations which they had passed. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... could neither read or speak English, and, what is still more remarkable, he said that he had never been in England! That a critic of his power and reputation, interested as he was in English literature, should never have had sufficient intellectual curiosity to cross the English Channel, struck me as nothing ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... day that we raised land, dead ahead, which I took, from my map, to be the isles of Scilly. But such a gale was blowing that I did not dare attempt to land, and so we passed to the north of them, skirted Land's End, and entered the English Channel. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... man told a mixed company that Captain Webb swam the English Channel, he would have a good chance ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... my father but, my dear Harry, you know it was never my foible to think over-abundantly well of him. Why I think as I do of the great geniuses, answer for me, Admiral Matthews, great British Neptune, bouncing in the Mediterranean, while the Brest squadron is riding in the English Channel, and an invasion from Dunkirk every moment threatening your coasts: against which you send for six thousand Dutch troops, while you have twenty thousand of your own in Flanders, which not being of any use, you send these very six thousand Dutch to them, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... are trying to do things they have been ordered to do by Sir Thomas, or because they are being pursued by a Romish priest, who had taken a major dislike to them as they were not paying due attention while he was saying Mass at Saint Paul's Cathedral. We realise what a major barrier the English Channel was in those days, with the short distance sometimes taking but a few hours, and at other times several days, perhaps even with ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... may be dated from February 18, 1915, when Germany, citing as a precedent Great Britain's establishment of a military area in the North Sea, proclaimed a war zone "in the waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole English Channel," within which enemy merchant vessels would be sunk without assurance of safety to passengers or crew. Furthermore, as a means of keeping neutrals out of British waters, Germany declared she would assume no responsibility for destruction of neutral ships within this zone. What ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Syren had captured His Majesty's cutter Landrail while crossing the Irish Sea with dispatches; when the Governor Tompkins burned fourteen English vessels in the English Channel in quick succession; when the Harpy of Baltimore cruised for three months off the Irish and English coasts and in the Bay of Biscay, and returned to Boston filled with spoils, including a half million dollars of money; when the Prince de Neuchatel hovered at her leisure ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... good sailor. A dozen times, perhaps, she had crossed the English Channel, in fair weather and foul, and never with discomfort. Her maid, she knew, was in for a wretched brawl with the waves, but Hetty was too wise a sailor to think of trying to comfort the unhappy creature. Misery does not always ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... never remember givin a better imitation of a whip snapper; and the wind, Julie dere, the wind which spends its time round the Flatiron and Woolworth Buildings, are as the poets say "gentle zephers" to that which sweeps across the English channel when a man sized storm is on; it listens like a cross between the moan of a dyin giastacutus and a subway express behind time ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... out with a party of ten on board, who were on pleasure bent. We have come up the English Channel from Dinard to Ostend, but before we had been out an hour we struck a gale, to which veterans on seasickness will refer for many a long day as "that fearful time on ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... in simple language, a record of my impressions, so far as I can recall them, of what I have seen of many and varied phases of the Great Drama which has now been played to a finish on the other side of the English Channel. Most of those recollections were penned at odd moments, soon after the events chronicled, when they were still fresh in mind, often within ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... given her their mistaken views, she must inevitably, by boat or on land, have reached the head-waters of the Nile. I cannot conceive of her stopping short of Bangweolo. She showed such indomitable pluck she must be a descendant of Van Tromp, who swept the English Channel till killed by our Blake, and whose tomb every Englishman who goes to Holland is sure ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... unfortunate as to live between the Bosphorus and the English Channel can view without dread the course Continental Europe has taken since 1870. The armies have increased until France and Germany alone have over six millions of soldiers. The Great Powers have now three armed men for every two of ten years ago. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... armament had ever appeared in the English Channel than the fleet of allied British and Dutch ships, under the command of Admiral Russell. On May 19 it encountered the French fleet under the Count of Tourville, and a running fight took place which lasted during five fearful days, ending in the complete destruction ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... tempers the heat of the equator. (8) Fuso: either spacious, outspread; or, poured into the land (referring to the estuaries) as Mr. Haskins prefers; or, poured round the island. Portable leathern skiffs seem to have been in common use in Caesar's time in the English Channel. These were the rowing boats of the Gauls. (Mommsen, vol. iv., 219.) (9) Compare Book I., 519. (10) Compare the passage in Tacitus, "Histories", ii., 45, in which the historian describes how the troops of Otho and Vitellius wept over each other after ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... all foreign markets. It was answered with war, the fierce naval war of 1652-1654, in which was exhibited that famous spectacle of the at first victorious Dutch admiral, Van Tromp, sweeping the English Channel with a broom ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... Cantal, and Mont d'Or would each have sent up to the sky a dark column of smoke, and have long remained in fierce action. Two years and three- quarters afterwards, France, from its centre to the English Channel, would have been again desolated by an earthquake and an island ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... off the roofs of the fishermen's huts and whirled up into the air as if they had been chips of wood; and rain swept down and along the ground in great sheets of water, or whirled madly in the air and mingled with the salt spray that came direct from the English Channel; while, high and loud above all other sounds, rose the loud plunging roar ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the new steam yacht that Hardy had had built (and which he had christened the Rosendal) was a great delight to the young Dane, who was naturally fond of the sea. The yacht made a few short trips in the English Channel, and was then laid up for the winter. Karl made himself useful on board the yacht, and his greatest pleasure was to do anything for John Hardy or his mother. The lad's thankfulness for the kindness he received was thorough, and Mrs. Hardy ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... 1628 a fleet of eighteen or twenty ships belonging to the company assembled in the harbour of Dieppe, laden deep with food, building materials, implements, guns, and ammunition, including about one hundred and fifty pieces of ordnance for the forts at the trading-posts. Out into the English Channel one bright April day this fleet swept, under the command of Claude de Roquemont, one of the Associates. On the decks of the ships were men and women looking hopefully to the New World for fortune and happiness, and Recollets and Jesuits going to a field at ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... that had set out to explore the now silent ocean had never returned, and every warship that could be made fit for service was imperatively needed to meet the now inevitable attack on the shores of the English Channel and the southern portions of the North Sea. Only one messenger had arrived from the outside world since the remains of Admiral Beresford's fleet had returned from the Mediterranean, and she had come, not by land or sea, but ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... the other, laughing, "friend of mine, if you can tell the precise day when brandy and laces were first smuggled from France into my country, I will answer your question. I think you have never navigated as far north as the Bay of Biscay and our English Channel, or you would know that a Guernsey-man is better acquainted with the rig of a lugger than ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... almost silently, cutting its way through the calm, blue waters of the English Channel, a passenger-boat is ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... normality about him. You find him in towns, ancient with chateaux and wonderful with age; he is absolutely himself, keenly efficient and irreverently modern. Everywhere, from the Bay of Biscay to the Swiss border, from the Mediterranean to the English Channel, you see the lean figure and the slouch hat of the U.S.A. soldier. He is invariably well-conducted, almost always alone and usually gravely absorbed in himself. The excessive gravity of the American in khaki has astonished ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... pleasure-gardens of Touraine, whispering of dead royalty. But the Seine pours out his black and toil-stained waters northward between rugged banks, hurrying from the capital of France to bear her cargoes through the Norman cliffs into the English Channel. ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... William Nevins. He is supposed to be buried in the wrecked tunnel under the English channel. It is impossible to repair the damage done by the explosion; futile efforts are made by sub-marine divers to locate the exact point at which the break in the tunnel was made. The action of the water has totally obliterated the breach. ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... terms, Mr. Field now undertook the organization of the company, in addition to the task of raising a capital of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. In both efforts he was effectively assisted by Mr. John W. Brett, who had laid the first cable across the English Channel, and by Mr. Charles T. Bright and Dr. Edward O.W. Whitehouse. The efforts of these gentlemen were successful. In a few weeks the whole capital was subscribed. It had been divided into three hundred and fifty shares of a thousand pounds each. One hundred ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... pollution control measures improving air, water quality; because of heavily indented coastline, no location is more than 125 km from tidal waters Note: lies near vital North Atlantic sea lanes; only 35 km from France and now being linked by tunnel under the English Channel ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... them would have come here in the "Mayflower" but for Miles Standish, as I will explain. The "Mayflower," you know, started from Holland. They had to go to Holland first to learn the Dutch language. [Laughter.] They started from Holland, and they came along the English Channel and stopped at Plymouth in England. They stopped there to get the last edition of the London "Times" for that day, in order that they might bring over early copies to the New York "Tribune" and New York "World". These ancestors of mine, the legend says, were all on the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... N., and longitude 23 deg. W., and her master reported that he had seen the Jamaica-men the previous evening; but nothing further was heard or seen of them, and on July 13th, being within twenty hours' sail of the English Channel, Commodore Rodgers reluctantly turned southward, reaching Madeira July 21st. Thence he cruised toward the Azores and by the Grand Banks home, there being considerable sickness on the ships. On August 31st he reached Boston after a very unfortunate cruise, in which ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... of but moderate power can pass in three or four hours. These natural conditions, governing the approach to the Isthmus, reproduce as nearly as possible the strategic effect of Ireland upon Great Britain. There a land barrier of 300 miles, midway between the Pentland Firth and the English Channel—centrally situated, that is, with reference to all the Atlantic approaches to Great Britain—gives to an adequate navy a unique power to flank and harass either the one or the other, or both. Existing political conditions and other circumstances unquestionably modify the importance of these two ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... galleys were also war-ships. They carried large numbers of armed men on board. Sometimes they scoured the Mediterranean, and protected French merchant-ships against the Sallee rovers. At other times they were engaged in the English channel, attacking Dutch and English ships, sometimes picking up a prize, at other times in ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... the time arrived for his embarkation. He sailed across the Bay of Biscay, and up the English Channel until he reached Southampton, a famous port on the southern coast of England. There he landed with great pomp and parade. He assumed a very proud and stately bearing, which made a very unfavorable impression upon the English ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... up the great camp he had formed on the shores of the English Channel, and gave orders for his mighty host to defile toward the Danube. Vast and various as were the projects fermenting in his brain, however, he did not content himself with giving the order, and leaving the elaboration of its details to his lieutenants. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... we will make a steamer-excursion almost across the English Channel, going about one hundred and fifteen miles to the Channel Islands, off the north-western coast of France and within a few miles of the shores of Normandy and Brittany. They are Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark, standing in a picturesque ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... of The Academy, and The Academy opened with this sentence: "Since our last issue we have received one hundred and nineteen new books and reprints." I looked across to the pile on my window-seat and felt it to be insignificant, though it interfered with my view of the English Channel. One hundred and nineteen books in a single week! Yet who was I to exclaim at their number?—I, who (it appeared) had contributed one of them? With that I remembered something which had happened just before my holiday, and began to reflect on it, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Bay—or Jack's Harbor, as the sailors call it; the latter, according to the log of the Admiral, may be found in latitude 37 deg. 59' 5"; longitude 122 deg. 57-1/2'. The cliffs about Drake's Bay resemble in height and color, those of Great Britain in the English Channel at Brighton and Dover; therefore it seems quite natural that Sir Francis should have called the land New Albion. As for the origin of the name California, some etymologists contend that it is derived from two Latin words: calida fornax; or, as the Spanish put it, caliente ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... paid any attention to the doubts and condemnations which they heard from every quarter. Four days after the news of the destruction of the Craglevin had been telegraphed from Canada to London, the Syndicate's fleet entered the English Channel. Owing to the power and speed of the crabs, Repeller No. 11 had made a passage of the Atlantic which in her old naval career would have ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... shall take a slice of seacoast; Germany needs ports on the English Channel. Russia will be so humbled that no longer will the Muscovite peril threaten Europe. Great Britain we shall crush utterly. She shall be shorn of her navy and she shall lose her colonies—certainly she shall lose India and Egypt. She ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the pursers joined their respective ships, and on the 3d we made sail with a fair breeze, and soon cleared the English channel. Nothing was now heard but confusion; the pilot having just left the ship, the hoarse voice of the captain resounded through a speaking trumpet, while the seamen were busy in making sail. We had a fine steady breeze till we made the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... Ireland that its date can be pretty well fixed. Fraech and his companions go, over the sea from Ulster, i.e. to Scotland; then through "north Saxon-land" to the sea of Icht (i.e. the sea of Wight or the English Channel); then to the Alps in the north of the land of the Long-Beards, or Lombards. The Long-Beards do not appear in Italy until the end of the sixth century; the suggestion of North Saxon-Land reaching down to the sea of Wight suggests that ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... centuries. It is not necessary to suppose them the work of intelligent beings, and, notwithstanding the almost geometrical appearance of all of their system, we are now inclined to believe them to be produced by the evolution of the planet, just as on the earth we have the English Channel ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... mysterious in July haze, giving him a queer feeling. But Lord Dennis, though he had his moments of poetic sentiment, was on the whole quite able to keep the sea in its proper place—for after all it was the English Channel; and like a good Englishman he recognized that if you once let things get away from their names, they ceased to be facts, and if they ceased to be facts, they became—the devil! In truth he was not thinking much of the sea, but of Barbara. It was plain that she was in trouble of some ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... incidents of her jubilee was the greatest naval demonstration ever known. The fleets of Great Britain were summoned from all parts of the globe and anchored in a long and imposing line in the English Channel. Mr. Ismay, at that time the head of the White Star Line, took the Teutonic, which had just been built and was not yet in regular commission, as his private yacht. He had on board a notable company, representing the best, both ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... had the regular army been large and well equipped, would have been sufficiently formidable. The city of Atlanta, which may be considered as the heart of the Confederacy, was sixty days' march from the Potomac, the same distance as Vienna from the English Channel, or Moscow from the Niemen. New Orleans, the commercial metropolis, was thirty-six days' march from the Ohio, the same distance as Berlin from the Moselle. Thus space was all in favour of the South; even should the enemy overrun her borders, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson |
