"Bowsprit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of April to the evening of the fourth of May we had fogs, great cold, and an amazing quantity of icebergs. On the thirtieth, when luckily the fog lifted for a time, we counted sixteen of them. The day before, one drifted under the bowsprit, grazed it, and might have crushed us if the deck-officer had not called out quickly, Luff. After speaking of our troubles and sufferings, I must tell you of our pleasures, which were fishing for cod and eating it. The taste is exquisite. The head, tongue, and liver are morsels worthy ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... these, for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, go to the fore-cabin of the ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that the name for that part of the vessel which is in the region of the bowsprit?) lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale, and wet; and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. I never could fancy ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... two native boys (passengers) had run out on to the bowsprit, and, watching their chance, had dropped over into a curling roller, and ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... 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 ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... and leisure, made Ginger's two friends—young 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 ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... gods, Graves of your fathers! now is all at stake. Then from our side swelled up the mingled din Of Persian tongues, and time brooked no delay— Ship into ship drave hard its brazen beak With speed of thought, a shattering blow! and first One Grecian bark plunged straight, and sheared away Bowsprit and stem of a Phoenician ship. And then each galley on some other's prow Came crashing in. Awhile our stream of ships Held onward, till within the narrowing creek Our jostling vessels were together driven, And none could aid another: each on each Drave hard their brazen beaks, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... fine than such processions are in Tuscany; but impressive. The little boats, with folded lateen sails, near the pier had coloured lanterns slung from the mast to the bowsprit. The sea broke ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... 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
... 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 ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... "But Cayuse ain't been on board, you bet. He likes something more old-fashioned than Suvy. Split my bowsprit, I wouldn't tow no horse into port which I was afraid to board. When I was bustin' bronchos I liked 'em ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... that night, or, at latest, before noon of the morrow, we should sight the Treasure Island. We were heading south-southwest, and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea. The Hispaniola rolled steadily, dipping her bowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray. All was drawing alow and aloft; everyone was in the bravest spirits, because we were now so near an end of the first part ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... coal-dust flies along the blinding blast: None heed the stagnant pools on either side, Where new-launch'd ships of infant-sailors ride: Rodneys in rags here British valour boast, And lisping Nelsons fright the Gallic coast. They fix the rudder, set the swelling sail, They point the bowsprit, and they blow the gale: True to her port, the frigate scuds away, And o'er that frowning ocean finds her bay: Her owner rigg'd her, and he knows her worth, And sees her, fearless, gunwale-deep go forth; Dreadless he views his sea, by ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... next peril. It comes with the onset of a "bergy-bit" which smashes the martingale as it plunges into a deep trough. The chain stay parts, dragging loose in the water, while a great strain is put by the foremast on the bowsprit. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... to hate myself, I was so full of poisonous suspicions. How did Mr. Gabriel know the schooner prepared to sail? And this man, could he tell boom from bowsprit? I didn't believe it; he had the hang of the up-river folks. But there stood Mr. Gabriel, so quiet and easy, his eyelids down, and he humming an underbreath of song; and there sat Faith, so pale and so pretty, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... your power! Then Curiosity comes swimming by, making signs to her companions to follow; they plunge into the current. Imagination sits dreaming on the bank. She follows the torrent with her eyes and transforms the fragments of straw and reed into masts and bowsprit. And scarcely has the transformation taken place, before Desire, holding in one hand her skirt drawn up even to her knees, appears, sees the vessel and takes possession of it. O ye drinkers of water, it ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... close down to her keel, and that floored over and stanchioned snug. For the rest, she was very narrow forward, as I think I said—everybody said she'd never stand the strain of her fore-rigging when they got to driving her on a long passage. And she carried an ungodly bowsprit—thirty-seven feet outboard—easily the longest bowsprit out of Gloucester. Topmasts to match, and there was some sail to drive a vessel. But she had the hull for it, full and yet easy, with the greatest beam pretty well aft of the mainmast, and she drew fifteen ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... men, with the Manby's mortar lumbering behind us in a cart, through stone gaps and track-ways, from headland to headland.—The maddening excitement of expectation as she ran wildly towards the cliffs at our feet, and then sheered off again inexplicably;—her foremast and bowsprit, I recollect, were gone short off by the deck; a few rags of sail fluttered from her main and mizen. But with all straining of eyes and glasses, we could discern no sign of man on board. Well I recollect the mingled disappointment and admiration of the Preventive men, as ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... on the stern, and also on the bowsprit," replied the skipper of the Goldwing. "It isn't a ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... round, sometimes he does not, that is all. The sun shines, the breeze comes up the cliff, far away a French fishing lugger is busy enough. The boats on the beach are idle, and swarms of boys are climbing over them, swinging on a rope from the bowsprit, or playing at marbles under the cliff. Bigger boys collect under the lee of a smack, and do nothing cheerfully. The fashionable throng hastens to and fro, but the row leaning against ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... Gervaise saw that his ships bore up nobly against the fierce strife. Each vessel showed the same canvass; viz.—a reefed fore-sail; a small triangular piece of strong, heavy cloth, fitted between the end of the bowsprit and the head of the fore-top-mast; a similar sail over the quarter-deck, between the mizzen and main masts, and a close-reefed main-top-sail Several times that morning, Captain Greenly had thought he should be ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... already learned what the jib was, and I went out on the bowsprit, as I had seen the men do on other vessels. I loosed the sail, and hoisted it. The jib-sheets led aft to the standing-room; and, as soon as I had made fast the halyard, the skipper luffed up and fastened down the jib. The boat heeled over, and began to cut ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... dreary breakfast, with crumpled company, in the midst of confusion, were hustled on board a steamboat and lay wretched on deck until you saw France lunging and surging at you with great vehemence over the bowsprit. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... blew the binnacle-light out; and then he started forrard, with his trumpet in his hand. He caught sight of me, standing halfway up the companion-way, and shook his fist at me to keep quiet and not to spoil sport. He slipped forward and out on to the bowsprit, clear out to the end of the flying-jib-boom, and stowed himself where he couldn't be well seen to leeward of the sail. Then he sung out with all his might through the trumpet, 'Schooner ahoy, there! Port your hellum!—port H-A-A-A-RD! I say,—you're right aboard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... That yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit steeved that way, she's the Hope of Prague. Nick Brady's her skipper, the meanest man on the Banks. We'll tell him so when we strike the Main Ledge. 'Way off yonder's the Day's Eye. The two Jeraulds own her. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... crew taken refuge in the main-top, they might have been saved; but the bowsprit, which was crowded with human beings, gave a lurch into the sea as the ship settled down, and thus all were washed off—though the timber appeared again above water when the 'Abergavenny' touched the ground. The ship had sprung a leak off St. Alban's Head; and in spite of pumps, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... remimber." He illustrated this question by holding up both arms straight above his head to represent the masts of a brig, and sticking his right leg straight out in front of him, to represent the bowsprit; but the woman gazed at him with an air of obtuse gravity that might have damped the hopes even of an Irishman. O'Riley prided himself, however, on not being easily beat, and despite his repeated failures, and the laughter of his messmates, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... impossible to start again. The captain in the meanwhile crowded her with sail; fifteen sails in all, every stay being gratified with a stay-sail, a boat-boom sent aloft for a maintop-gallant yard, and the derrick of a crane brought in service as bowsprit. All the time we have had a fine, fair wind and a smooth sea; to-day at noon our run was 203 miles (if you please!), and we are within some 360 miles of Sydney. Probably there has never been a more gallant success; and I can say honestly it was well worked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... them such a broadside, It smote their mast asunder, And tore the bowsprit off their ship, Which made the Spaniards wonder, And caused them in fear to cry, With voices loud and shrill, 'Help, help, or sunken we shall be ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... is laid and tacked down, and the joints painted, and calked if needed, the stem and stern-post replaced permanently, and the bowsprit screwed to the ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the twenty-fourth of July; but the "Joly" soon broke her bowsprit, and they were forced to put back. [Footnote: La Salle believed that this mishap, which took place in good weather, was intentional.—Memoire autographe de l'Abbe Jean Cavelier sur la Voyage de 1684, MS. Compare Joutel, 15.] ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... figurehead. He was a tolerably good workman, and had already carved several figure-heads, in what he intended for feminine shapes, and looking pretty much like those which we see nowadays stuck up under a vessel's bowsprit, with great staring eyes, that never wink at the dash of the spray. But (what was very strange) the carver found that his hand was guided by some unseen power, and by a skill beyond his own, and that his tools shaped out an image which he had never ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... regain the Land, and final Departure from the Ice.—Remarks upon the probable Existence and Practicability of a Northwest Passage, and upon the Whale Fishery.—Boisterous Weather in Crossing the Atlantic.—Loss of the Hecla's Bowsprit ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... worthy to rank with the miniature yachts of our large cities. She was schooner-rigged, with a small cabin forward. Her masts, by an ingenious contrivance, could be lowered down aft, and, by means of a rope attached to the fore-top, and running through a block on the bowsprit, could be instantly restored to their original upright position. This arrangement the owner found necessary, on account of the overhanging trees, which nearly concealed the two openings of ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... silence, disposed in the form of a wedge, of which the admiral's galley formed the point. Joyeuse himself had taken his first lieutenant's place, and was leaning over the bowsprit, trying to pierce the fogs of the river and the darkness of the night. Soon, through this double obscurity, he saw the pier extending itself darkly across the stream; it appeared deserted, but, in that land of ambushes, there seemed ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... cabin; but, then, his understanding eye noted the minutest fact that occurred, and his 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 ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... among a crowd 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 a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • 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 ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... than an hour we were sent on board the enemy's vessels. I was carried to the Royal George, but Mr. Trant was taken on board the Wolfe. The Growler had lost her bowsprit, and was otherwise damaged, and had been forced to strike also. She had a man killed, and I believe one or two wounded.[8] On board of us, not a man, besides myself, had been touched! We seemed to have been preserved by a miracle, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... London. It was pretty rough, but the skipper wasn't a bad kind of fellow when he was sober. I stuck to that for three years, and then the old craft was wrecked on Shoreham beach. Fortunately she was driven up so far that we were able to drop over the bowsprit pretty well beyond the reach of the waves, but there was no getting the Eliza off. It was no great loss, for she would have had to be broken up as firewood in another year or two. About six hours out of every twenty-four I was taking my turn at ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... Neck was behind me now. There was nothing ahead of the sloop's fixed bowsprit. We were driving into a curtain of blackness that had been let down from the sky to the sea. It is seldom that there is not some little light playing over the surface of the water. This night a palpable cloud had settled upon the face of the waters and I could not even see the foam on the crests ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... you manned the gun Armorial. What cheerings did you share, Impulsive in the van, When down upon leagued France and Spain We English ran— The freshet at your bowsprit Like the foam upon the can. Bickering, your colors Licked up the Spanish air, You flapped with flames of battle-flags— Your challenge, Temeraire! The rear ones of our fleet They yearned to share your place, Still vying with the Victory Throughout that earnest race— The Victory, whose Admiral, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... herself, and with a silver belly, which was her successor—sailed among gathering clouds; she, too, deserted us; stars of every degree of sheen, and clouds of every variety of form disputed the sub-lustrous night; and still we gazed in vain for Takaroa. The mate stood on the bowsprit, his tall grey figure slashing up and down against ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... topmast had 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 by the English. ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... against Ridgeway's side, and, with the instinct of a drowning man, he grasped for the object as it rushed away. A huge section of the bowsprit was in his grasp and a cry of hope arose in his soul. With this respite came the feeling, strong and enduring, that he was not to die. That ever-existing spirit of confidence, baffled in one moment, flashes back into the hearts of all men when the faintest sign of hope appears, even though ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 an ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... were less swift and manageable craft than the Norwegian "dragons" of the tenth. Mere yachts in size we should call them, but far from yachtlike in shape or nimbleness. With their length seldom more than thrice their width of beam, with narrow tower-like poops, with broad-shouldered bows and bowsprit weighed down with spritsail yards, and with no canvas higher than a topsail, these clumsy caravels could make but little progress against head-winds, and the amount of tacking and beating to and fro was sometimes ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... 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 our deliverance was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... 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
... but at no great angle, thanks to her flat-bottomed build. A line of tattered flags, with no wind to stir them, led down from the truck of either mast, and as we drew near I called Mr. Jope's attention to an immense bunch of foxgloves and pink valerian on her bowsprit end. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not why, but something in my heart Has always whispered, "Westward seek your goal!" Three times they sent me east, but still I turned The bowsprit west, and felt among the floes Of ruttling ice along the Groneland coast, And down the rugged shore of Newfoundland, And past the rocky capes and wooded bays Where Gosnold sailed,—like one who feels his way With outstretched hand across a darkened room,— I groped ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... cement. After examining and puzzling myself over this strange scene for some time, my next care was to seek traces of the ship and of her crew; and before long I saw just outside the coral reef what had been her bowsprit, and presently, floating on the sea, one of her masts, with the sail attached. There could be little doubt that the shock had extended to her, had driven her off the reef where she had been fixed into the deep water outside, where she must have sunk immediately, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... early morning we had warped into dock at Hoboken, the Rotherhithe—and, in some respects, Rosherville—of New York, being situated on the opposite side of the river; and here, the Herzog von Gottingen lay, with her bowsprit jammed into a coal shed and her decks, aforetime so white and clean, all bespattered with dirt, and encumbered with hawsers and cables. These latter coiling and uncoiling themselves here, there, and everywhere, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to tell me what was the matter. The Hebe Maitland's hull was any kind of a dingy black, but the rails, canvas, tarpaulins, and companion were all white. By the end of the day almost everything had modified. They'd got a kind of fore-shortening out of the bowsprit, and another set of canvas partly up that was dirty and patched. The boats were shifted and recovered, cupola taken off the cabin, and the whole look of the ship altered in mid-sea. Then Clyde came out of his cabin with a board in his hand, and they unscrewed the Hebe Maitland's name from ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... schooner bound for Honolulu, and then to trade in the low islands; and by a very good chance for Keola she had lost a man off the bowsprit in a squall. It was no use talking. Keola durst not stay in the Eight Islands. Word goes so quickly, and all men are so fond to talk and carry news, that if he hid in the north end of Kauai or in the south end of Kau, the wizard would have wind of it before a month, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... speeding into space beyond the bowsprit of the anchored rum-runner, with Jack starting to climb in order to bank and swing around, so as to complete the job if his first endeavor lacked in ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... boom 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 line ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... the wharf where Ken had seen her on the eve of her departure. Then, she had been waking to action at the beginning of a long cruise; now, a battered gull with gray, folded wings, she lay at the dock, pointing her bowsprit stiffly up to the dingy street where horses tramped endlessly over the cobblestones. The crew was jubilant. Some were leaving for other ships; some were going on shore ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... fearlessly removed the stops from the jib, which required her to crawl out a little way on the bowsprit, she hoisted the sail, and carried the sheet aft to the standing-room, as she had often seen the boatmen do. The effect of this additional canvas was immediately seen, for the Greyhound had now reached ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... buried in a drunken sleep, Ayrton did not hesitate to venture onto the "Speedy's" deck, which the extinguished lanterns now left in total darkness. He hoisted himself onto the cutwater, and by the bowsprit arrived at the forecastle. Then, gliding among the convicts stretched here and there, he made the round of the ship, and found that the "Speedy" carried four guns, which would throw shot of from eight to ten pounds in weight. He found also, on touching ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... round the ship. There is another favourite station which is speedily filled on these occasions; I mean, alongside of the slight-looking apparatus projecting perpendicularly downwards from the end of the bowsprit. This spar is not inaptly called the dolphin-striker, from its appearing to dash into the waves as the ship pitches; perhaps it may have acquired its name on account of its being so capital a position from which to strike that fish. The lower end of the spar is connected with the outer end of ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... to the front crosspiece, also bowsprit, bracing them both to the pontoons. A set of sails having about 300 sq. ft. of area will be about right for racing. Two sails, main and fore, of about 175 to 200 sq. ft. will be sufficient for cruising. —Contributed by J. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... spenser-mast, called out, "Lay out there and furl the jib!'' This was no agreeable or safe duty, yet it must be done. John, a Swede (the best sailor on board), who belonged on the forecastle, sprang out upon the bowsprit. Another one must go. It was a clear case of holding back. I was near the mate, but sprang past several, threw the downhaul over the windlass, and jumped between the knight-heads out upon the bowsprit. The crew ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... was for an instant 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 ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... shouted the Captain. "Never mind, Dolly, don't give way to temper, and curl up that bowsprit of yours with such a confounded ugly twist. There may be a chance yet. Let me see. I don't think that you are fifty-four. My nurse, Betty Holt, was called an old maid for thirty years, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... her decks,—that is to say, she ran with a curve forward and aft. On her forecastle another small deck ran from the knight-heads, which was called the top-gallant forecastle. Her quarter-deck was broken with a poop, which rose high out of the water. The bowsprit staved very much, and was to appearance almost as a fourth mast: the more so, as she carried a square spritsail and sprit-topsail. On her quarter-deck and poop-bulwarks were fixed in sockets implements of warfare ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... task that had to be deftly performed, for the ship was forging through the sea, and plunging her bowsprit under water as she rose and fell in her progress, one minute describing a half-circle through the air with her forefoot as she yawed to the heavy rolling waves, the next diving deep down into the billows and tossing up tons of water over her forecastle, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... ship, taut, well kept, larger than the Viking longboats Ross had watched on the tapes of the Project's collection, yet most like those far-faring Terran craft. The prow curved up in a mighty bowsprit where was the carved likeness of the sea dragon Ross had fought in the Hawaika of his own time. The eyes of that monster flashed with a regular blink of light which the Terran did not understand. Was it a signal or merely a device ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... received little or no damage. The waves were, however, sufficiently high to break over her, and almost to fill her, so that the crew were compelled to land as fast as they could. This they accomplished by dropping down from the little stump of a bowsprit as the water receded, and running up on to the dry sand ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... that wreck, which already had settled so far down that the gentle, low swell, over which our boats rose and fell easily without a check to their speed, welling up almost level with her head-rails, plucked at the ends of broken gear swinging desolately under her naked bowsprit. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... them on the side of his temples. The old fisherman in the boat beyond noticed this strange movement, and forthwith caught a rope, hauled the boat across a stretch of water, and then came scrambling over bowsprit, lowered sails and nets to where Lavender had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... day of March 1694-95, when we spied a sail, our course SE. and by S. We soon perceived it was a large vessel, and that she bore up to us, but could not at first know what to make of her, till, after coming a little nearer, we found she had lost her main-topmast, fore-mast, and bowsprit; and presently she fired a gun as a signal of distress. The weather was pretty good, wind at NNW. a fresh gale, and we soon came to speak with her. We found her a ship of Bristol, bound home from Barbadoes, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... dreadful crime of cowardice or bad breeding instead of merely inquiring about the existence of physical symptoms over which they admittedly had no control whatever. The security of a harbour, with a railway station not fifty yards from the yacht's bowsprit, had restored them, by dint of calming secret fears, to their customary condition of righteousness and rectitude. Several days of gusty rainstorms had elapsed at Ostend, and the passengers had had the opportunity to study the method of managing ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... of heart and stomach; sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit and you think you are there—roll, roar, wash!—Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be specially ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... leeward, he recalled the chasing ships, formed a close line of battle, and carried sail to windward all night; during which the French line-of-battle ship Le Zele, whether from injuries received in action, or in running foul of another ship, lost her bowsprit and fore-mast, and at daylight on the morning of the 12th was seen in tow of a frigate, both carrying all the sail they could, and steering for Basseterre. Sir Samuel Hood being in the rear, and consequently nearest these ships, was ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... shore was seen. The hurricane was over, and the sea was becoming calmer. Jack securing me to the stump of the bowsprit with three or four of our surviving shipmates, contrived to form a raft. When this was launched he came for me, and fed me with some biscuit which he had in his pocket, I conclude. We then embarked, and partly by paddling with pieces of plank, and partly ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... to 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 had struck on the sands. The ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... town. These were soon left behind by the flying yacht, and as a vast sea of fleecy cloud drifted up from the north-east and spread its veil across the path of the half moon, a little cluster of lights gleamed out on the port bow. Her bowsprit swerved to the left till it pointed directly to them. Presently she slowed down and ran into a little land-locked bay surrounded with dense pine woods which came down almost to the water's edge, swung round and slowed up alongside a wooden jetty. From this a broad road, cut straight through ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... decent crew this time, if I lose all my existing contracts," Tunis said to Zebedee. "I'll find a bunch of men who are not afraid of their shadows. Huh! Hoodooed, is she? I'll show 'em that she can sail, even if Davy Jones himself sits on her bowsprit!" ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... buffeted the sea. These shoulders bent inward toward the prow and met in what was 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 ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... 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
... helped to chase beyond the mountains the whooping savages that carried the scalps of his friends at their girdle. The year his brother was born, John Maynard's ship had sailed up the James River with the bloody head of Blackbeard hanging to the bowsprit. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... under command of Kara Ali, was illuminated with colored lanterns. On that night Constantine Kanaris, a sea-captain from Psara, drove a fire-ship into the midst of the Turkish fleet. Sailing close up to the admiral's flagship he thrust his bowsprit into one of the portholes. Then setting fire to the pitch and resin on board his ship, he dropped into his small boat and pulled away. A breeze fanned the flames, and in a moment the big Turkish man-of-war ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... with nothing particularly striking in her rig or appointments—a mere trading vessel. But on her bulwarks at the bow and on the heel of the bowsprit was gathered a group that well deserves notice, for there, foremost of all, and towering above the others, stood Antonio Zeppa, holding on to a forestay, and gazing with intensity and fixedness at the speck of land which had just been sighted. Beside him, and not less absorbed, ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... arch-villain, 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 ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... feet, our sails were thrown back, and the French frigate's larboard bow came directly on to our starboard quarter. As she did so, the boatswain with his mates sprang aft, and in a moment it seemed that the enemy's bowsprit, or rather jib-boom, was lashed to our mizen-rigging, in spite of a heavy rattling fire of musketry, kept up on them by the French marines on their forecastle. A body of our marines came aft to reply to them, and numbers were dropping on both ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... commanders to settle such questions among themselves. The four vessels sailed from Rochelle on the 24th of July, 1684. They had advanced but about one hundred and fifty miles when a violent tempest overtook them. The Joli lost her bowsprit. Consequently the little squadron returned to Rochefort. Having repaired damages, the fleet again set sail, on the 1st ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... plough gone mad, and the yielding water it turned up curled over and fell white with foam, as the ploughed soil, heavy and brown, rolls and falls in a ridge. At each wave they met—and there was a short, chopping sea—the Pearl shivered from the point of the bowsprit to the rudder, which trembled under Pierre's hand; when the wind blew harder in gusts, the swell rose to the gunwale as if it would overflow into the boat. A coal brig from Liverpool was lying at anchor, waiting for the tide; they made a sweep round her stern and went to look ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... channel, 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 us from ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... fowling-pieces with buckshot. Though not a good marksman, he had some experience in the use of arms, and felt fully competent to cut off the bloodhounds before they could pounce upon their human prey. Leaving Cyd at the helm, he went forward and stationed himself at the heel of the bowsprit. ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... did not admit of it. The captain made every effort to hug the shore, and finally came to anchor in great peril, under the highlands of Sauble. Here we pitched terribly, and were momently in peril of being cast on shore. In the effort to work the ship, one of the men fell from the bowsprit, and passed under the vessel, and was lost. It was thought that our poor little craft must go to the bottom; it seemed like a chip on the ocean contending against the powers of the Almighty. It seemed as if, agreeably to Indian fable, Ishkwondameka ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... 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. The powder on board exploded; the boats were sunk; and the vessel, with its ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... entered was a very quiet one. The eye of any chance passer would have been at once drawn to a broad, heavy, white brick edifice on the lower side of the way, with a flag-pole standing out like a bowsprit from one of its great windows, and a pair of lamps hanging before a large closed entrance. It was a theatre, honey-combed with gambling-dens. At this morning hour all was still, and the only sign of life was a knot of little barefoot girls gathered within its narrow ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... from my eyes, I saw the main topsail halyard-block about level with the water's edge about eight or ten yards from me; so I swam to it and rode on it, holding on by the halyards, and then I looked about me. The fore, main, and mizzentops were all above water, as was a part of the bowsprit, and also part of the ensign-staff, with the flag hoisted—for, you see, messmates, we went down in only thirteen and a half fathom water, that is, about eighty feet; and, as I said before, she measured sixty-six ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... reply. 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
... we endured. After long while came lessening in that weight of rain, and then cessation. Suddenly the tempest was over. There shone a star—three stars and on topmast and bowsprit Saint Elmo's lights. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... escaped bumping a large Norwegian sailing vessel at anchor with her stem pointing down-stream. This ship they passed on the port side. Just as they got clear of her bowsprit the fat man cried out excitedly, 'There's her nose!' and he put the boat about and began to pull back against the tide. And surely the missing 'Squirm' was comfortably anchored on the starboard quarter of the Norwegian ship, hidden neatly between the ship and ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... hundred miles off the Irish coast, the ship-of-the-line turned back, and the three vessels held their way alone in a turbulent sea. Two of them beat stoutly against the gale, but the Edward and Ann hove to for a time, her timbers creaking and her bowsprit catching the water as she rose and fell with the waves. And so they put out into the wide and wild Atlantic—these poor, homeless, storm-tossed exiles, who were to add a new chapter to Great ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... thocht we were ower near Soa; but na, it wasnae that, it was puir Sandy Gabart's deid skreigh, or near hand, for he was deid in half an hour. A't he could tell was that a sea deil, or sea bogle, or sea spenster, or sic-like, had clum up by the bowsprit, an' gi'en him ae cauld, uncanny look. An', or the life was oot o' Sandy's body, we kent weel what the thing betokened, and why the wund gurled in the taps o' the Cutchull'ns; for doon it cam'—a wund do I ca' it! ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... answering him, as he ran on immediately into a minute individual examination of all the details of the little vessel, calling for attention and admiration in every case: "Look at the bowsprit, and then the rudder; see how delicately it moves; the royal is beautiful, and there are three flags; do look, Willie, mine will be the admiral's vessel, and I ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... aroused himself, at once, to his duty, and gave his orders coolly and with judgment. The first step was to endeavour to save the captain. The jolly-boat was lowered, and six men got in it, and passed ahead of the ship, with this benevolent design. Mark stood on the bowsprit, and saw them shoot past the bows of the vessel, and then, almost immediately, become lost to view in the gloomy darkness of the terrible scene. The men never reappeared, a common and an unknown fate thus sweeping away Captain Crutchely and six of his best men, and all, as it ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 circles around ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... round a point, I heard a rustle and a rush of something coming, and the bowsprit of a large sloop glided into view close by me. She was painted in stripes of all colors above her green bottom. The shimmer of the water shook the reflection of her hull, and made the edges of the stripes blend together. It ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... Seen through the powerful lenses of the brig's telescope, Leslie made out that she had once been a full-rigged ship, and from the little that showed above water he judged her to be American-built. Her three masts were gone by the board, also her jib-booms, which were snapped close off by the bowsprit end. There was no sign of any floating wreckage alongside her, from which Leslie was led to surmise that her masts must have been cut away; a circumstance that, in its turn, pointed to the conclusion that she had been hove over on her ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... broadsides of two English seventy-fours. She was moored stem and stern, but her stern moorings were shot away, and she consequently drifted in such a position, that both the English ships poured in an awful fire that raked her fore and aft. In a few minutes, her bowsprit was cut to shivers; her foremast was splintered and tottering; her main-yard broken up; her mizen-mast entirely carried away, and drifting under her counter; her bows riddled with shot; and her upper decks strewn with dead and dying. Only ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... his walling; But while I'm afloat, I'll stick to it that mine Beats yours into rope-yarn in spite of your bawling, Just as snuffy old Tiber is flogged by the brine; And he who the difference cannot discern Is a lob-sided lubber from bowsprit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... gentleman, as soon as they had pulled out past Castle Cornet, and had hoisted the masts and two rather dirty sprit sails, and had run out the bowsprit and a new clean jib with a view to putting the best possible face on matters, and were beginning to catch occasional puffs of a soft westerly breeze and to wallow slowly along,—"Ee see, time's o' consekens to me and my son. We got to arn ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... the deck and among the watch, that spoke of the silent yet potent arm of authority. The men spoke to each other now and then, but it was in an under tone, and there was no open levity. A few men were lounging about the heel of the bowsprit on the forecastle, one or two were busy in the waist coiling cable; an officer of second or third caste a quiet, but decided character, to judge from his features, stood with folded arms just abaft the mizzen-mast, and a youthful figure, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... rigging, remained alongside for four days. During all this time the ship lay rolling in the trough of the sea, the heavy surges breaking over her, and the spars heaving and banging to and fro, bruising the half-drowned sailors that clung to the bowsprit and the stumps of the masts. The sufferings of these poor fellows were intolerable. They stood to their waists in water, in imminent peril of being washed off by every surge. In this position they dared not ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... two boats were nearly bowsprit to bowsprit, and Sam Rover's heart almost stopped beating. But now Mumps spoke to the man with him, and his craft, called the Falcon, sheered to port, scraping the Spray's side as she ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... more steam if you can, sir. With your leave, I mean to post myself under the bowsprit, and, if we get within harpooning distance, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... ground and easy working, and the shell large. We did good business for a while, until one day I got a proper start. The life-line fouled on something, and I found that it had taken a turn round the bowsprit of a wreck. I got on top pretty quick, and, having had a talk with my mate, went down again. Very soon I knew the boat. It was the ——, and she had belonged to a man I had known very well. The strange part about the business ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... 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 due to pass in a day or two and Ronald's pockets ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... third morning just after daybreak the ship collided with something, probably either a floating rock or one of the dry Tortugas. She blew out her four funnels, the bowsprit dropped out of its place, and the propeller came right off. The Captain, after a brief consultation, decided to abandon her. The boats were lowered, and, the sea being now quite calm, the ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... trying to make up their minds to land now on Brava, now on St. Jago. Some of the ships grated on the rocks, all lost anchors and cables; one pinnace, her crew being asleep and no one on the watch, drove under the bowsprit of the 'Destiny,' struck her and sank. When they did effect a landing on Brava, they were soaked by the tropical autumnal rains of early October. Men were dying fast in all the ships. In deep dejection ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... she is a glorious sight as she comes in quite close to the pier-head, and goes into stays—(is that right?)—and her great sails flap and swing, and a person to whom caution is unknown, and who cares for nothing in heaven or earth, sits unconcerned on a string underneath her bowsprit, and gets wet through every time she plunges, doing something nautical in connexion with her foresail overhead. And then she leans over in the breeze, and the white sheets catch it full—so near you can hear ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... fairly in upon the vessel, making a clean breach over her. Those on shore fancied they heard the cries of help from on board, and could plainly descry the busy useless efforts made by the stranded crew. Now a wave came rolling onward, falling like a rock upon the bowsprit, and tearing it from the brig. The stern was lifted high above the flood. Two people were seen to embrace and plunge together into the sea; in a moment more, and one of the largest waves that rolled towards the sand-hills threw a body upon the shore. It was a woman, and appeared quite ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the want of 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, as did several ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... addition of the fore and aft rigged jigger mast, rendered necessary by the enormous length of the vessel. It will be seen that the distinctive type of the Inman line has not been departed from in respect to the old fashioned but still handsome profile, with clipper bow, figurehead, and bowsprit—which latter makes the Rome's length over all 600 feet. For the figurehead has been chosen a full length figure of one of the Roman Csars, in the imperial purple. Altogether, the City of Rome is the most imposing and beautiful sight that can be seen on the water. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... animated by the words of the First Consul, redoubled their zeal and the rapidity of their fire. One of them said, "Look at the frigate, General; her bowsprit is going to fall." He spoke truly, the bowsprit was cut in two by his ball. "Give twenty francs to that brave man," said the First Consul to the officers who were with him. Near the batteries of Wimereux there was a furnace to heat the cannon-balls; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Sea Foam was as well appointed as she was below. Her bowsprit had a gentle downward curve, her mast was a beautiful spar, and her topmast was elegantly tapered and set up in good shape. Unlike most of the regular highflyer yachts, her jib and mainsail were not unreasonably large. ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... dragged forward by Stovin and two or three of the men, who made up to him, and lashed down to the foot of the bowsprit, where I was most exposed to the spray which flew over the ship, and could be watched from every part. "You'll cool your temper and your heels there, my lad, till I let you go," whispered my old enemy in a tone of voice which showed the ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... with it, of course, and dug up a stretch of storm canvas about the size of a leg-o'-mutton sail and lashed that to the jury foremast and the stump of the bowsprit. With that gale cuttin' off our ears, it was all the sail she could carry. Bill, we had him lashed near the tiller we'd rigged up, not havin' a wheel, and by-n-by, most of us was wishin' we was lashed. But the old hooker stood up under it well, and though she was buried nearly all the ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... prepared, we started. It was a fearful moment; the wind freshened, and whistled through our rigging, and the night was so dark, that we could not see our bowsprit. We had only our foresail set; but with a strong flood-tide and a fair wind, with plenty of it, we passed between the advanced frigates like an arrow. It seemed to me like entering the gates of hell. As we flew rapidly along, and our own ships disappeared in the intense darkness, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... now fighting not for glory, but for life itself; for, on looking round, we saw to our horror that the grapnels had been loosened, and thus all retreat cut off. Our vessel was no longer lying alongside of the brig, but across its bows, so that the bowsprit of the latter crossed its deck. We could not, therefore, reach it, since the Spaniards had possession of the forecastle of their own vessel. At this critical moment we received unexpected aid in the shape of a shower of grape shot from our schooner, which ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... effect. They had in the mean time reached Leda Tanah, whence they were brought down again sulky enough, and did show a slight inclination to see whether the people on board the Swift were keeping watch; for several of their boats dropped close to her, and one directly under the bowsprit, as silently as death; but on being challenged, and a musket leveled near them, they sheered off, and the next day finally departed. The poor Dyaks in the interior, as well as the Chinese, were in the greatest state of alarm, and thence ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... a nutshell on the raging waters. The bowsprit raised itself high in the air, while the stern was buried in the trough of the sea. All clung to the ropes or whatever object presented itself expecting to be washed overboard, as the boat shook and ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... who told them the time for some sort of action was rapidly approaching. Then they went to the bow of the vessel, where they found that she was anchored, though the chain had been hove short. The hawser by which she was to be towed to sea was made fast to the bowsprit bitts, and led to the stern of the steamer, where it was doubtless ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... was. We also told him of the beautiful significance of the occasion, what happy thoughts it inspired, and how much sentiment was attached to it. Then we told him to get busy. We were in a Thanksgiving mood, being grateful that we were not riding around on the bowsprit of the rhino, and also because our relatives and friends at home were well at last reports, two ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... usual first flat, with the cloak upon the nail, the rosaries of onions, the gun and powder-horn and corner-cupboard; here is the inn (this drama must be nautical, I foresee Captain Luff and Bold Bob Bowsprit) with the red curtain, pipes, spittoons, and eight-day clock; and there again is that impressive dungeon with the chains, which was so dull to colour. England, the hedgerow elms, the thin brick houses, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... another wood called dongon, [45] which is very strong, and of a yellowish color. From it are made stringer-plates, chocks of the bowsprit, coamings of the hatchways, strakes and stanchions for the decks. If all these woods are cut at the conjunction and decrease of the moon, and seasoned, as above stated, for one year, the ship will last much longer; for if they are cut and not ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... bulwarks, 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,' said Macivor, addressing ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough. One could not promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the bowsprit was taking a deadly aim at the sun in midheaven, and at the next it was trying to harpoon a shark in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird sensation it is to feel the stem of a ship sinking swiftly from under you and see the bow climbing high away among the clouds! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Lundy Island we experienced a head wind and the gentle summer swell of the Atlantic. In spite of her deeply-laden condition the "Terra Nova" breasted each wave in splendid form, lifting her toy bowsprit proudly in the air till she reminded me, with her deck cargo, of a little mother with her child upon ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... lying alongside, and there is not another craft outside her. The boat is fastened to her bowsprit, and I can take off my boots and get on board and drop into her, without difficulty; and push her along to the foot of some stairs which are but ten yards away. Of course, we will have the water and food and ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... and was soon standing beside my host, who seemed pleased at the alacrity with which I had joined him, and I watched with feelings of indescribable exhilaration the 'Diana' being loosed from her moorings. Steam was up, and in a very short time her bowsprit swung round and pointed outward from the bay. Quivering like an eager race-horse ready to start, she sprang forward; and then, with a stately sweeping curve, glided across the water, catting it into bright wavelets with her sword-like keel and churning a path behind her of opalescent foam. We ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... eyes swept the vessel throughout its entire length from stern rail to bowsprit, his admiration grew. He was glad that such a craft was to carry the hopes and fortunes of the treasure hunters. She seemed ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... craft forward until the stays of the bowsprit were directly above him. He could just reach them. To make his canoe fast there was the work of but a minute or two, and then the ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and the moon was already rising bathed in silvery light, when Tonio Kroeger's ship reached the open sea. He stood by the bowsprit, his mantle shielding him from the steadily freshening breeze, and looked down into the dark roving and surging of the strong, smooth wave-bodies below him, as they rocked about each other, met each other with a splash, separated with a rush in unexpected directions, or suddenly ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... raking broadsides, to which her opponent could reply only feebly from a few forward guns; then, the vessels being close together, and the British forging slowly ahead, threatening to cross the American's stern, the helm of the latter was put up. As the "Constitution" turned away, the bowsprit of the "Guerriere" lunged over her quarter-deck, and became entangled by her port mizzen-rigging; the result being that the two fell into the same line, the "Guerriere" astern and fastened to her antagonist as described. (5) In her crippled condition for manoeuvring, it was possible ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Could not sail yet, but the Rotterdammer sailed with thirty passengers, with little or no freight. In going down she broke the bowsprit of our ship. Mr. Ouwen left us in her, after we ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... all over the sea; and the ship made a strange, musical noise under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all still. It seemed a pity to go to work at such a time; and if we could only have sat in the windlass again; or if they would have let me go out on the bowsprit, and lay down between the manropes there, and look over at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should have been almost ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... should at all times use Captain King's inner route;** and much of the delay occasioned by anchoring at night would be obviated by cautiously approaching, at reduced speed, the reefs, the position of which might be distinguished by means of a powerful light at the vessel's head or bowsprit end; when a course might be shaped for the next and so on. As the smooth water within the shelter of the Great Barrier Reefs affords facilities for steering with great nicety, a steamer, with care, might effect a saving of fuel as ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... of its fury worked this wonder. For the craft came in on a tall billow that flung her, as a sling might, clean against the cliff's face, crumpling the bowsprit like paper, sending the foremast over with a crash, and driving a jagged tooth of rock five feet into her ribs beside the breastbone. So, for a moment it left her, securely gripped and bumping her stern-post on the ledge beneath. As the next sea deluged her, and the next, the folk above saw ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... numerous shoals, reefs, and rocks surround the island mostly below the surface, some only showing their black pates, while from its slight elevation above the ocean at the distance of less than four miles it was scarcely visible. A negro standing on the bowsprit end, and holding on by the stay, piloted the schooner, giving his directions to the man at the helm ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Now and then there would come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling waters, and then I fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on the bottom. Her masts had all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos of cordage floated and swung in the waves that broke over her. But her bowsprit remained entire, and shot out into the foamy dark, crowded with human beings. The first rocket had missed. They were preparing to fire another. Roxton stood with his telescope in his hand, ready ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... refer either to the bowsprit or to the flying balloon-jib," he replied coldly, and acting generally as if he were very much bored, "you are entirely wrong. This isn't a sloop, or a catamaran, or a caravel. Neither is it a government transport, an ocean gray-hound, or a ram. ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... had been obliged to put into Plymouth for repairs, and, on the 22nd Sept., 1796, was lying alongside of a sheer-hulk taking in her bowsprit, within a few yards of the dockyard jetty. The ship, being on the eve of sailing, was crowded with more than an hundred men, women, and children, above her usual complement. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon that ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... beach to the water's edge, and now could see that there were three people in the yacht,—a little round man with big spectacles at the rudder, a taller one, young and trim-looking in his tourist costume, who stood boldly out on the bowsprit, while a beautiful woman with blond hair leaned gracefully ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the will of God, as if he had been born a Christian; and he gave many a kind word of encouragement to his men. What a difference there must have been between him and the vulgar, bullying man that Sam Bowsprit once sailed with, who was a wolf when there was no danger, and a sheep when there was; but it is always so with your bullies, whether in the cabin or the forecastle. To return to my story: in two or three days the gale spent its fury, and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... between two coves thus formed is a reverse [symbol: upside-down V], called a point, always, naturally, composed of the hardest rock, and not infrequently ending in a literal point so sharp that it is like a vast granite bowsprit thrust out into the green plains far below, terminating in a sheer precipice of several hundred feet. Roughly, then, you may visualize this section of the Cumberlands as a giant double-edged saw, a thousand feet thick, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... the strong current caught our bow and carried us into the bank, causing us to collide with and considerably damage two schooners, as well as the balcony of one of the numerous wooden houses standing on piles in the river. The bowsprit of one of the schooners was completely interlaced with the stanchions, ropes, and railings of our gangway, and it must have been a good stick not to snap off short. The tide was now much higher than when we came up, but the ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... from her jibboom, which knocked him over into the moat and broke two of his ribs, and it was also maintained with equal truth that when she came to the wharf it was found she had brought away a small brass gun on her bowsprit, into which she had thrust it like the long ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... really is a matter 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
... Dutchman, you know. But he had a bad dream that night, had Andreas. All the dead men came to fetch him, and he ran from them and got right out on the bowsprit, and there he sat and yelled, while the dead men stood on the forecastle. And the one with his broken thigh-bone in his hand was foremost, and he came crawling out, and wanted Andreas to put it together again. But just then he wakened. We were lying in the same berth, you ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... for wharfage, they took the building out and anchored it in the stream. That night a tug-boat, coming up the river in the dark, ran halfway through the Sunday-school room, and a Dutch brig, coming into collision with it, was drawn out with the pulpit and three of the front pews dangling from the bowsprit. The owners of both vessels sued for damages, and the United States authorities talked of confiscating the meeting-house as an obstruction to navigation. But a few days afterward the ice-gorge sent a flood down the river and broke the building ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... this time that orders were given to clew up the jib and then to furl it. Bowers and four others went out on the bowsprit, being buried deep in the enormous seas every time the ship plunged her nose into them with great force. It was an education to see him lead those men out into that roaring inferno. He has left his own vivid impression of this gale in a letter home. His tendency was always to underestimate ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Away at some distance on either hand were white masses of foam where the sea was breaking on the sands. He went up to the bow and looked ahead through the darkness, then he went back to his uncle. "I caught sight of a light right over the bowsprit." ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... believe the evidence of his senses at the transformation that he beheld. Upon the main deck were eight twelve-pound carronade neatly covered with tarpaulin; in the bow a Long Tom, also snugly stowed away and covered, directed a veiled and muzzled snout out over the bowsprit. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... have been greatly strained and might be leaking through some open seams, the tough keelson of the well-built vessel, running her length like a stiff backbone, had received and distributed the shock, and although her bowsprit was shivered to pieces and her cut-water splintered, her sides were apparently uninjured. Furniture, baggage, coils of rope, and everything movable had been pitched forward and heaped in disordered piles all over the vessel. A great part of the china had ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton |
