"Merchantman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called the "America," the equipment and operations of which illustrated precisely the business conception which attached to these enterprises in the minds of competent business men. This ship-rigged vessel of four hundred and seventy-three tons, built of course for a merchantman, was about eight years old when the war broke out, and had just returned from a voyage. Seeing that ordinary commerce was likely to be a very precarious undertaking, her owners spent the months of July and August in preparing her deliberately for her new ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... first place, the navigating officers of a merchantman are merely the employees of civilians—the shipowners. In the second place, the Board of Trade, by compelling shipowners to carry a certain number of navigators and engineers holding certificates of competency, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Ishmael sat there was no one present except the old retired merchantman, Captain Mountz, who sat on the opposite side, directly under the port lights. And with the rolling of the ship these two diners, holding desperately onto the edge of the table, were tossed up and down like ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... had been done he had bargained with a Peruvian captain of a merchantman to carry the cargo ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... de Clieu was a merchantman, and many were the trials that beset passengers and crew. Narrowly escaping capture by a corsair of Tunis, menaced by a violent tempest that threatened to annihilate them, they finally encountered a calm that proved more appalling than either. The supply of drinking water was ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly clapped the door in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened, Excellency; no, not I. Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without a ducat in my pocket or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board of a Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected; but luckily we were attacked by a pirate,—half the crew were butchered, the rest captured. I was one of the last: always in luck, you see, signor,—monks' sons have a knack that way! The captain of the pirates took a fancy to me. 'Serve with us?' ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... officers to come aboard and ask questions. Accordingly, he decided to stop at Valparaiso. He thought it likely that if he did not meet a vessel going into port which would lay to and take his letter, he might find some merchantman, anchored in the roadstead, to which he could send a boat, and on which he was sure to find some one who would willingly ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... effectual reparation' if Berkeley had been wrong. Berkeley was wrong. The Right of Search did not include the right to search a foreign man-of-war, though, unlike the modern 'right of search,' which is confined to cargoes, it did include the right to search a neutral merchantman on the high seas for any 'national' who was 'wanted.' Canning, however, distinctly stated that the men's nationality would affect the consideration of restoring them or not. Monroe now had a good case. But he made the fatal ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... February day of the year 1760, and a young Tony, newly of age, and bound on the grand tour aboard the crack merchantman of old Bracknell's fleet, felt his heart leap up as the distant city trembled into shape. Venice! The name, since childhood, had been a magician's wand to him. In the hall of the old Bracknell house at Salem there hung a series of yellowing prints ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... occurred (had not superiority stepped in) at the very outset if, for instance, we had sent several Dreadnoughts to catch the Emden. It was strongly suspected, mind you, that there were German armed vessels on the trade routes. As one merchantman after another was sunk there could no longer be any doubt about it. What if, in panic, we had suddenly dispersed our naval force to every part of the globe? What then? But we didn't. What again if it had been determined, in accordance with some fanciful scheme, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... too, the pilot of the biggest merchantman, grasping the steering oar by its handle, which the Greeks call [Greek: oiax], and with one hand bringing it to the turning point, according to the rules of his art, by pressure about a centre, can turn the ship, although she may be laden with a very large or even enormous burden of merchandise ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... Houston early in the morning of February 11th, after disposing of Herlihy and eluding the watchfulness of Herlihy's assistants. Hummel was leading and by ten o'clock the next morning Dodge and his comrades were on board an English merchantman lying in the harbor of Galveston. Later in the same day the Hummel interests chartered from the Southern Pacific Railroad for the sum of three thousand dollars the sea-going tug Hughes, to which Dodge was now transferred for the purpose of ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... countenance was swarthy, his eyes were black his hair was black, his heavy jaw was shadowed by an enormous black mustachio. A kerchief of brilliant red tied about his throat gave him the appearance of the matador in a Spanish bullfight rather than the officer of an English merchantman. He glanced at the dory occasionally, shook his head silently in response to the requests to go aboard, and at length when that did not serve to put an end to them, he shrugged his shoulders and disappeared. ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... Without insisting, for example, upon the impossibility of having a speech delivered by one who is actually blind, and deaf, and dumb, we need only imagine here its utterance, by some wall-eyed stammerer, who has a visage about as wooden and inexpressive as the figure-head of a merchantman. Occasionally, it is true, physical defects have been actually conquered, individual peculiarities have been in a great measure counteracted, by rhetorical artifice, or by the arts of oratorical delivery: instance the lisp of ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... cruisers were driven off the sea, the privateers continued the naval war. At that time a merchantman could be turned into a capable fighting ship by adding strengthening timbers and providing the necessary guns. Such a ship, when commissioned as a privateer by the United States government, could capture the enemy's merchantmen ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart
... grate, containing a few half-consumed embers; there was the compass, swinging between the stern-windows. A nice Brussels carpet was under my feet; and there were three doors on either side of the cabin, opening into the staterooms. The vessel appeared to have been a first-class merchantman, fitted to carry half a dozen passengers; and how such a vessel as this ever found its way into these northern seas was a mystery. I just glanced for a moment into these rooms, and saw there trunks and valises, and all the usual articles of the ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... Ship. — N. ship, vessel, sail; craft, bottom. navy, marine, fleet, flotilla; shipping. man of war &c. (combatant) 726; transport, tender, storeship[obs3]; merchant ship, merchantman; packet, liner; whaler, slaver, collier, coaster, lighter; fishing boat, pilot boat; trawler, hulk; yacht; baggala[obs3]; floating hotel, floating palace; ocean greyhound. ship, bark, barque, brig, snow, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... schooner had by this time found out his mistake and immediately came on board, where, instead of being lauded for his gallantry, I am sorry to say he was roundly rated for his want of discernment in mistaking his Majesty's cruiser for a Yankee merchantman. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and towing their cousin like two fussy little tugs with a fine merchantman, the children returned to the parlour, where Emil kissed all the women and shook hands with all the men except his uncle; him he embraced in the good old German style, to the great delight ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Chinese station, but had recently obtained information that war had been declared between England and the States. She was now making her way to the west by a circuitous route to avoid the British squadron, and, at the same time, with a view to pick up an English merchantman or two. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... order of a Portuguese devil, whose ambition coolly plotted murder. I was sailing under the black flag, to be hung if captured, compelled to act out the masquerade, a satellite of the most infamous villain who ever sacked a merchantman. Why, the very name of Sanchez had been horror to me in the past—yet here I actually was in charge of the deck of his death ship, searching for new victims, and only hoping that the arch villain might live to overthrow the even fouler demon who would succeed him if he died. Already I knew murder ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... Clerc had a commission from the Prince of Conde. It was proved that in the summer of 1563 there were 400 English and Huguenot rovers in and about the Channel, and that they had taken 700 prizes between them. The Queen's own ships followed suit. Captain Cotton in the Phoenix captured an Antwerp merchantman in Flushing. The harbour-master protested. Cotton laughed, and sailed away with his prize. The Regent Margaret wrote in indignation to Elizabeth. Such insolence, she said, was not to be endured. She would have ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... to haunt British thought was the growing American navy. John Paul was a Scots sailor, who had been a slave trader and subsequently master of a West India merchantman, and on going to America had assumed the name of Jones. He was a man of boundless ambition, vanity, and vigor, and when he commanded American privateers he became a terror to the maritime people from whom he sprang. In the summer of 1779 when Jones, with a squadron of four ships, was haunting ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... first-class merchantman Deliverance, Kirke, commander, sailed from London for the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... a very short time before he took leave of his master; rather, indeed, departed without taking leave; and, having broke open his mother's escritore, and carried off with him all the valuable effects he there found, to the amount of about fifty pounds, he marched off to sea, and went on board a merchantman, whence he was afterwards pressed ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the lads had shipped on board a peaceable merchantman," he observed when I told him, "but I can't pretend to dictate to them. I am glad thou hast been better ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... night-glass of many a mystified merchantman searched the murk for those coruscations with which the crescent of forts had constellated the Atlantic, the mariner's sea-rent waiting ready, with his ship's-papers, in his cash box: but no galaxy of lights ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... d'ye see, in a Revenue sloop, And, off Cape Finisteere, A merchantman we see, A Frenchman, going free, So we made for the bold Mounseer, D'ye see? We made for the bold Mounseer! But she proved to be a Frigate - and she up with her ports, And fires with a thirty-two! It come uncommon near, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge. At times, there was a curious nervousness ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... could they, in any way, detract from her own native grace and loveliness? Were her eyes less bright, or was her conversation less cheery, or were her attitudes less picturesque and pleasing, because old Captain Barkstead, instead of still sailing a fleet merchantman, now mopingly cleaned his reflectors, and, when strangers came, hid himself in the lantern? Moreover, had she not brought with her from her former home, wherever that might be, a wit, and intellect, and intelligence which might adorn any position? ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... she won through, stout ship that she was, and her weary sailors found brief respite in the harbor of Valparaiso on March 14, 1813. Thence Porter headed up the coast, disguising the trim frigate so that she looked like a lubberly, high-pooped Spanish merchantman. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... killed he sat up and drank till the morning with some of his own men and the master of a merchantman; and having had intelligence of the two sloops coming to attack him, as has been before observed, one of his men asked him, in case anything should happen to him in the engagement with the sloops, whether his wife knew where he had buried his money? He answered, "That ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... Captain decided things had gone too far. He himself apparently remained to watch over the linen; but at five o'clock on the Sunday morning, Aunt Anna, Fleeming, and his mother were rowed in a pour of rain on board an English merchantman, to suffer "nine mortal hours of agonising suspense." With the end of that time peace was restored. On Tuesday morning officers with white flags appeared on the bastions; then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched in, two hundred men sleeping on the ground floor of the Jenkins' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to own a name! But he was cook's boy on board a merchantman, and they called him 'Galley Vick.' I never knew him by any other name. Did you ever see him ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... resembling the lugger had been in that part of the Bay. The vessel's head was now laid to the southward and westward, in waiting for the zephyr, which might soon be expected. The gallant frigate, seen from the impending rocks, looked like a light merchantman, in all but her symmetry and warlike guise; nature being moulded on so grand a scale all along that coast, as to render objects of human art unusually diminutive to the eye. On the other hand, the country-houses, churches, hermitages, convents, and villages, clustered all along the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... writer's own knowledge of the career of the subject of his present work. In the year 1806, the editor, then a lad, fresh from Yale, and destined for the navy, made his first voyage in a merchantman, with a view to get some practical knowledge of his profession. This was the fashion of the day, though its utility, on the whole, may very well be questioned. The voyage was a long one, including some six or eight passages, and extending to near the close ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the article provides. But the armed vessels of France have been also admitted to land and sell their prize-goods here for a consumption, in which case, it is as reasonable they should pay duties, as the goods of a merchantman landed and sold for consumption. They have however demanded, and as a matter of right, to sell them free of duty, a right, they say, given by this article of the treaty, though the article does not give the right to sell at all. Where a treaty ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... peaceful one. England at that time had become the undisputed mistress of the ocean; and even the few splendid victories obtained by the gallant little American navy, had failed as yet to inspire in the bosoms of her sailors, any feeling like that of fear or of caution; and Captain Horton, of the merchantman Betsy Allen, smoked his pipe, and drank his glass as unconcernedly as if there were no such thing as an American privateer ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... must ply to and fro over that primitive home of commerce, the Mediterranean. Doubling the Cape, they must visit every part of the affluent East and of the broad Pacific. With restless energy they must plough every sea and explore every water where the hope of honest gain may entice the busy merchantman. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... voyage. The foul winds prophesied never blew, the icebergs kept far away to the northward, the excitement of flight from Russian privateers was exchanged for the sight of one harmless merchantman; even the fogs off Newfoundland turned ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and having closed the door, and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... merchantman came slowly to its berth and the anchor fell with a rattle and a splash, the motley crowd cheered shrilly. When the ruddy gold-bearded trader appeared at the side, ready to clamber into the boat his men were lowering, they cheered again. And they ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of the year 18—, I was the only passenger on board the merchantman, Alceste, which was bound to the Brazils. One fine moonlight night, I stood on the deck, and gazed on the quiet ocean, on which the moon-beams danced. The wind was so still, that it scarcely agitated the sails, which were spread out to invite it. I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... scarce three leagues away by this time; and although the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken place apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception, however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her course with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... of the steamer Falaba, by which an American citizen lost his life, the Government of the United States is surprised to find the Imperial German Government contending that an effort on the part of a merchantman to escape capture and secure assistance alters the obligation of the officer seeking to make the capture in respect of the safety of the lives of those on board the merchantman, although the vessel had ceased her ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... mode of procedure, and no doubt accounted for ship after ship being taken and plundered. I felt startled, too, as I realised the strength of the crews, and what a simultaneous attempt to board might mean. With an ordinary merchantman, even with a strong crew, undoubtedly death and destruction, while even with our well-armed men and guns I began to have doubts. A slip in the manoeuvres, ever so slight a mistake on Captain Thwaites' part, or a blunder in the carrying out of his orders, might give ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... beneath their feet, was still partially veiled in a thin blue mist, pierced here and there by the tall mast of a King's ship or merchantman lying unseen at anchor; or, as the fog rolled slowly off, a swift canoe might be seen shooting out into a streak of sunshine, with the first news of the morning from the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... developed and expanded as to include the following prescriptions: (1) In general all import and export trade must be conducted in ships built in England, in Ireland, or in the colonies, manned and commanded by British subjects. Thus, if a French or Dutch merchantman appeared in Massachusetts Bay, offering to sell at a great bargain his cargo of spices or silks, the shrewd merchants of Boston were legally bound not to buy of him. (2) Certain "enumerated" articles, such as ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... not come whole out of her struggle with the powers of the abyss. Timbers were sadly strained, a mast was gone, every man on board was weary and muscle-sore. And then a Levantine gale drove the crippled merchantman down on ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... tantalized us by anchoring outside, but so close in and under their batteries that it was impossible to get at them in that position. We, one morning at daybreak, captured a row-boat with twenty-two men, armed with swivels and muskets. We had disguised the ship so much that she took us for a merchantman, and before she discovered her mistake was within pistol-shot. Three months had now expired, which had been passed much in the same manner as the last cruise, when a cutter came out to order us into ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... this morning for Venice," Browning wrote to a friend on Good Friday, 1838. He voyaged as sole passenger on a merchantman, and soon was on friendliest terms with the rough kindly captain. For the first fortnight the sea was stormy and Browning suffered much; as they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, Captain Davidson aided him to reach the deck, and a pulsing of home-pride—not home-sickness—gave ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... about sunset. The merchantman, having passed the protecting promontory, and swept around the tall ship of war, had gained an offing, about a half mile beyond, under the lee of a thickly-wooded, long, narrow island; and was now lying snugly at anchor, riding out the heavy ground-swell occasioned ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... of Commodore Perry, few efforts to intrude upon the Japanese had proceeded from the United States. An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1837, by an American merchantman, to return a party of Japanese who had been shipwrecked on our Western coast. In 1846, Commodore Biddle was deputed to open negotiations, and entered the Bay of Yedo with two ships of war. Receiving an unfavorable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... exceeding two hundred tons." The SPARROW-HAWK wrecked on Cape Cod in 1626 was only 40 feet "over all." The Dutch seem to have built larger vessels. Winthrop records that as they came down the Channel, on their way to New England (1630), they passed the wreck of "a great Dutch merchantman ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... was said to have been degraded into use as a base for apportioning the booty, coals and victuals, among the belligerent vessels. The island was a Chilian possession. It was practically certain that von Spee's squadron had stayed there beyond the legal limit of time. A French merchantman had, contrary to rule, also been sunk there by the Dresden, within Chilian territorial waters. Inquiries in other quarters were being made, moreover, as to the friendly wireless stations which the Germans had been utilizing secretly in Colombia and Ecuador; while a rumour ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... come into favor at the court of King Angus recently. The Black Star and the Queen Flavia—whose captain had contemptuously ignored an order from Gram to re-christen her Queen Evita—had remained. They were his ships, not King Angus'. The captain of the merchantman from Wardshaven now on orbit refused to take a cargo to Newhaven; he had been chartered by King Angus, and would take orders from ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... republic. The seat of his government was at S. Helier, while S. Aubin, on the opposite point of the bay, was filled with his skippers and their crews, and the traders who profited by their piratical proceedings. Hardly a week passed but some rich prize—usually an English merchantman—was brought in there, to be condemned by Carteret's court, and sold, together with her cargo, while the unfortunate mariners who had manned her were left to their own resources. Adventurers from all parts flocked to Jersey, ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... glasses to Robert's eyes. The other ship, suddenly came near to them, and grew fourfold in size. Every detail of her stood out sharp and vivid in the moonlight, a stout craft with all sails set to catch the good wind, a fine merchantman by every token, nearing the end of a profitable voyage. Discipline was not to say somewhat relaxed, but at least kindly, the visible evidence of it an old sailor sitting with his back against the mast ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... not to be thought of by the son of a yeoman-farmer. Besides, he has heard of harsh discipline on war-vessels, and that the navy tar, when in a foreign port, is permitted to see little more of the country than may be viewed over the rail or from the rigging of his ship. A merchantman is the craft he inclines to—at least, to make a beginning with—especially one that trades from port to port, visiting many lands; for, in truth, his leaning toward a sea life has much to do with a desire to see the world and its wonders. Above all, would a whaler be to ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... the exciting capture of a merchantman with the indiscriminate slaughter of all on board—a spectacle on which the round blue eyes of the plump Polly had gazed with royal and maternal tolerance, and they were burying the booty—two table spoons and a thimble in the corner of the closet, ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... circumscribed its activity. In the face of apparent danger, it has continued to flourish, and there has been hardly more risk to a pirate with a living cargo from Gaboon, than would be encountered by an ordinary merchantman from pirates in the Gulf. Indeed, there were many who believed and feared, prior to the breaking out of the present rebellion, that the next compromise between the North and South would be the repeal of all laws prohibiting the African slave-trade. So rapidly ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... think, who tells us that when he was a boy he used once in a while to go down to the wharves in Salem, and lay his hand on the rail of some great East India merchantman, redolent of spices, and thus bring himself in actual touch with the mysterious orient. But there is nothing strange in this: almost anything that we can feel or see may start the flight of fancy, and open to us prophetic visions. This is ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... and counted, indeed, five masts. They were, then, evidently those belonging to the pirate junks which had attacked the Chinese merchantman on the preceding day; and the fort on the hill, yonder, was the pirates' lair which he had been specially dispatched from Tien-tsin to destroy. He rubbed his hands gleefully and gave orders to clear for action; then, with his telescope fixed unwaveringly ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... Being, the personal ideal of all perfectness. The understanding needs one ultimate Cause on which it can rest amid the dance of fleeting phenomena; the heart cannot pour out its love to be shared among many. No string of goodly pearls will ever give the merchantman assurance that his quest is complete. Only when human nature finds all in One, and that One a living Person, the Lover and Friend of all souls, does it fold its wings and rest as a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... for ever the account of the pirates, except in China, when even to this day accounts reach us, through the Press, of piratical enterprises; but never again will the black, rakish-looking craft of the pirate, with the Jolly Roger flying, be liable to pounce down upon the unsuspecting and harmless merchantman. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... resolutely athwart-hawse of the enemy, and the rest, plying her hard with shot, prepared to run aboard her towering hull. But, ere they closed, her flag fluttered sadly down, and the famous San Filippe, the King of Spain's own East-Indiaman, the largest merchantman afloat, was a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... beginning of the year 1748, a small French merchantman, which was bound from Rochelle to Martinique, was so closely chased by the British cruisers that the captain and crew were compelled to take to their boat. By so doing they avoided the fate of the ship and cargo, which fell a prey to the pursuers, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... fled with a few companions toward Larissa. He did not enter the city although the Larissaeans invited him, because he feared that by so doing he might incur some blame. Bidding them make terms with the victor, he himself took provisions, embarked on the sea, and sailed away to Lesbos on a merchantman, to his wife Cornelia and his son Sextus. After taking charge of them he did not even enter Mitylene but started for Egypt, hoping to secure an alliance with Ptolemy, the king of that country. This was the son of that Ptolemy who, through ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... takes a little lull, And gives the merchantman A chance to seek domestic scenes, To interview the magazines, Convoke his growing clan, The boys and girls almost unknown, And get acquainted with his own; As well the household budget ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Jamaica. Off Morant Point they picked up a negro pilot in his little canoe far out at sea. The pilot wore a pair of blue pants, white shirt and stove-pipe hat, given him no doubt by some passenger or captain of a merchantman. He gravely saluted all on deck as he passed his bare feet over the bulwarks and turning to the captain said in the peculiar ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... character of the persons sent in pressed men's rooms Admiralty thus had Trade on the hip, and Trade suffered much in consequence. More than one rich merchantman, rusty from long voyaging, strewed the coast with her cargo and timbers because all the able seamen had been taken out of her, and none better than old men and boys could be found to sail her. Few seaport towns were as wise as Sunderland, where they had a Society of Shipowners ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Braunschweig classes, three battle cruisers, apparently the Seydlitz, Moltke, and Von der Tann, one four-funnelled cruiser, probably the Roon, two old light cruisers of the Frauenlob and Bremen classes, ten destroyers, one large two-funnelled merchantman or liner, and three ships which appeared to be colliers. Anti-aircraft guns, firing shrapnel, were used against the seaplane and very nearly scored a direct hit. On issuing from the Roads the officers in the seaplane saw a large number of ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... his expectations. In Venice there were constantly bargains to be purchased from ships returning laden with the spoils of some captured Genoese merchantman, or taken in the sack of some Eastern seaport. The prices, too, asked by the traders with the towns of Syria or the Black Sea, were but a fraction of those charged when these goods arrived in London. ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... Gibraltar, running beneath a crimson sunset and between misty purple shores. On one hand lay Africa, on the other the Moorish country, both shrouded in a soft haze and edged with snowy foam. Down below the soldiers of Italy were singing. A merchantman of belligerent nationality, our ship proudly flew its flag again. Indeed, had it failed to do so, the British patrol-boats would long since have ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... a gentle breeze filled the sails. An unusual arrangement of the vessel attracted the attention of Albert. Soon he observed men at the guns, and Captain Templeton standing in a commanding position. The brig was bearing down upon a French merchantman. ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... tropics. We anchored at 11 o'clock in 14 fathom clean sand, and very smooth water, about three-quarters of a mile from the shore, in the same place where I anchored in my voyage round the world; and found riding here the Newport of London, a merchantman, Captain Barefoot commander, who welcomed me with 3 guns and I returned one for thanks. He came from Fayal, one of the western islands; and had store of wine and brandy aboard. He was taking in salt to carry ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... wheat, and went his way. Again, the kingdom of Heaven is like unto treasure hidden in a field, the which, when a man has found, he hideth again, and for joy thereof goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all he had, and bought it. Again, the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind; which, when it was full, they drew to shore, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... blow up one and damage two; allied landing party suffers loss; Asia Minor ports are being shelled; one-third of the Dardanelles reported clear of Turkish mines; concentration of Turkish fleet reported; Germans state that a submarine, reported by the Captain of British merchantman Thordis to have been sunk by his vessel, escaped; German Embassy at Washington expresses regret over torpedo attack on British hospital ship Asturias in February, stating that the attack, which did no harm, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... take in negroes at some point on this coast. There is no American man-of-war here to obtain intelligence. What risk does she run of being searched? But suppose that there is a man-of-war in port. What is to secure the master of the merchantman against her [the man-of-war's commander's knowing all about his [the merchant-man's] intention, or suspecting it in time to be upon him [the merchant-man] before he shall have run a league on his way to Texas?" Consul Trist ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... commerce had practically ceased, owing to the perils and hazards of the mine-strewn waters of both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Just when submarine activities ended we do not know but the last vessel of this type sighted by a Pan-American merchantman was the huge Q 138, which discharged twenty-nine torpedoes at a Brazilian tank steamer off the Bermudas in the fall of 1972. A heavy sea and the excellent seamanship of the master of the Brazilian permitted the Pan-American ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... being secreted on board of ships would always operate as an inducement to wretches who saw a long term of servitude before them to attempt their escape; but it certainly behoved every master of a merchantman bound from this port to be very vigilant and sedulous to prevent their succeeding, as the safety of the ship might be very much endangered by having numbers of such people on board mixing ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... whole earth with our name and power, nothing good has been our lot. In the first place we disputed in cliques at home and within our walls, and later we exported this plague to the camps. Therefore our city, like a great merchantman full of a crowd of every race borne without a pilot these many years through rough water, rolls and shoots hither and thither because it is without ballast. Do not, then, allow her to be longer exposed to the tempest; for you see that she is waterlogged. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... were enough to curdle the blood of the brawniest pirate. He who had been Jack Cockrell in mortal guise was quick to slide the cabin hatch closed and fasten it. For the moment they had captured the armed brig Royal James and as ferocious a crew of rascals as ever scuttled a merchantman. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... a voice said. 'You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked toward Roosevelt Street. It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the children, and what did it matter? She had fought ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... which souls are brought to their Saviour. Sometimes, like the merchantman seeking goodly pearls, men seek Him earnestly and find Him. Sometimes, by the intervention of another, the knowledge of Him is kindled in dark hearts. Sometimes He Himself takes the initiative, and finds those ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... he was a mate of a merchantman, but when most of the officers of the former royal navy had emigrated or perished, he was, in 1793, made a captain of the republican navy, and in 1796 an admiral. During the battle of Aboukir he was the chief of the staff, under Admiral ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... ordered below, and only the sailors, a few blacks, and the officers, kept the deck. The same expedient was likewise adopted, in part, by Captain Price, of the Volcano; and in order to give to his ship a still greater resemblance than it already had to a merchantman, he displayed an old faded scarlet ensign, and drew up his fore and mainsail in what sailors term ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... to a ramshackle building reminiscent of the days when the street bristled with bowsprits of ships from all over the world, an age when the American merchantman flew our flag on the uttermost of the seven-seas. On the ground floor was an apparently innocent junk dealer's shop, in reality the meeting-place of the junta. By an outside stairway the lofts above were reached, hiding their secrets ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... nationality and bound upon every sort of errand. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutral ownership bound from neutral port to neutral port, have been destroyed along with vessels of belligerent ownership in constantly increasing numbers. Sometimes the merchantman attacked has been warned and summoned to surrender before being fired on or torpedoed; sometimes passengers or crews have been vouchsafed the poor security of being allowed to take to the ship's boats before she was sent to the bottom. But again and again no warning has been given, ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... completely. The strange ship, which is a three-masted merchantman, is taking in her top-gallant sails. It is useless to expect the wind to spring up again during the night, and she will lay becalmed till morning. The Ebba, however, propelled by her mysterious motor, continues ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... twenty-nine vessels were British trawlers. There were four British and one French merchantman in the list. The others were vessels ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... work of MM. Correard and Savigny, this gentleman is made mention of in substance as follows. "On the evening of the 11th, they met with more of the natives, and an Irishman, captain of a merchantman, who, of his own accord, had left St Louis with the intention of assisting the sufferers. He spoke the language of the country, and was dressed in the Moorish costume. We are sorry we cannot recollect the name of this foreign officer, which we would have a real pleasure in publishing; but, since ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... pleasant to turn aside from these scenes and sayings which show the least amiable side of a nature essentially noble, and pass to one of the little incidents that are strikingly characteristic of the man. On board the Sterling, the merchantman on which Cooper's first voyage was made, was a boy younger than himself. His name was Ned Myers. This person had spent his life on the sea. He had belonged to seventy-two crafts, exclusive of prison-ships, transports, and vessels in (p. 248) which he had merely made passages. According to his ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... his two children, he went first from Rye to Boulogne, and there, on the 15th of August, 1818, embarked in the Rose, a merchantman which had formerly been a warsloop. The long voyage was uninteresting until Cape Horn was reached. There, and in passing along the rugged coast-line of Tierra del Fuego, Lord Cochrane was struck by its wild scenery. He watched ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... the quay, to get a boat to take her out to the merchantman, she looked in at the post-office, where she found Marie Forstberg already up, and busy in the sitting-room in her morning dress. She was greatly astonished when Elizabeth told her of her ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... bark ran alongside, and grappling-irons were tossed aboard the ill-fated merchantman. The Pirate Captain, standing in the stern of his vessel, ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... Come, Callicles, you were not so timid when you plundered the merchantman off Cape Malea. Take up the torch and move. Hippomachus, tell one of the slaves to bring a sow. (A sow was sacrificed to Ceres at the admission to the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... order—a certain brand of wine, iced beyond recognition for any normal palate, was always served to Aholibah. She loved "needles on her tongue," she asseverated if any one offered her weaker stuff. That July night she looked like a piratical craft that had captured a sleek merchantman for prize. She was all smoothness; Ambroise alone detected the retracted claws of the leopardess. She blazed in the electric illumination, and her large hat, with its swelling plumes, threw her dusky features ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... The bishop was merchantman, freighting ships. His wharves are wide, his fleet is great, his cargoes are many. Only he is freighting ships for heaven. No bales of merchandise nor ingots of iron, but souls for whom Christ died,—these are his cargoes; and had you asked him, "What work ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... times, and their tough oak sides were not easily pierced by the six- and nine-pound balls then in general use, and twelve-pounders were considered of unusual dimension. During the war between France and America, a merchantman, armed with nine-pounders, actually beat off a sloop-of-war and several Spanish privateers; but now frigates, and even sloops-of-war, are armed with Dahlgren guns of eight- to eleven-inch bore, which throw balls of sixty to one hundred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Very different would be the fate of an unarmed vessel, for the explosion of a torpedo would probably blow such a large hole in the thin steel plates that she would go to the bottom like a stone. To torpedo a merchantman simply means the cold-blooded murder of the crew, for their chances of escape would be almost negligible, whilst it is impossible to find words to describe the attempts which have been made to sink hospital ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... ship-of-war, and I intend to be implicitly obeyed," he continued sternly, looking even more fiercely at them. "Nevertheless," he added, somewhat relaxing his set features, "although we be not a peaceful merchantman, yet I expect and intend to do a little trading with the ships of the enemy, and in any prizes which we may capture, you know you will all have a just, nay, a liberal, share. It must not be lost sight of, however, that the first business of this ship, as of every other ship-of-war of our country, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... some years since this little story was set afloat on the sea of books. It is not a man-of-war, nor even a high-sided merchantman; only a small, peaceful sailing-vessel. Yet it has had rather an adventurous voyage. Twice it has fallen into the hands of pirates. The tides have carried it to far countries. It has been passed through the translator's ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... would take to tell, the Vulture, black sails spread, moved forward to head off the merchantman evidently homeward ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... everywhere. Rare as he is at present, he has led us to both poles, from the uttermost recesses of the Pacific to Behring's Strait, and the infinite wastes of the Antarctic waters. There is even an enormous region that no vessel, whether war-ship or merchantman, ever traverses, at a few degrees beyond the southern points of America and Africa. No one visits that ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... if bound for a hostile port, another that it is only necessary to show that the ultimate destination of the goods is hostile. The latter rule was declared to apply in the American case of the Springbok, an English merchantman conveying goods in 1863 from a neutral port to a neutral port, but, it was alleged, with the evident intention that the goods should reach by a later stage of the same voyage the belligerent forces of the Southern Confederacy, ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... storm abating, he made for the first port, to repair the ship's damages, intending to return to Jamaica, to deliver her up to her captain; but, from a vessel they spoke at sea, he learned that Jemmison was gone to England in a merchantman. To England then Walsingham ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... they were more successful on the sea, as will be seen in the chapter on Naval Operations. On September 4, 1914, an attempt was made by the Germans to wreck the British gunboat Dwarf, which with the cruiser Cumberland was watching German ships in the Cameroon estuary. The German merchantman Nachtigal tried later to ram the same gunboat and wrecked herself with a loss of 36 men. Further attempts to destroy ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various |
