"Rudder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the day the hurricane still continued, and the rudder was gone. At 1 A. M. they felt the ship strike, and gave themselves up for lost, expecting every moment to be engulphed in the depths of ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... first shotte he split our rudders head in pieces, and the second shotte he shotte vs vnder the water, and the third shotte he shotte vs through our foremast with a Coluering shot, and thus he hauing rent both our rudder and maste, and shot vs vnder water, we were ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... manage, and cast off. It was a clumsy, broad-beamed, leaky old conveyance, and that it was as dirty as Hewitt had described it I could feel as I groped for the sculls and got them out. The night was light and dark by turns—changing with the clouds. We shipped the rudder, and Styles steered, or I should probably have run ashore more than once, for the banks were not always distinct, and the channel was narrow and dark. We passed the black forms of several factories with tall chimneys, and then drew out among the Marshes, ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... condition of the ship, I am enabled to report that she has sustained no irreparable damage to her hull. The sternpost is bent, and some 20 feet of her keel partially gone; propeller and shaft uninjured. The lower pintle of the rudder is gone, but no other damage is sustained by it. No damage is done to her hull more serious than the loss of several sheets of copper, torn from her starboard bilge ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... navigator on a voyage of discovery under the bottom of the vessel, lowering him[2] down over the bows, and with ropes detaining him exactly in his position under the kelson, while he is drawn aft by a hauling line until he makes his appearance at the rudder-chains, generally speaking quite out of breath, not at the rapidity of his motion, but because, when so long under the water, he has expended all the breath in his body, and is induced to take in salt water en lieu. There ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... pole-star, faith in God; rudder, free will; compass, conscience; sextant, rationalism and experience; anchor, hope; guiding chart, creeds and opinions of men vs. the Word of ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... more like the manoeuvre of a skilful helmsman, who, when a flaw that may not be resisted strikes the sails of his ship, doth not luff, and thereby increase the power of his enemy, and risk destruction, but, by a gentle turn of the rudder, glides by the danger, making its very violence facilitate his advance; or it may be compared to the progress of a wise traveller, who, when he encounters a steep hill, doth not always press straight forward, but, influenced ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Lady Margaret had been head of the river since 1854, Canon M'Cormick was rowing 5, Philip Pennant Pearson (afterwards P. Pennant) was 7, Canon Kynaston, of Durham (whose name formerly was Snow), was stroke, and Butler was cox. When the cox let go of the bung at starting, the rope caught in his rudder lines, and Lady Margaret was nearly bumped by Second Trinity. They escaped, however, and their pursuers were so much exhausted by their efforts to catch them that they were themselves bumped by First Trinity at the next corner. ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... foundryman who had constructed the big torpedo-shaped contrivance had been interviewed. He knew both men, and they were on the most friendly terms. In a moment of confidence Doctor Anderwelt had told him the machine was for submarine exploration; had explained the four-winged rudder, which would make it dive into the water, rise to the surface, or direct it to right or to left. Moreover, there were closed living compartments, around which were chambers containing a supply of air. He himself had pumped them full of compressed air, and it was so ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... in beautiful condition, smooth, polished and fitted with everything that was needed. They put on their flying clothes, drew down their visors, stowed their automatics in handy pockets, and took their seats in the aeroplane. Then, as he put his hand on the steering rudder and the attendants gave the Arrow a mighty shove, the soul of Lannes swelled ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... an oil-stove once, but "never again." It had been like living in an oil-shop that week. It oozed. I never saw such a thing as paraffine oil is to ooze. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from there, it oozed down to the rudder, impregnating the whole boat and everything in it on its way, and it oozed over the river, and saturated the scenery and spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other times an easterly oily wind, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... there is always a portion divided off for the negro population, that they may not be mixed up with the whites. When I first landed at New York, I had a specimen of this feeling. Fastened by a rope yarn to the rudder chains of a vessel next in the tier, at the wharf to which the packet had hauled in, I perceived the body of a black man, turning over and over with the ripple of the waves. I was looking at it, when a lad came ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... crew thrust the handle of an oar against the breakwater and pushed off. Then they rowed for a short spell to get into the wind, whilst old Hrolfur fixed the rudder. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... administration was at the mercy of contending factions; and incapable of fixing a policy for herself, she allowed herself to be dragged on by the current of events at Constantinople. She 'drifted,' as Lord Clarendon said, exactly describing his own position, into the war, apparently without rudder and without compass. ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... But I lay inert for a long minute trying to find out why I was not in my own bed, in my own home, and to account for the rushing, rippling sound of the tide eddies sucking and chuckling around the Lass's rudder-post. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... me," said Nick. "He's like a well-built ship adrift without a rudder. He's all manners and no grit—the sort of chap who wants to be pushed before he can do anything. I often ached to kick him when we ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... would have stuck for half-an-hour in irons, rolling her decks full of water, knocking the men about—spars cracking, braces snapping, yards taking charge, and a confounded scare going on aft because of her beastly rudder, which she had a way of flapping about fit to raise your hair on end. I couldn't get over my wonder ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... a good look at the planes, the rudder-bar, and the elevating lever before I got in. Everything was in order so far as I could see. Then I switched on my engine and found that she was running sweetly. When they let her go she rose almost at once upon the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... during the night. The preparations to secure the York boat against the threatening storm were highly characteristic of her hit-or-miss crew. A stake was driven in the sand of the lake bottom, at either side the stern, and the rudder-post lashed between. This flimsy apparatus was designed to keep the boat from being driven broadside on the bar. The practical Garth frowned impatiently at its utter insufficiency; but the breeds could scarcely contain their impatience to resume their gambling with the other crew; and ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... intellectual cultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything else. The fountains of vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... have sunk, burnt, drove on shore, twenty-one sail of the line in all; and if we had not had a gale of wind next day we would have taken every one of them. We were riding close in shore with two anchors a-head, three cables on each bower, and all our sails were shot to pieces, ditto our rudder and stern, and mainmast, and everything; but, thank good, I am here safe, though there was more shot at my quarters than any other part of the ship. We are now at anchor, but expect to go to Gibraltar every ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... fierce Eurus, in his angry mood, Dash'd on the shallows of the moving sand, And in mid ocean left them moor'd aland. Orontes' bark, that bore the Lycian crew, (A horrid sight!) ev'n in the hero's view, From stem to stern by waves was overborne: The trembling pilot, from his rudder torn, Was headlong hurl'd; thrice round the ship was toss'd, Then bulg'd at once, and in the deep was lost; And here and there above the waves were seen Arms, pictures, precious goods, and floating men. ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the time, and this liked Harek well. So betook they themselves to the shore, and did hale down a six-oared boat, & Sigurd from the boat-house fetched him a sail and the gear appertaining to the boat, and moreover shipped he the rudder. Sigurd and his brother were fully armed, as was their wont to be when they were at home with the goodman, and the twain ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... of himself as simply a citizen of the Union. His general reputation, won in many fields, gave weight to what he wrote as a publicist. His editorials were one more evidence of the central pull of the Great Tradition; it steadied his judgment, clarified his vision, kept his rudder true. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... tail of a fish, both of them rising high above the water. The oars are curved, like golf or hockey-sticks, and are worked from the gunwale of the bark, though there is no indication of rowlocks. The vessel is without a rudder; but it has a mast, supported by two ropes which are fastened to the head and stern. The mast has neither sail nor yard attached to it, but is crowned by what is called a "crow's nest"—a bell-shaped receptacle, from which a slinger or archer might discharge ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... misery are swallowed up and sink into insignificance and nullity compared with this: this present, they disappear: this absent, each alone is sufficient to wreck the soul, fluttering about without rudder or ballast on the waves of the world. Duality is the root, out of which alone, for mortals, happiness can spring. And the old Hindoo mythology, which is far deeper in its simplicity than the later idealistic pessimism, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... greatly, little Primrose," he wrote. "I seem like a boat with no rudder, that is adrift on an ocean. Do you think good Madam Wetherill, who has been so much to you, would let you ask a guest for a few days? A Henry who has dared to lift his hand against the country of his birth, and regrets it now in his better understanding of events? ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... bridge, and Rosy was rather scared at this big, strange boat; but she got safely over, and held on fast; then, with a roll and a plunge, off went the whale, spouting two fountains, while his tail steered him like the rudder ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... ult. Your favorable reception of sentiments not generally avowed, if felt, by our countrymen, but which have ever been so inseparably interwoven with my opinions and feelings as to become, as it were, the rudder that shapes my course, even against a strong tide of interest and of local partialities, could not but be in the highest degree gratifying to me. And your interesting and highly prized letter conveying them to me in such flattering terms, would have called forth my ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... I do," came the reply, as the other eagerly bent his gaze on the tree tops that they were beginning to approach closer, for Frank had turned the lever of the deflecting rudder in order to start ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... no time in letting fly an oar at him, the yoke and rudder quickly following. His vengeance was let loose, and he poured forth a stream of quarter-deck language at the top of his voice. His phrases were dazzling in ingenuity, and amid much laughter and applause he urged ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... ride from Glenwood back to Tahoe City was not so calm. The Lake was considerably agitated; less so, however, than on the following day, when, as we learned afterward, our little steamer lost its rudder. Owing to the gorges in the mountains upon either side, through which winds rush unexpectedly, Tahoe has her dangers. She is a wild, wayward child, but thoroughly lovable throughout all her frowns as well as smiles, equally captivating in her moments of unconquerable ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... her style, and thus the legend speaks:— "This man I will restore, and he shall hold The city and his father's palace homes." Such the devices of the hostile chiefs. 'Tis for thyself to choose whom thou wilt send; But never shalt thou blame my herald-words. To guide the rudder of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the same moment a little barge suddenly appeared on the blue river. When it came nearer, everybody looked with astonishment at the strange vessel. Its form was light and graceful; but what astonished the people most was that it was not moved by either oar or rudder, but was gently gliding on the blue waves drawn by a snow-white swan. In the middle of the vessel stood a knight ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... could; and when we got to what we thought was a safe distance we stopped to look at the 'Thomas Hyke.' You never saw such a ship in all your born days. Two thirds of the hull was sunk in the water, and she was standing straight up and down with the stern in the air, her rudder up as high as the topsail ought to be, and the screw propeller looking like the wheel on the top of one of these windmills that they have in the country for pumping up water. Her cargo had shifted so far forward that it had turned her right ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... the fruits of its toil; each individual being reduced to the proper allowance of fifty-six and a half centimes, poverty becomes general; the compact formed between labor and capital is dissolved, and society, deprived of its rudder, drifts ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... and they went to the shore, and drew down a six-oared skiff; and Sigurd took the mast and rigging belonging to the boat out of the boat-house, for they often used to sail when they went for amusement on the water. Harek went out into the boat to hang the rudder. The brothers Sigurd and Hauk, who were very strong men, were fully armed, as they were used to go about at home among the peasants. Before they went out to the boat they threw into her some butter-kits and a bread-chest, and carried between them a great keg of ale. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... and lopped them and worked them by the line. Then the goddess brought him an auger, and he made holes in the logs and joined them with pegs. And he made decks and side planking also; also a mast and a yard, and a rudder wherewith to turn the raft. And he fenced it about with a bulwark of willow twigs against the waves. The sails Calypso wove, and Ulysses fitted them with braces and halyards and sheets. Last of all he pushed the raft down to the sea ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... and four or five dark figures jostled noisily out and came haltingly down the street. They walked crazily, like ships without a rudder, veering from one side of the walk to the other, shouting and singing uncouth, ribald songs, hoarse laughter ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... great sails was a fine sight; but it was evident that the sails and ropes were in a very rotten condition, and soon, with anxious looks, we followed the growth of a tear in the mainsail, wondering whether the mast would stand the strain. A heavy sea broke the rudder, and altogether it was high time to land when we entered Port ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... four galliasses loses her rudder, and drifts helpless to and fro, hindering and confusing. The duke, having (so the Spaniards say) weighed his anchor deliberately instead of leaving it behind him, runs in again after awhile, and fires a signal for return: but his ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... true, the only support of a monarchy. Without it the State is a vessel without a rudder—a balloon in the air. A true aristocracy, however, must be ancient. Therein consists its ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... been Edged to the outer cliff. I have been weak, And played too much the lackey. What am I In this waste, empty, cruel, land of England, Save an old castaway,—a buccaneer,— The hull of derelict Ambition,— Without a mast or spar, the rudder gone, ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug—you mus git him for your own self." Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it was enclosed. It was ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the sea, which was as calm as if it had been sleeping, and as blue as thy eyes, O divine one. We ourselves rowed, for evidently it flattered the Augusta that men of consular dignity, or their sons, were rowing for her. Caesar, sitting at the rudder in a purple toga, sang a hymn in honor of the sea; this hymn he had composed the night before, and with Diodorus had arranged music to it. In other boats he was accompanied by slaves from India who knew how to play on sea-shells while round about appeared numerous dolphins, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... lead we could find no bottom, even with three hundred fathom. What made this circumstance the more wonderful, and indeed beyond all comprehension, was, that the violence of the shock was such that we lost our rudder, broke our bowsprit in the middle, and split all our masts from top to bottom, two of which went by the board; a poor fellow, who was aloft furling the mainsheet, was flung at least three leagues from the ship; but he fortunately saved his life by laying hold of the tail of a ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... adjusted their oars, and the coxswain pushed off. Having adjusted the rudder-lines, Trix affixed the megaphone, and lifted her hand. The eight strained forward, and the ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... only have to bend them on again when next they wanted to use the sail—and in another minute Tom had the sail mastheaded, the tack lashed down, and the sheet aft in George's hand; whilst the latter, sinking down in the sternsheets with a sigh of ineffable relief, and too tired yet to ship the rudder, steered the boat with the oar which he had used for sculling, whilst Tom was busied in the operation ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... from side to side, The boat, untrimm'd, admits the tide, Borne down, adrift, at random tost, The oar breaks short, the rudder's lost. Gay's Fables. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hideous cry, some pull up anchors, some for haste cut their cables, they set up their sails, they apply their oars, and stricken with extreme terror, in great haste they fled most confusedly. Among them the Pretorian Galleass floating upon the seas, her rudder being broken, in great danger and fear drew towards Calais, and striking in the sand, was taken by Amias Preston, Thomas Gerard, and Harvey; Hugh Moncada the governor was slain, the soldiers and mariners were either killed or drowned; in her there was found great ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... about, leaped uninvited to the nuptials upon the deck, one man baled them with a bowl into a tub, another drove them off with a pump; and whilst every sailor was hard at work—as it concerned his own safety—one minding the rudder, another hauling the foresail, another the mainsheet, Jennariello ran up to the topmast, to see with a telescope if he could discover any land where they might cast anchor. And lo! whilst he was measuring a hundred miles of distance with two feet of telescope, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... offspring were a fair example of these irresponsible people. Like a ship adrift without skipper or rudder, they were at the mercy of every adverse wind of misfortune. Each morning they went out with frantic energy to earn or in some way procure sustenance for one more day. Young Dave hounded the sponge fishermen until they gave him an extra job. He made the rounds of the fishing docks, continually ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... a bark of dead men's bones And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast, Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast; Although your rudder be a dragon's tail Long severed, yet still hard with agony, Your cordage, large uprootings from the skull Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail To ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... sea, this construction gave the craft a supple strength. Calking was done with woolen cloth steeped in pitch. The mast, of a chosen trunk of fir, was set upright in a log with ends shaped like a fishtail. The long oarlike rudder was on the board or side of the ship to the right of the stern, called the starboard or steerboard. The lading was done on the opposite side, the larboard or ladderboard. There were ten oars to a side, and ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... and its ventures are laid, The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves May see us in sunshine or shade; Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark, We'll trim our broad sail as before, And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, Nor ask how we look from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the music-ship, Over the moonlit sea, And the trumpet that the captain blows Is the only rudder the vessel knows, As we sail so merrily, The fiddles, and fifes, and drums, and horns All carry the ship along, It shapes its course by the cymbal clash To the land of music ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... turned the world. Not a sailor would go voluntarily; so the king and queen compelled them. Three days out, in his vessels scarcely larger than fishing-schooners, the Pinta floated a signal of distress for a broken rudder. Terror seized the sailors, but Columbus calmed their fears with pictures of gold and precious stones from India. Two hundred miles west of the Canaries, the compass ceased to point to the North Star. The sailors are ready to mutiny, but he tells them the North Star is not exactly north. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... now nearly finished a most exquisite figure of a fisher-boy, standing on the shore, with his net and rudder in one hand, while with the other he holds a shell to his ear and listens if it murmur to him of a gathering storm. His slight, boyish limbs are full of grace and delicacy—you feel that the youthful frame ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... munition ships in order to cripple them. In a Hoboken storage warehouse was found a quantity of picric acid he had deposited there, with a number of steel mine tanks, each fitted with an attachment for hooking to the rudder of a vessel, and clockwork and wire to fire the explosive in the tanks. In rooms occupied by Fay and Scholz were dynamite and trinitrotoluol (known as T-N-T), many caps of fulminate of mercury, and Government survey maps of the eastern coast line ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... shouted, 'before I brain you!' I held the very gaff with which Grimalson had torn my arm. He had plucked the tiller from the rudder-head, and with these two weapons in our right hands we faced one another, each with his left feeling for ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is of a special and somewhat particular construction. On either side of the rudder and propeller posts—which are sided 24 inches (65 cm.)—is fitted a stout oak counter-timber following the curvature of the stern right up to the upper deck, and forming, so to speak, a double stern-post. The planking is carried outside these timbers, and the stern protected by heavy iron plates ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... sailors seized him in their arms, and carried him by force upon deck, where the sight of the danger, and the cries of 'Throw him overboard!—over with him!' only seemed to fortify his resolution. Not a word, not a sign could they get from him. The rudder was now unshipped! At this the sailors' fury turned suddenly upon Jefferies, who between terror and ignorance was utterly incapacitated. They seized, bound, gave him up to Walsingham, returned to their duty; and then, and not till then, Walsingham resumed ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... children went passengers in a packet; on board of which, as she afterwards learned, there was not even a compass. A storm arose and they were tossed to and fro for nine hours in imminent danger. The rudder and the mast were carried away; every thing on deck thrown overboard; and at length the vessel struck in the night upon a rock, on the coast of Ayr, in Scotland. The greatest confusion pervaded the passengers and crew. Among ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... have embarked in the same vessel with an unscrupulous villain—so I regard Ralph Dewey—and have, as far as I can see, given the rudder into his hands. If he do not wreck them on some dangerous coast, or sunken rock, it will be more from good ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... heaved and sot, and sot and heaved, And high his rudder flung, And every time he heaved and sot, A mighty leak ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... defects they might sustain by the working of the spars; a small topgallant studding-sail was obtained for a sail; and upon this miserable raft the ten persons made sail for the coast of Africa, distant 200 miles, without rudder, oar, ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... they despatched 16 boats, with an aggregate load of 380 tons, to Liverpool, drawn by one small vessel of 16-horse power, other engines taking up the "train" at different parts of the voyage. Mr. Inshaw, in 1853, built a steamboat for canals with a screw on each side of the rudder. It was made to draw four boats with 40 tons of coal in each at two and a half miles per hour, and the twin screws were to negative the surge, but the iron horses of the rail soon put down, not only all such weak attempts at competition, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... weather moderated we found to our dismay that the rudder was adrift, the pintles having been broken by the heavy seas. I was now compelled to put before the wind and run for St. Thomas, in the West Indies, and when near the entrance of the port a passenger, Captain George Adams, "went off his head," and thus gave no little ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... prevail, even if there were many ships they could not aid one another, whatever injury the galleys were inflicting upon them—the least being to dismantle them, so that they cannot sail, for there is nothing there with which to make a mast or rudder. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... and we weren't pleasant traveling companions. I had never sailed with Edith under such baffling winds as we now encountered. Squalls, calms, and occasional storms we had experienced, but she had always kept a firm hand on the rudder. Now she seemed to lose her nerve and forget all the rules of successful navigation that she ever had learned. She threw the charts to the winds, and burst into uncontrolled passions of ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... risen in mid-stream, the keel of the Magdalen boat might have killed him. The oars of Magdalen did all but graze his face. The eyes of the Magdalen cox met his. The cords of the Magdalen rudder slipped from the hands that held them; whereupon the Magdalen man who rowed "bow" missed ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... reef so violently, that both keel and rudder were instantly knocked off and carried away, and the Captain declared the vessel to be totally lost; at the same time giving orders to get the boats ready and furnished with provisions, in order to endeavour to reach ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... was quickly discovered that Mortimer was at sea without a rudder or compass, but was still enabled to preserve the true line of beauty, which is said to be in a flowing curve; Merry well was magnanimous, Frank Harry moppy, and all of them rather muggy. Harry was going Eastward, and the remainder of the party Westward; it was half-past one in the morning—the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... it seemed as if the Mountain, as if the revolution, would regain the ascendency, as if the terrorists would once more seize the rudder which had slipped from their blood-stained hands. But the Convention, which for a time had remained undecided, trembling and vacillating, rose at length from its lethargy to firm, energetic measures, and came to the determination to ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... say, were sailing together on our way from Troy, the son of Atreus and I, as loving friends. But when we had reached holy Sunium, the headland of Athens, there Phoebus Apollo slew the pilot of Menelaus with the visitation of his gentle shafts, as he held between his hands the rudder of the running ship, even Phrontis, son of Onetor, who excelled the tribes of men in piloting a ship, whenso the storm-winds were hurrying by. Thus was Menelaus holden there, though eager for the way, till he might bury his friend and pay the last rites over him. But when ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... French have always been remarked. With his knife and a nail he would carve a plum-stone into a miniature basket, with handle across it, all delicately wrought with flowers and checker-work. The shell of a butter-nut would be transformed into a boat, with thwarts, and seats, and rudder, with sails of basswood or birch-bark. Combs he could cut out of wood or bone, so that Catharine could dress her hair or confine it in braids or bands at will. This was a source of great comfort to her; and Louis was always pleased when he could in any way contribute to his cousin's ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... were about thirty feet long. These were placed about five feet apart and parallel, and then firmly secured by bamboo joists. Over these we spread a flooring of split bamboo, and planted four stout chonta sticks to support a palm-thatched roof. A rudder (a novel idea to our red-skinned companions), and a box of sand in the stern of one of the boats for a fire-place, completed our rig. The alcalde, with a hiccough, declared we would be forever going down ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the water was increasing below. I swam back to the quarter-deck, where the captain, who was as brave a man as ever trod a plank, stood at the wheel with three of the best seamen; but such were the rude shocks which the rudder received from the sea, that it was with the utmost difficulty they could prevent themselves being thrown over the ship's side. The lee quarter-deck guns were under water; but it was proposed to throw them overboard; and as it was a matter of life and death, we succeeded. Still she lay like ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Storage Company. An electric motor in the after part of the hull is coupled directly to the shaft of the screw propeller, and fed by "E P S" accumulators in teak boxes lodged under the deck amidships. The screw is controlled by a switch, and the rudder by an ordinary helm. The cabin is seven feet long, and lighted by electric lamps. Alarm signals are given by an electric gong, and a search-light can be brought into operation whenever it is desirable. The speed attained by the Lady Cooper is from ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... he made fast the rope, and bade me go to the rudder, for I had taken tight hold of ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... "And it also has a rudder that you can unship and use as a safety razor. You might open up a barber shop with it, only the eminent citizens over here don't have any more ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... point of being dashed to pieces, a sudden breeze providentially sprang up, and filling our sails, impelled the vessel forward three or four yards. This was enough, but only just sufficient, for the rudder was not more than six yards from the rock. No sooner had we passed this frightful danger than the breeze fell again, and was succeeded by a dead calm; the tide, however, continued to carry us on with a gradually decreasing strength until one o'clock, when we felt very little ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... had neither oars, spars, nor sails fitted for the boat. In half an hour more, however, we had fashioned two pairs of oars, in a very rough way certainly, but such as would serve in smooth water well enough. We had stepped two masts and fitted two lugs and a jib. Fortunately the rudder had not been injured, so that we were saved the trouble of making one. I felt my heart somewhat lighter when the work was finished, and we were able to launch the boat over the side where the bulwarks had been knocked away when the enemy ran us aboard. She swam well, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... ship expressly built for cable purposes. All the latest improvements that electric science and naval engineering could suggest were in her united. With a length of 360 feet, a width of 52 feet, and a depth of 36 feet in the hold, she was fitted with a rudder at each end, either of which could be locked when desired, and the other brought into play. Two screw propellers, actuated by a pair of compound engines, were the means of driving the vessel, and they were placed at a slight angle to each other, so that when the engines were worked in opposite ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... success are largely in the runner's favor. The stages of the game must be taken into consideration, and what may be a perfectly commendable play in one situation may be altogether reckless and foolhardy in another. Therefore, the most important faculty of all, the pendulum which regulates, and the rudder which guides, is judgment. An illustration may make my meaning clear. In the ninth inning, with a runner on first base and the score a tie, it may be a good play for the runner to attempt to steal second, because from there a single hit may send him home. But suppose ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... and Neil returned to the Reindeer and got under way, the junk towing astern. I went aft and took charge of the prize, steering by means of an antiquated tiller and a rudder with large, diamond-shaped holes, through which the water rushed back ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... infernal pass. By the force of the current, the boat neared a large and furious whirlpool, formed by an eddy on the side of the passage. The steersman endeavored, in vain, to counteract this drift of the boat by the aid of the rudder. The side of the boat approached to within a yard of the white foam which covered this dreadful spot. Our rais tore his turban from his head, and lifted his clasped hands to Heaven, exclaiming, "We are lost!" The rest of the boatmen were screaming to God and the prophet for aid, when, I know ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... I know the way, Eradicate, my good fellow. It isn't necessary for you to come. As long as Tom Swift is out there, I'll find him. Bless my horizontal rudder! I'm anxious to see what progress he's made. I'll find him, ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... evening a stroke of luck occurred; in the middle of the High Street I met a couple of yachting friends, who had had to put in by reason of a strained rudder. I told them my story, and they appeared less surprised than amused. Captain Goyles and the two men were still watching the weather. I ran into the "King's Head," and prepared Ethelbertha. The four of us crept ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... the greatest of the losses of Athens was the death of Pericles. In him Athens lost its wisest man and ablest statesman. The strong hand which had so long held the rudder of the state was gone, and the subsequent misfortunes of Athens were due more to the loss of this wise counsellor than to ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... health. I wish I could say better,—but I cannot. With a constitution like mine, you never know—to-morrow I may be carrying topgallant sails again: but just at present I am scraping along with a jurymast and a kind of amateur rudder. Truly I have some misery, as things go; but these things are mere detail. However, I do not want to crever, claquer, and cave in just when I have a chance of some happiness; nor do I mean to. All the same, I am more and more in a difficulty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... noticed trees floating slowly down the river. With 'the most confident and cheerful expression, he asked: "Who would accompany him to sea on the raft he was about to form with those timbers?"' A sail was 'made of a bisket-sack,' and with 'an oar shaped out of a young tree for a rudder,' they set out to sea, in danger of being swamped by every wave, and often waist-deep in water. After about six hours of extreme peril they sighted the pinnaces, and in the end Drake succeeded in reaching them, and was able ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... early childhood, is still a sight whereof my old eyes never tire. What animation in that verdant world! On the warm mud of the edges, the frog's little tadpole basks and frisks in its black legions; down in the water, the orange-bellied newt steers his way slowly with the broad rudder of his flat tail; among the reeds are stationed the flotillas of the caddis worms, half protruding from their tubes, which are now a tiny bit of stick and again a ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... and fifty sailors on the benches having oars in their hands ready for rowing; and the two young men were standing unbound upon the shore near to the stern. And other sailors were dragging the ship by the cable to the shore that the young men might embark. Then the guards laid hold of the rudder, and sought to take it from his place, crying, "Who are ye that carry away priestesses and the images of our Gods?" Then Orestes said, "I am Orestes, and I carry away my sister." But the guards laid hold of Iphigenia; and when the sailors saw this they leapt from the ship; and neither the one ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... ne'er be done." He raised a mighty rudder oar, mickle and broad, and struck at Hagen (full wroth he grew at this), so that he fell upon his knees in the boat. The lord of Troneg had never met so fierce a ferryman. Still more the boatman would vex the haughty stranger. He smote with an oar, so that it quite to-broke (11) over Hagen's ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... differently. With that superstition peculiar to Italians, they blamed the strange passenger for all the mishaps which had befallen the vessel since the "Shaven Redhead," as they called him, had come on board the vessel. On the first night a sudden storm carried away the rudder, on the second day one of the planks near the helm split, and the storm kept on increasing, finally reaching such a height that even Gennaro, the veteran sailor, could not remember to have ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... stood with arms folded, balancing himself to the sway of the rather clumsy craft and watching the water ahead. In the stern, on a little platform whence he could look over the heads of the others and catch any signal from the lookout, a squat, dark-faced steersman lounged against his crude rudder. Between these two the paddlers stood, each with one foot on the bottom of the long dugout and the other on the gunwale, swinging in nonchalant unison as their blades moved fore and aft. Under the curving roof of a rough-and-ready cabin, ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... to Valparaiso, was struck by a tornado off the coast of Peru. The storm, which rose with frightful suddenness, was of short duration, but it left the Castor a helpless wreck. Her masts had snapped off and gone overboard, her rudder-post had been shattered by falling wreckage, and she was rolling in the trough of the sea, with her floating masts and spars thumping and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... which I believed would be most acceptable to them. But when a day of heavy and insupportable calamity came upon me, and I was made to look after the foundations of what I had been believing, I found there were none. I was like a ship tossed about by the storms, without rudder or pilot. I then knew not whether there were gods or not; or if there were any, who, among the multiplicity worshipped in Rome, the true ones were. In my grief, I railed at the heavens and their rulers, for not revealing themselves to us in our darkness and weakness; and cursed them for their ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... framer should needs be a natural philosopher, and hold the rudiments of all science in her grasp. Botany, mineralogy, conchology should walk as handmaidens to philosophy; optics should steer the rudder of color's bark when launched upon the sea ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... happening to the birdmen who became temporarily lost in a raid. He eyed the two nearing scout planes with no little aversion. Not only was his machine going at less speed, despite his efforts, but the difficulty in steering was greater. Apparently if would only obey the rudder slowly, no matter how hard he tried to "get a move on her." As for wheeling, volplaning, spiraling or doing anything that occasioned quick action on his part with rudder or planes, ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... struck out, all the rest would be ineffectual. In a great machine all its parts are equally necessary, and a defect in a cog on a wheel would be as fatal as a flaw in the cylinder or a crack in the mighty shaft. What would become of a ship if the pintle that the rudder works on were away? The effect of a whole orchestra may depend on the coming in of the flute at the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... home, comes over their minds. Ceyx thinks of Halcyone. No name but hers is on his lips, and while he yearns for her, he yet rejoices in her absence. Presently the mast is shattered by a stroke of lightning, the rudder broken, and the triumphant surge curling over looks down upon, the wreck, then falls, and crushes it to fragments. Some of the seamen, stunned by the stroke, sink, and rise no more; others cling to fragments of the wreck. Ceyx, with the hand that used to grasp the sceptre, holds fast ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... drifted into a quarterless five, and still driving before a tempest of wind and rain, I ordered the axe to be laid to the mast, and soon after they were over the side: the ship struck violently several times, and the rudder was torn away with a tremendous crash. About four in the morning the strength of the gale abated, and her shocks were less violent. Every officer and man in the ship were now employed erecting jury-masts, hoping that by lightening her we should be able ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... me. What you see is all on the surface. If I ever had any power of decision or action it has gone. I am the victim, and not the master of my destiny. I am drifting along like a derelict, with no compass to guide, rudder to steer or ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... it won't do to remain here all night. Cass," addressing the man in the boat who was seated low in the stern, only occasionally taking a sly peep, and immediately withdrawing his head, "place your cap on the rudder, and lie flat in the bottom. If they are there, and mean to fire at all, they will ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... as though the end had come, for a particularly well-aimed shell came hurtling into the Covadonga, close to her rudder-post, almost entirely destroying the rudder, and smashing one of the blades clean off the propeller. As a consequence, her speed immediately dropped to about five knots, and Condell ground his teeth with ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... crew together, and set them about repairing the damages that had arisen, and preventing the further perils that stared them in the face; while the second mate at the same moment sprang to the wheel, which was revolving as it liked, now to starboard now to port as the waves met the rudder below, the poor helmsman who had previously controlled its action lying senseless on the deck, whither he had been thrown by the sudden concussion when the ship was ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... familiar to Governor King, inasmuch as he had taken a part in the 1803 attempt to colonise Port Philip, as follows: One of the officers, Lieutenant Bowen, on his way across Bass's Straits in a small boat, had the misfortune to carry away his rudder, and when in danger was rescued by Delano. Bowen, anxious to deliver some despatches, hired the Pilgrim's tender from Delano to carry them, omitting to make a bargain beforehand; and for this paltry service the American charged L400! The British ...
— The Americans In The South Seas - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Unshipping the rudder and laying one oar astern, Scudamore fetched along the inner row of piles, for he durst not pass under the drawbridge, steering his boat to an inch while he sat with his face to the oar, working ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... me! Work! I am no better than a tramp. The thing I thought to cure myself with was laziness, idleness. Here I sit in a land discovered and conquered as a result of the tremendous will power of the Europeans, with my oars gone, my rudder gone and my last bit of free will. It is this that distinguishes most men of to-day from ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... hath been proved that God is goodness itself." "I remember it very well," quoth I. "Then He disposeth all things by goodness: since He governeth all things by Himself, whom we have granted to be goodness. And this is as it were the helm and rudder by which the frame of the world is kept steadfast and uncorrupted." "I most willingly agree," quoth I, "and I foresaw a little before, though only with a slender guess, that thou wouldst conclude this." "I believe thee," quoth she, "for now I suppose thou lookest more watchfully about thee to ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... great aid in any case—I have never thought it more. A doctor is only a pilot; he steers a ship sometimes past dangerous places on which it would founder otherwise, but he never pretends, unless he is a charlatan, to upheave shoals and rocks, or to control tempests. He can only mind his rudder and shift his sails; the rest is with Providence. Now, suppose the captain of this ship is calm and firm, and coincides with the pilot's efforts, instead of counteracting and embarrassing them. Don't you see the advantage ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... divest himself of uneasiness; for when her stern fell into the sea, it struck with so much violence as to be more like the resistance of a rock than the sea. The water, at the same time, often rushed with great force up the rudder-case, and, forcing up the valve of the water-closet, the floor of his cabin was at times laid under water. The gale continued to increase, and the vessel rolled and pitched in such a manner that the hawser by which the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pain which I knew I must inflict, but because I valued his welfare more than my own feelings, I was constrained to be faithful to him. I told him that he was drifting where he ought steer, that instead of holding the helm and rudder of his young life, he was floating down the stream, and unless he stood firmly on the side of temperance, that I never would clasp hands will ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die. They make my might their porter, they make my house their path, Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... my hands along the wall," explained Frank, still in a whisper. "That will bring us to the opening—the smallest possible that would allow the boat to pass into the stream. Then the current will carry us down. I have a rudder, that will hold us in the shadow of the left bank through all the turns. It is a chance—the only one we had. If all goes well, we shall drift down below the city ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... continued my journey, and a man rose up immediately in front of me on the road, and he cried for mercy; he was afraid of me. When the night fell I walked into the village of Nekau, and I crossed the river in an usekht boat without a rudder, by the help of the wind from the west. And I travelled eastwards of the district of Aku, by the pass of the goddess Herit, the Lady of the Red Mountain. Then I allowed my feet to take the road downstream, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... denies at least the exercise of them; he denies his omniscience, which is the eye of Providence; mercy and justice, which are the arms of it; power, which is its life and motion; wisdom, which is the rudder whereby Providence is steered; and holiness, which is the compass and rule of each motion." This argument for a Providence might be made much more impressive, did our limits allow us to expand it, ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... world without. And remember that there should be a central heat which keeps the temperature substantially the same, whatever be the weather outside. As the wheel-house, and the steering gear, and the rudder of the ship proclaim their purpose of guidance and direction, so eloquently and unmistakably does the make of our inward selves tell us that emotions and moods and tempers are meant to be governed, often to be crushed, always to be moderated, by sovereign will and reason. In the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre.... His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin good-humored and round, but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing—like what he has done." And Dorothy Wordsworth (to close with a contemporary and sympathetic impression) set him down in her journal after their first meeting at Racedown thus: "He is a wonderful man. His conversation ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Mr. Reasono, that the 'arth makes its circuit, as much owing to this said steam of yours shoving, as it were, always a little on one side, acting thereby in some fashion as a rudder, which causes her to keep waring as we seamen call it, and as big crafts take more room than small ones in waring, why, she is compelled to run so many millions of miles, before, as it were, she comes up to the wind ag'in? ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... great King's fortunes, and his death in a dishonoured old age, the ambition of his heir, the proudest hope of both dynasty and nation, had overleapt itself, and the Black Prince had preceded his father to the tomb. The good ship England (so sang a contemporary poet) was left without rudder or helm; and in a kingdom full of faction and discontent the future of the Plantagenet throne depended on a child. While the young king's ambitious uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (Chaucer's patron), was ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... seemed to have been accomplished. Bud said he could fix the rudder of the model so that when once it was in the air, it would continue to make revolutions for a certain time. He declared it would actually fly around the field slowly until the measured stock of gasoline had been ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... first secured the tiller a-lee. As he was returning with his hat, the boat got way on her, and sailed some distance before she came up in the wind. He had almost reached her when she filled again, and he was thus baffled three or four times. At length, by a desperate effort, he caught the rudder, but he was so much exhausted that it was a considerable time before he had strength to get ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... hurled another mighty rock, which almost lighted on the rudder's end, yet missed it as if by a hair's breadth. So Ulysses and his comrades escaped and came to the island of the wild goats, where they found their comrades, who indeed had waited long for them, in sore fear lest they had perished. Then Ulysses divided among his company all the sheep which ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... growing speed reduction. The sensitiveness of the elevating rudder warned Dave that he must maintain a perfect balance until they could strike a steady path of flight. Hiram's rapt gaze followed every skillful maneuver of the ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood |
