Quotes About Seafaring

You could have been shanghaied down at the docks.

While calling at American ports was dangerous, their wharves trawled by bounty hunters, whalers were bound for the Indian and Pacific Oceans, where there were no slave masters' agents, and where desertion to the wider world was an option. So men like Johnson encouraged fugitive slaves to seek berths on the whalers of Fairhaven and New Bedford and were actively assisted by the antislavery Quaker shipowners, who had quickly established a tradition of employing black runaways as crew.

He strides ahead of many of the other merchant princes. Inborn know-how they call it, but more likely it's lightning in the blood from the old sea-roving days when Norsemen set out in longboats to plunder whatever took their fancy. Anyway, men were born to be aggressive and I say hail to the male who isn't afraid to be one.

Venerable training ships displayed their chequered hulls by the wooded shore, and whispered of the days of oak and hemp, when the tall three-decker, comely and majestic, with her soaring heights of canvas, like towers of ivory, had not yet given place to the mud-coloured saucepans that fly the white ensign now-a-days and devour the substance of the British taxpayer: when a sailor was a sailor and not a mere seafaring mechanic.

John B. Hattendorf

The boat—no, it was a ship, as one of the crew had explained, since it had a solid superstructure and was stabilized by ballast,

How do you break into a ship?" "The same way you do a house, only wetter.

creating a new kingdom called Dal Riata – a maritime empire

Hastein's wife and sons were

the ability to appear on the horizon without warning, rather than having to tack around the coast.

I'm fond of anything that comes from the sea, and that includes sailors.

He was, like so many of the men made large by history, rather mediocre in the flesh, the fine tailoring highlighting rather than hiding his physical shortcomings. […] A man made more for grand dinners than seafaring.

flying boat was skirting

And the tale of the Flying Dutchman is thought to be the story of a yellow-fever-infected ship repeatedly denied port until all on board perished of the fever, and the ship was forced to sail endlessly, manned by a ghost crew, delivering detriment to other seafaring vessels.

Sir John thought it best not to mention that the crew of the Antelope hadn't been paid for eighteen months either.

he would have to go due south instead, around the outside of Majorca and Ibiza – pirate waters,

The bateaux canonniers were more seaworthy, but could not traverse their guns.

Several small boats were drawn up on the strand, their crews engaged in the mysterious occupations of mariners on land.

Then they will lament for you, saying, “How you have perished, O city of renown inhabited by seafaring men—she who was powerful on the sea, along with her people, who imposed terror on all peoples!