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More "Steerage" Quotes from Famous Books



... sleep as they rested on the long swell that bore them along, and everything in sea and sky bespoke the calm. No sailor trod the deck; no watch was stirring; the very tiller ropes were deserted; and as they traversed backwards and forwards with every roll of the vessel, told that we had no steerage-way, and lay a ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... drawn to the idea because of a face she could see down in the steerage: face of an immigrant girl who was also turning eager face, not to the land for which her forefathers had fought, but to that which would be the land ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... miss father, anyway—and just see all we have accomplished by my coming here to you! Mother writes that she had a telegram from father late Saturday night, saying the steamer was detained at quarantine on account of some suspects in the steerage who seemed to have symptoms of yellow fever. He is not sure when they will get off, but he will wire mother ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... number of sailors, stewards, stewardesses, workers in the kitchen, and so on, besides two cabin-boys and a nurse. There was also an officer in charge of the mail on board. The vessel was carrying only a hundred cabin passengers from Bremen; but in the steerage there were four hundred ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... came up, he found that the wind had quite died away, and the sails hung loosely from the yards. Looking astern, he saw two vessels. They were some six miles away, and perhaps two miles apart. As they lay without steerage way, they had swung partly round, and he saw that they were a brig and a schooner. The former he had no doubt, from her lofty masts and general appearance, was the same the Madras had passed six days ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... crossing the sea in the cabin of a British vessel. The insult was keenly felt by my white friends, but to me, it was common, expected, and therefore, a thing of no great consequence, whether I went in the cabin or in the steerage. Moreover, I felt that if I could not go into the first cabin, first-cabin passengers could come into the second cabin, and the result justified my anticipations to the fullest extent. Indeed, I soon found myself an object of more general interest than I wished ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... man. You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... from the day that we made up our mind to try what luck there was in store for us in Australia, we were on board of a clipper ship, and with some two dozen other steerage passengers (for Fred and myself were determined to be economical) we were passing through the Golden Gate on our way to a strange land, where we did not possess a friend or acquaintance that ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... practised new dance-steps with the first officer when he wanted to sleep; she caused him to lift his unwilling eyes a dozen times an hour by her endless circuits of the deck. She was on terms of friendship with everybody on board except himself, including the second class and steerage. There seemed no end to her activities, no limit to her enthusiasm. The more she attracted his unwilling attention, the more ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... they were subjected to the indignity of returning home on a nine- day boat and in the captain's cabin. It made their blue blood boil; and the thought that their emigrant ancestors had come over in the steerage did ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... men and women," said she: "such people should be steerage passengers. Are you going ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... Thorne, who was one of this party, was very much interested in the billows, and in the attentions of a student who sat opposite her. From time to time she remarked also on some of the steerage passengers on the deck below; particularly was she interested in a young girl who sat watching the threatening swells emerge from the mist. Miss Sylvia spoke to the young lady alongside of her about that interesting young girl in the steerage, but her companion said she had so much trouble ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... battle was not only long, but also near at hand—within half a musket-shot—and that to the great advantage of the Englishmen, who, with their ships being, as was aforesaid, excellent of sail and of steerage, yet less a great deal than the Spanish ships, and therefore more light and nimble, fought not according to their manner otherwise, to board them, but keeping themselves aloof at a reasonable distance, continually beat upon the hull and tackling of the enemy's ships, which, being a good deal ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... of obeying, when Cato, the cook, was seen rising through the steerage-hatch, dragging after him the dark poll of another black, whom he had gripped by the wool. In an instant both were on deck, when, to my astonishment, I discovered the agitated countenance of Nebuchadnezzar Clawbonny. Of course the secret was out, the instant the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... steamer was under way an old woman came across her in the steerage, and exclaimed, "Why, child, where are your father ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... train of freight and cattle cars rudely fitted up, a part of them at least, with rough pine boards for seats. The men of the Twenty-Third Regiment having, up to this period of their existence, missed somehow the disciplining advantages of "traveling in the steerage," or as emigrants or cattle, cannot be expected to appreciate at sight the luxury of the style of conveyance to which they are thus suddenly introduced. But we tumble aboard and dispose ourselves for a miserable night. A few of us are glum, and revolve horrible thoughts; ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... had lost heavily by him, her mother gave us 500 pounds to make a start in South Australia. An 80-acre section was built for 80 pounds, and this entitled us to the steerage passage of four adults. This helped for my elder sister and two brothers (my younger brother David was left for his education with his aunts in Scotland), but we had to have another female, so we took with us a servant girl—most ridiculous, it seems now. I was under the statutory ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... and fifteen guineas in English money, which he had saved from his slender earnings by the absolute denial to himself of every thing not essential to his existence. The way to America was now open, and he resolved to set out at once. For five guineas he bought a steerage passage in a ship bound for Baltimore, and reserving about five pounds sterling of the remainder of his capital in money, invested the rest in seven German flutes, which he bought of his brother, and embarked ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... first, the creaking of a block, then a faint wash of sea; and out of the white depths of the fog came the bulky hull of a full-rigged ship. Her sails were set, but she made scarcely steerage way. Her rusty sides and general look bespoke a long voyage just concluding; and we found on hailing her that she was the British ship Marathon, from Calcutta for San Francisco. We boarded the Marathon, though almost ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... matter of fact, there was nothing for him to do. The ship had no steerage way. She lay with her head to the westward, the everlasting Koh-ring visible over the stern, with a few small islets, black spots in the great blaze, swimming before my troubled eyes. And but for ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... England for our own blessed country, no matter what the cost or inconvenience. Why, within a month this whole continent will be involved in war. There are people now besieging the booking offices by the hundreds who would be glad and thankful to find room in the steerage. If we had not started when we did, we ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... By steerage he made his way to America ... to Chicago ... all his works of art, his priceless manuscripts sold ... the money gone like water through the assiduities of false ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... her himself to Los Angeles. But there had not been money enough for him to go any farther, and his chief had wired him peremptorily to return and arrest the leaders of the Alliance and all connected with it. So he had bought a steerage ticket for Helen May and put her aboard the boat, where she must herd with a lot of leering Chinamen. He had stood on the pier and watched the boat swing out and nose its way to the open sea, and a submarine had torpedoed it when it had sailed beyond the three-mile ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... to his latest day, When Death, just hovering, claimed his prey, With Palinure's unaltered mood, Firm at his dangerous post he stood; Each call for needful rest repelled, With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall, with fateful sway, The steerage of the realm gave way! Then, while on Britain's thousand plains One unpolluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around The bloody tocsin's maddening sound, But still, upon the hallowed day, Convoke the swains to praise ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... Saronia slipped smoothly away from a Liverpool dock. Twenty-five hundred Americans—about twice the number the boat could comfortably carry—stood on her decks and cheered. Some of those in that crowd who had millions of money were booked for the steerage. All of them were destined to experience during that crossing hunger, annoyance, discomfort. They were to be stepped on, sat on, crowded and jostled. They suspected as much when the boat left ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers

... time Perk noticed two separate things that had a bearing on their mission—the first was that for some reason they no longer romped along at their earlier speed, showing that the pilot had seen fit to slacken his craft to a considerable degree, though keeping up steerage way. The second thing that struck Perk was the fact that they were slowly but surely making a decided swing off to the west, which if continued would make their immediate course ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... a common seaman. His dress and manner, too, militated fatally against any such proposal as the latter; and yet he was reduced to making it; for even if he could have contemplated the being set down in America totally without money, he had not enough left now for a steerage passage and the poorest provisions ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... away, in thunder and lightning went the ball, which, entering the cabin windows, shattered the two young friends: thence raging through the bulk-heads and steerage, it shivered three sailors on the main deck, and, after all, bursting through the forecastle into the sea, sunk with ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... quartermaster would bring us back to reality and the ship; overboard would go our magical cheroot, over the side our imaginative self, and having duly reported the important fact of our return on board, down we would dive through the steerage hatch, to conjure up again in dreams the dear face we saw in ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... Silverado reckoning, and after we were all abed, Mrs. Hanson returned to give us the newest of her news. It was like a scene in a ship's steerage: all of us abed in our different tiers, the single candle struggling with the darkness, and this plump, handsome woman, seated on an upturned valise beside the bunks, talking and showing her fine teeth, and laughing till the rafters rang. Any ship, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... others that they all ran off laughing, till they met a stout, dignified "yellow man," holding the store-room keys, and wearing a cleaner jacket than the others. He was the steward, and, being cross, scolded the children roundly for getting in his way. In the lower cabin were the steerage passengers. These had no saloon with tables arranged for their accommodation. They ate plain bean soup from tin mugs, and hard ship biscuit from their hands, and their table was a long board, let down from above by ropes. They ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels

... fine ship, of about a thousand tons, with a poop-deck, beneath which were the cabins for the first-class passengers. Below their cabins were those for the second-class passengers, while the between-decks was devoted to the use of the steerage passengers. Thus there were three ranks of people on board; indeed, including the officers and crow, the good ship presented a little world of itself. Old Captain Westerway was the sovereign—a mild despot, however; but if he was mild, his first ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... the immigration to these shores arises from the determined opposition of the foreign steamship lines who have no interest whatever in the matter save to increase the returns on their capital by carrying masses of immigrants hither in the steerage ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... hampers and sea-chairs, and were composed largely of ladies of various ages, a little pale with anticipation, wrapped also in striped shawls, though in prettier ones than the nursing mothers of the steerage, and crowned with very high hats and feathers. They darted to and fro across the gangway, looking for each other and for their scattered parcels; they separated and reunited, they exclaimed and declared, they eyed with dismay the occupants of ...
— Pandora • Henry James

... door that is open for a moment only, and find ourselves in an apartment about fifteen feet square. We can touch the ceiling on tiptoe, yet there are three tiers of bunks placed with head boards to the wall, and each bunk just broad enough for two occupants. It is like the steerage in an emigrant vessel, eminently shipshape. Every bunk is filled; some of the smokers have had their dream and lie in grotesque attitudes, insensible, ashen-pale, having the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... the boat was buzzing merrily along at a speed of between six and seven knots; but after that the wind began to soften rapidly away again, until at length, when the sun swept into view above the eastern horizon, we scarcely had steerage way, and half an hour later it fell a flat calm. We accordingly lowered the sail, and, this done, I directed Simpson, the sailmaker—who was the lightest of us, and therefore the least likely to capsize the boat—to shin ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... of sailor's clothes that Dan had bought for him. Vincent had given him full instructions as to the course he was to pursue. The ship was bound for Liverpool; on his arrival there he was at once to go round the docks and take a passage in the steerage of the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... to fetch his revolver that time, once in the twenty-four hours, returned to his cabin to have a bit of sleep, leaving me on the watch; the second officer and boatswain, who acted also as third mate, having also turned in for a caulk and gone down into the steerage. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... it everywhere in our surroundings? If we lean over the railing and watch the steerage in the crowded ship, is there really less gayety among the fourth-class passengers than among the first-class? Where are the gifts of life which bring happiness to every one? I have friends to whom a cigar, a cocktail, ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... there was now no alternative; but he was doing it on a system which, as he explained it to Roswell, was not only to leave him materials with which to construct a smaller craft in the spring, but which would allow of his inhabiting the steerage and cabin as ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... was dark enough, Captain Penman let his vessel drift landward with the tide, then running strong into the wide swallow of the Solway. The wind was light, and a jib was sufficient to give her steerage-way. It was intended that the passengers should be set on shore at a point nearly opposite to Julian Wemyss's house, where a spit of sand and the shoulder of cliff formed a neat little anchorage. The sailors of the Good Intent, accustomed to the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... of the Phoenician pelted over the Nausicaae like hail. Rowers fell as they sat on the upper benches; on the poop the proreus lay with half his men. Glaucon never counted how many missiles dinted his helmet and buckler. The next instant the two ships were drifting without steerage-way. The grappling-irons dashed down upon the Athenian, and simultaneously the brown Phoenician boarders were scrambling like ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... Philadelphia, and with some friendly assistance, sailed, in 1850, from New York, as a steerage passenger for San Francisco. Arriving at Aspinwall, the point of debarkation, on the Atlantic side, boats and boatsmen were engaged to transport passengers and baggage up the "Chagress," a small and shallow river. Crossing the Isthmus to Panama, on the Pacific side, I found Panama very cosmopolitan ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... stone building. Its large patios were literally packed with peon prisoners. The life within was an almost exact replica of that on the streets of the capital, even to hawkers of sweets, fruit-vendors, and the rest, while up from them rose a decaying stench as from the steerage quarters of old transatlantic liners. Those who choose, work at their trade within as outside. By night the prisoners are herded together in hundreds from six to six in the wretched old dungeon-like rooms. Nothing ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... by Martin Flemming and three chiefs, were soon underway, and passing out through the narrow passage in the reef, went northward till they rounded the point, and saw the barque about five miles away. She had every stitch of canvas set, but was making little more than steerage way, for only the faintest air was ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... light for manoeuvring much, and the combatants swung to their broadsides, having taken the breath of the air away by the fury of their fire. All three were standing to the north-north-west, under easy sail, and on the starboard tack, but scarcely holding steerage-way, and taking little heed of it. Close quarters, closer and closer still, muzzle to muzzle, and beard to beard, clinched teeth, and hard pounding, were the order of the day, with the crash of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... the 1st of September in the same year, the first steam vessel entered the harbor, the "Walk-in-the-Water," commanded by Captain Fish, from Buffalo, putting in on its way to Detroit. It was 300 tons burthen, had accommodations for one hundred cabin and a greater number of steerage passengers, and was propelled at eight or ten miles an hour. Its arrival and departure were greeted with several rounds of artillery, and many ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... in successful use in England, but without any profit to me, and wholly out of my control. In the spring of 1849 I was indebted to a Scottish mechanic for a steerage passage, and I returned to the United States, poorer, if possible, than when I left. On my return I found my wife and children very destitute; all other personal effects, save what they had on, being still detained to secure payment for their passage home. My wife was ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... was released from Bilibid prison last summer and came through here last month. One of our operatives uncovered him on the boat—traveling as an ordinary steerage passenger. He went to Davao, and I fear it means trouble. I think he gathered that tough crew together to operate in Davao, thinking to test us out now that the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... soft marshy flats across the river, it would be next to impossible to get her off again. Apart from the valuable cargo, the loss during the busy carrying season would mean much. He must get the boat under steerage way, and ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... village of the Punjab two years ago," Fallows replied, "and there was a lad of sixteen there, wonderful in promise— a mind, a spirit. They could not raise in the village enough money to send him across the seas steerage for his education. A single rifle costs nearly three pounds. It is hard for us to ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... neighbourhood; and as the Elbe at high water is hereabouts much higher than the surrounding country, we were soon sucked into the current, and had only to keep our oars in the water, pulling a stroke now and then to give the boat steerage way. As we shot through the gap into the smooth water beyond, we once more gave way, the boat's head being kept in the direction of lights that we saw twinkling I in the distance, apparently in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... relish; the wonders of the sea furnished him with many instructive and pious thoughts; and the ship itself supplied him with an inexhaustible fund of interest. In particular, he paid frequent visits to the steerage, where large numbers of emigrants were bestowed. He spent many hours amongst these poor people; and, by entering into conversation with such of them as were disposed to talk, he became acquainted with many cases of necessity, which he was not slow to relieve. Nor did the gifts of money, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... till the afternoon of the next day, when a device occurred to some inventive mind, possibly that of Mistress Bradstreet herself, which was immediately carried out. "Our children and others that were sick and lay groaning in the cabins, we fetched out, and having stretched a rope from the steerage to the main mast, we made them stand, some of one side and some of the other, and sway it up and down till they were warm, and by this means they soon ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... of a steerage passage to Australia for a man and his wife. She spoke in low, hopeless tones. Moderate as the sum was, it looked like unattainable ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... the crew's quarters to the lowest sleeping deck of steerage. Here a few old people and some children, too discouraged, too indifferent, or too helpless, were clinging to their bunks. On the next deck he found a gathering in the open space surrounding a freight hatch. One whom he knew for ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... anchor, and to make across them past the Whittaker Beacon into the channel as soon as there was sufficient water to enable him to do so. The wind was light, sometimes scarcely sufficient to belly out the sails and give the boat steerage way, at others coming in short puffs which heeled her over and made ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... too literally. I may have to travel on foot or take a steerage passage, but I shall keep going all the same. I haven't made any definite plans yet. I shall probably strike for something in the diplomatic line,—secretary of legation, or some small consulship perhaps. But the principle is the main thing, and the principle ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... that Providence was responsible. When she rose to testify in prayer-meeting she always mentioned her "cross" and everybody knew that the cross was Luther. She carried him, but it is no more than fair to say that she didn't provide him with cushions. She never let him forget that he was a steerage passenger. However, Lute was well upholstered with philosophy, of a kind, and, so long as he didn't have to work his passage, was happy, even if the voyage was a ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... kept all below, except a few hardy gentlemen who crowded together on the lee of the smoke-stack, and kept up a stubborn cheerfulness on a very small capital of comfort. There were few cabin-passengers on board, but the usual crowd of emigrants in the steerage. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... that, when the explosion came, he looked round—considered, for fully a minute, his duty. He never lost control of himself once, he said, and I believe him. The Argentina was a small boat, making a winter passage. There were very few cabin passengers. No second cabin, but plenty of steerage. She sailed, you remember, from Naples. He had been doing some work, some very important work, in the Aquarium. The only other person of consequence—I am speaking in the most literal and un-snobbish sense—in the first cabin, was ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... it, but the bobbies caught him in the steerage of an ocean steamer, and then it was all ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.

... seeing many things in Belfast which I had hoped to see. It was with some gladness I saw the ship "Ontario" again. Having arrived before the other cabin passengers I took the opportunity of going over the steerage with Mr. Duffin, the excellent chief steward. The quarters for steerage passengers were on the same deck as the saloon, as lofty and as well ventilated. The berths were arranged in groups with an enclosed state room to each. Single men by themselves, families by themselves, single women by ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... her parents died. She was very unhappy and before her baby came—she was in Poland then,—she sent for Mrs. Talcott. Mrs. Talcott had been married, too, and had lost her husband and was very poor. But she left everything and crossed to Europe in the steerage—and what it must have been in those days!—imagine!—to join her unfortunate relative. My guardian has told me of it; she calls Mrs. Talcott: 'Un coeur d'or dans un corps de bois.' She stayed with Dolores Okraska until she died a little time after. She brought ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... naturalization laws that were more than liberal, agencies for the encouragement of settlers organized by individual States and by railroad corporations and other great landed proprietors, and the eager competition of steamship companies drumming for steerage passengers in all parts of Europe—all these cooeperated with the growing facility and cheapness of steam transportation to swell the current of migration. The discovery of gold in California quickened ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... the cockpit and stern store-rooms before the fires were lighted over their heads. Indeed, when the officer entrusted with this duty had completed his task, he found the after-hatches so filled with smoke from the fire in the ward-room and steerage, that he was obliged to escape to the deck ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... come over from Liverpool in this very ship on her last voyage, as a steerage passenger; but finding that he would have to work very hard to get along in America, and getting home-sick into the bargain, he had arranged with the captain to' work his ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... morning they boarded the "Washington," bound for New York, that was to loose anchor at the turn of the tide; and while Staunton, the detective, was making inquiries of the captain about the steerage passengers, Maurice's sharp eyes had caught sight of a young sailor with a patch over his eye, apparently busy with a coil of ropes, and he walked up to him carelessly; but as he loitered at his side a moment his ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... he had at the braces, he sprang upon the bulwarks, and, bidding everybody keep wide awake, ordered the helm up. In a few moments, we were running in. Being toward noon, the wind was fast leaving us, and, by the time the breakers were roaring on either hand, little more than steerage-way was left. But on we glided—smoothly and deftly; avoiding the green, darkling objects here and there strewn in our path; Jermin occasionally looking down in the water, and then about him, with the utmost calmness, and ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... charming picture! Miss Graham fits the part well. You can see that she's sorry for the dirty little beggars. They don't look as if they'd had a happy time; and a liner's crowded steerage isn't ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... last he found an ancient tar Who served with RODNEY and his crew Against the French in 'Eighty-two, (That gained the peerage). He gave him fifty pounds a year, His rum, his baccy, and his beer; And had a comfortable den Rigged up in what, by merchantmen, Is called the steerage. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... in my desire for a passage to the West Indies; instead of which people laughed while I spoke in panting jerks, and the water dripped out of my clothes. After I had made it clear that I wanted to go with Carlos, and could pay for my passage, I was handed down into the steerage, where a tallow candle burnt in a thick, blue atmosphere. I was stripped and filled with some fiery liquid, and fell asleep. Old Rangsley was sent ashore with ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... at the guns, were mustered on poop and forecastle, and some were sent aloft to the tops to assist the tars there to sweep the British decks with handgrenade and musket. And, lastly, the surgeon and his mates went below to cockpit and steerage, to make ready for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the 28th, we passed the lofty headland of the Mull of Galloway and entered the Irish Sea. Here there was an occurrence of an impressive nature. A woman, belonging to the steerage, who had been ill the whole passage, died the morning before. She appeared to be of a very avaricious disposition, though this might indeed have been the result of self-denial, practised through filial affection. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... Land. At nine in the evening, the wind blew hard at S. E. by E., accompanied by a hollow, irregular sea, which put our enterprising discoverer and his boat's crew into the greatest danger; but the good qualities of his little bark, with careful steerage, carried him through this perilous night. On the 3rd, at six o'clock the land was seen; and in the afternoon, whilst standing in to look for a place of shelter, a smoke and several people were observed upon a small island not far from the main coast. On rowing up, they proved ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... among the steerage, passengers and listened to the story of the lost man who, it seems, had been one of those unfortunate ones who had failed to pass the health inspector at New York and had therefore been sent back to his native land, Ireland. He was known as ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... had heard the captain say that he expected to be in the Gulf Stream by twelve o'clock. In a few minutes eight bells were struck, the watch called, and we went below. I now began to feel the first discomforts of a sailor's life. The steerage in which I lived was filled with coils of rigging, spare sails, old junk and ship stores, which had not been stowed away. Moreover, there had been no berths built for us to sleep in, and we were not allowed to drive nails to hang our clothes upon. The sea, too, had risen, the vessel was rolling ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... money and buys herself a steerage ticket and comes over here with the baby. That, as near as I can figure out, is about three months ago. She's not seen this husband of hers for going on three years—of course the baby's never seen him. And ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... deducted, nearly twenty pounds. This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself for want of money to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail from the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... of the Souls (Waini-yalo) is what mortals now call the Ndravo River. When the ghosts arrived on the bank, they hailed the ferryman and he paddled his canoe over to receive them. But before he would take them on board they had to state whether they proposed to ship as steerage or as cabin passengers, and he gave them their berths accordingly; for there was no mixing up of the classes in the ferry-boat; the ghosts of chiefs kept strictly to themselves at one end of the canoe, and the ghosts of commoners huddled together at the other end.[774] The natives ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... Howe a little money while he worked on another model. This enabled Howe to send his family home to America, and then, by selling his last model and pawning his patent rights, he raised enough money to take passage himself in the steerage in 1848, accompanied by Inglis, who came to try his ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... Euterpe, Captain Riding, belonging to the Transatlantic Clipper Line of Messrs. Judkins & Cooke, left the Mersey yesterday afternoon, bound for New York. She took out the usual complement of steerage passengers. The first officer's cabin is occupied by Professor Titus Peebles, M.R.C.S., M.R.G.S., lately instructor in metallurgy at the University of Edinburgh, and Mr. William Beauvoir. Professor Peebles, we are informed, has an important ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various

... that was no reason she should blame me for it, and look on me as a cold deck; but she did—ay, she did. Why didn't she give me a show? Why didn't the world? Why did I go broke in Seattle? Why did I take the steerage, and live like a hog to Nome? Why did I go to the El Dorado? I was heading for Big Pete's and only went for matches. Why didn't I have matches? Why did I want to smoke? Don't you see? All worked out, every bit of it, all parts fitting snug. Before I was born, like as not. I'll put the sack ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... Yet there are generally many interchanges of courtesy, as between upper, middle, and lower classes; and different messes will sometimes banquet one another. The "cuddy" will, perhaps, get up amateur theatricals or charades, to which spectacle the whole vessel will be invited; while the "steerage" will return the compliment with a concert, more or ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... are all that way. That last importation of Basques brought it probably from the steerage of the ship. I'm told they've had several cases over in ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... precisely what she did," Salemina replied, with a pale smile. "However, she was so ill in the steerage that she had to pay twenty-five or thirty dollars extra to go into the second cabin, and this naturally reduced the amount of her savings, though it makes no difference since she left them all behind her, save a few dollars in her purse. She says she is usually perfectly well, but ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... avenue of the Main Building, in opposition to the trophy at the other end of the same avenue illustrating the history of the American flag. But he will look in vain for selected specimens of the emigrant-runner, the luxuries of the steerage and Castle Garden, or for photographs of the well-fed post-trader and Indian agent, agricultural products from Captain Jack's lava-bed reservation and jars of semi-putrescent treaty-beef. He will alight, next ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... gotten to be quite the fashion for somebody in the steerage to create this sort of sensation. It happened as I went over. If a man sees fit to jump overboard, all well and good; in nine cases out of ten it's a good riddance to the community. But why in Heaven's name should the ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice

... of them, and far more are innocent than are guilty of any acts of violence. Then it became dark soon after these craft were seen, and night shut them in. An hour after the sun had set, the wind fell to a light air, that just kept steerage-way on the ship. Fortunately, the John was not only fast, but she minded her helm, as a light-footed girl turns in a lively dance. I never was in a better-steering ship, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... them for having invented gunpowder. He laughs at Cope's inventions. He says his people set the fashion, and then wisely stopped when they found that such inventions did more harm than good. I think they have a right to complain of us. Why, there's one of our soldiers in the steerage with seventeen of their pigtails with the scalps still fastened to them as trophies! Old Chung says our ribbons and decorations are the equivalent of the scalps dangling at a savage's belt. I didn't tell him we had the genuine article. But, come, you had better ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... the wireless cabin, which was situated aft on the turn of the promenade deck, and commanding a not entirely inspiring view of the cargo well and the steerage. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... fame, unfortunately, are not proof against fate, and most of these notable personages perished as pitiably as the more humble steerage passengers. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... Cabin with Meals,'" said Fred. "Those meals aren't good enough for steerage passengers. Unless you ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield

... moment, Nelly, all in good time. 'Capt. Flint, of British Army; Achille Bureau, of Paris; T. Davis, of Charleston; Dr. Brackett, of St. Louis;' and, though last, not least in our estimation, W. Hazleworth, of Phil.; with seventy-nine in the steerage.' Of course, for W. Hazleworth, read H. Hazlehurst; they never spell a name right. We shall have them all here ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... view of an ocean-going steamer at close range and everything about it interested him. He wished he might have gone aboard and looked the vessel over. He would like to know about the engines and see the cabins, and especially the steerage about which he had read so much. But perhaps there would be an opportunity again. Surely there would be. He would go to Ellis Island, too, and see the emigrants as they came into the country, seeking a new home where they had been led to expect ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... have laid before your Majesty Would make for this, in sum:— That Mr. Fox, Lord Grenville, and their friends, Be straightway asked to join. With Melville gone, With Sidmouth, and with Buckinghamshire too, The steerage of affairs has stood of late Somewhat provisional, as you, sir, know, With stop-gap functions thrust on offices Which common weal can tolerate but awhile. So, for the weighty reasons I have urged, I do repeat my most respectful hope To win your Majesty's ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... countryman that you will not breathe a word of this, whatever you hear. Beenah and I have sold a few little trinkets which our children gave us, and we have reckoned that with six pounds more we shall be able to take steerage passages and just exist till ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... poor emigrants on board the merchant ship, in which Friend Hopper returned home. He soon established friendly communication with them, and entered with sympathy into all their troubles. He made frequent visits to the steerage during the long voyage, and always had something comforting and cheering to say to the poor souls. There was a clergyman on board, who also wished to benefit them, but he approached them in an official way, to which they did not so readily ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... to the N. a stiff gale, with fair weather. In the afternoon less wind, and our people began to grow well again. Our children and others, that were sick and lay groaning in the cabins, we fetched out, and having stretched a rope from the steerage to the main-mast, we made them stand, some of one side and some of the other, and sway it up and down till they were warm, and by this means they soon grew ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... years' chapter of Alwyn Hill's romance wound itself up under his eyes. That the poor young woman in the steerage had been the young Duchess of Hamptonshire was never publicly disclosed. Hill had no longer any reason for remaining in England, and soon after left its shores with no intention to return. Previous to his departure he confided his story to an old friend from his native town—grandfather ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... and Joe told his story. After leaving college, from New York he had gone to Kansas City, and by the "livest paper" there he had been sent abroad with a bike to do a series of "Sunday specials." He had come over steerage and written an expose of his passage. He had two weeks for Paris and then was off ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... these poor people, dear Harriet, in this little hive of English industry and energy in the far west, the fertile wildernesses of Indiana! How often I thought of the fears and misgivings of these poor women in the steerage, when our progress was delayed by tempestuous, contrary winds, when the heavy seas leaped over our laboring vessel's sides, and when, during a violent thunderstorm, our masts were tipped with lambent fire, which played round them like a halo ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... not unfavourable, though she could not lie within five points of her course. The captain took the helm as often as possible, trusting no one but himself to prevent her from dropping to leeward, the effect of the rudder being influenced by the steerage-way. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... rested upon the waters. Canvas was spread on all the ships, but flapped idly against the yards. Not the slightest motion could be discerned, and none of the ships had steerage-way. The enemy had evidently determined to fight; for before the sun rose red and glowing from beneath the horizon, sweeps were seen protruding from the sides of the two ships, and they gradually began to ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... had not, and for nearly an hour he remained in conversation with the executive, during which he learned the exact state of affairs about decks. Every thing appeared to be going on smoothly, and Frank had no desire to show his authority by issuing unnecessary orders. One by one the wardroom and steerage officers came in to congratulate the young commander, and when bed-time came they returned to their quarters, saying among themselves that "Captain Nelson didn't feel any bigger in his new position than he would if he were nothing but a Johnny ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon

... sake! Our thrust shaft has cracked!" The words came faintly. "Our Captain was washed from the bridge. . . . Tried to put out sea anchor, but couldn't make it hold without steerage way. . . . It broke adrift. . . . This . . . the Veiled Ladye, with Mr. Horace Howland and a ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... steersman in intense enjoyment—a bright sun and glittering blue sea; and we tore along, pitching and tossing the water up like mad. It was glorious. At night, I was calmly reposing in my cot, in the middle of the steerage, just behind the main hatchway, when I heard a crashing of rigging and a violent noise and confusion on deck. The captain screamed out orders which informed me that we were in the thick of a collision— of course I lay still, and waited ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... knows what mischief might have been prevented? I could at least—whatever the consequences—have called a warning to Captain Coffin to give his enemy a wide-berth. But I was unnerved; the impulse came too late; and as the foresail filled and she picked up steerage way, I stood helpless under the lamp at the quay-head—stood and stared after her, alone with the sense of my ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... true, but still insisted, that Seven was an Odd Number; suggesting at the same time that if he were provided with a sufficient Stock of leading Papers, he should find Friends ready enough to carry on the Work. Having by this means got his Vessel launched and set afloat, he hath committed the Steerage of it, from time to time, to such as he thought capable ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... dozen men stood on the boat deck with guns and revolvers, facing several hundred sullen, determined men and women from the steerage. Night had not yet fallen; the shadow of the hills, however, was reaching half way across the oval pool; gloom impenetrable had settled ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... pair of trousers only, when at work, and a handkerchief twisted round the head, to which in the evening they would add a thin cotton jacket. Four of the elder men were "jurumudis," or steersmen, who had to squat (two at a time) in the little steerage before described, changing every six hours. Then there was an old man, the "juragan," or captain, but who was really what we should call the first mate; he occupied the other half of the little house on deck. There were about ten respectable ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... cars, and a canal packet drawn by three prancing horses, to bring him to some place beyond Albany. He gets a steam-boat ticket to Albany. Here his great ticket, with the pictures, is protested; he has to pay once more, and instead of railroad cars and a packet-boat, he is thrust into the steerage or hold of a line boat, which amongst other conveniences is furnished with false scales for weighing ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... myself with chronicling the fact that during the voyage we passed two dolphins, one whale and one iceberg (none of them moving very fast at the time), and that on the fourth day out the sea was so rough that the Captain said that in forty years he had never seen such weather. One of the steerage passengers, we were told, was actually washed overboard: I think it was over board that he was washed, but it may have been on ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... he, biting hard on the little black pipe, "we just go by the power o' man," and with the words a sharp turn of the wheel lurches us out from the lee of a batture. The jolt jerks up its passengers in the semidetached steerage. A growling of huskies, a kick, and a muttered adjuration in Cree, and all is ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... the crew was on allowance. Our captain, who is a gentleman, furnished them with flour, tea, sugar, porter, cold tongue, ham, eggs, etc., etc. The men remained about half an hour on board, and as they were remanning their boat we saw a whole cargo of eatables carried to it from our steerage passengers. You know that these are always poor people, who are often barely supplied themselves with necessaries for their voyage. The poor are almost invariably kind and compassionate to one another, and Gaffer Gray is ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... next night that Lethway kissed her. He had left her alone most of the day, and by sheer gravitation of loneliness she and the boy drifted together. All day long they ranged the ship, watched a boxing match in the steerage, fed bread to the hovering gulls from the stern. They told each other many things. There had been a man in the company who had wanted to marry her, but she intended to have a career. Anyhow, she would not marry unless she loved a person ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... sorts of carved work and imagery" on that part of the vessel where the cabins were; and in the cabins themselves he observed "some superfluity of workmanship of several sorts." This subjected his mind to "a deep exercise," and he decided that he would have to take passage in the steerage instead of the cabin. Having our self made use of the steerage aforetime, both in the Mauretania and humbler vessels, we feel a certain kindred sympathy for his experiences. We have always enjoyed his remark: "The wind now blew ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... quantity of coals which any of them will require to carry, will be (Fayal to Barbadoes, and Fayal to Pernambuco) 300 tons. Airy accommodation for from fifty to sixty cabin passengers, and twenty-five to thirty steerage ditto, with the crew, will be all that is requisite, leaving a room for specie and the mails, and space for from forty to one hundred tons of goods. Since the present calculation was made, the price of machinery has risen considerably. Boats of the size necessary ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen

... rest, they would strike out for Havre or Boulogne, and take passage across on the first boat that could give them any sort of accommodations; for in the rush of American tourists to get home people were even willing to sleep in the steerage in order to quit the inhospitable shores of Europe ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... soon as he had made up his mind what to do, he wired to find out if there were still a berth to be had on board the New York bound ship sailing from Cherbourg next day. Even if he had been forced to travel in the steerage he would have gone, though he keenly disliked physical hardships; but he was fortunate, and obtained a good cabin for himself. As soon as this matter was arranged he left for Cherbourg; and next day, on board his ship, gazing across the tumbled gray ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... fine, that every body remained on deck; but on the wind shifting and becoming more violent, the landsmen soon retired below decks, and poor Moriarty and his English companion slunk down into the steerage, submitting to their fate. Ormond was never sea-sick; he walked the deck, and enjoyed the admirable manoeuvring of the vessel. Two or three naval officers, and some other passengers, who were used to the sea, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... that you are astute; another friend, who makes cigar stumps into chewing tobacco, says, you're "up to snuff." Assuming the truth of those statements, I apply to you for information. You have the ability, have you also the inclination, to aid a poor, weary mariner on the voyage of life, (in the steerage,) who has been buffeted by reason, tempest-tossed by imagination, becalmed by fancy, wrecked by stupidity, (other people's,) and is now whirling helplessly in the Maelstrom of conundrums? (If that doesn't touch your heart, then has language failed to accomplish the end for which ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... as if by a giant's hand. The crew managed to cut the wreckage away before it had pounded a hole in her side, and with what canvas they could set on the mizzen the captain attempted to drive her before the wind. But naturally enough the ship had no steerage-way and simply revolved in the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... His vessels were broadside. They would strike him full on the beam. Cut his boats in two. Mascola shrieked out an order to put about and face the enemy. His captains sprang to their respective wheels and battled desperately among themselves for steerage way. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... half square. These little prints are put in the layers of a shoe heel of a travelling American or elsewhere, book cover, hat band, etc., and then rephotographed and enlarged in America. Also messengers travel steerage and put things in the mattress of a fellow passenger and go back to the ship after landing in New ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... German or it might be Scandinavian, but never native to the land unless she happened to be a person of colour. The man or youth who lived in the stable had like wages, and sometimes he, too, was lately a steerage voyager, but much ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... hope for an aristocracy of intellect, if only for the reason that not one person in a thousand has any; and birth does not count for much. Of course, it is quite true that all of our remote ancestors came over with William the Conqueror—I have sometimes thought that the number of steerage passengers his ships would accommodate must have been little short of marvellous—but it is equally true that the grandfathers of most of our leisure class were either deserving or dishonest persons—who either started life ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell

... beat through me like the beating of a heart, and that far below, among the dim lights that came up from the emigrants in the steerage, there was a tinkling music as I prayed and a man's voice singing a plaintive air in some ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... say that he expected to be in the Gulf Stream by twelve o'clock. In a few minutes eight bells were struck, the watch called, and we went below. I now began to feel the first discomforts of a sailor's life. The steerage in which I lived was filled with coils of rigging, spare sails, old junk and ship stores, which had not been stowed away. Moreover, there had been no berths built for us to sleep in, and we were not allowed to drive nails to hang our clothes upon. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... wharf there—take that stern fast out to the last ringbolt. Mr. Second Mate... get your fenders aboard." The wind increased in a violence tipped with stinging rain. "Give her the jib and stay-sail." She heeled slightly and gathered steerage way. Roger Brevard involuntarily waved a parting salutation. An extraordinary emotion swept over him: a ship bound to the East always stirred his imagination and sense of beauty, but the departure of the Nautilus had a special significance. ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... down to the edge of the sands and there anchor, and to make across them past the Whittaker Beacon into the channel as soon as there was sufficient water to enable him to do so. The wind was light, sometimes scarcely sufficient to belly out the sails and give the boat steerage way, at others coming in short puffs which heeled her over and made her ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... hawklike man. You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... messenger passed, capstan-bars in their places, accommodation-ladder below; and in glorious spirits, we sat down to dinner. In the ward-room, the lieutenants were passing round their oldest port, and pledging their friends; in the steerage, the middies were busy raising loans to liquidate the demands of their laundress, or else—in the navy phrase—preparing to pay their creditors with a flying fore-topsail. On the poop, the captain was looking to windward; and in his grand, inaccessible cabin, the high and mighty ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... was taken, to board on the Quarter, which they did; but seeing no body appear, they feared some Stratagem. However, some of the Crew ran into the Steerage and Great Cabbin; but seeing nobody, they went between Decks, and, upon Examination, found her a Ship abandon'd, and that she had Six Foot Water in the Hold. They took out of the Great Cabbin Two Chests of Pieces of Eight, with ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... thread. In the cut it is represented as sailing, when it expands two of its arms on high, and between these supports a membrane which serves as a sail, hanging the two other arms out of its shell, to serve as oars, the office of steerage being generally served ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various

... contributing to true social progress. Let any one learn what hardship was involved, even for a wealthy person, a century ago, in crossing the Atlantic, and then let him compare that hardship even with a steerage passage at the present time, considering time and money cost. This improvement in transportation by which "the poor and weak" can be carried from the crowded centres of population to the new land is worth more to them than all the schemes of all the social ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... state of matters in the steerage. There the difference in comfort was not proportioned to the difference in passage-money. There was no velvet, not much light, little space to move about, and nothing soft. In short, discomfort reigned, so that the unfortunate passengers could not easily read, and the falling of ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... are astute; another friend, who makes cigar stumps into chewing tobacco, says, you're "up to snuff." Assuming the truth of those statements, I apply to you for information. You have the ability, have you also the inclination, to aid a poor, weary mariner on the voyage of life, (in the steerage,) who has been buffeted by reason, tempest-tossed by imagination, becalmed by fancy, wrecked by stupidity, (other people's,) and is now whirling helplessly in the Maelstrom of conundrums? (If that doesn't touch your heart, then has language failed to accomplish ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... he decided to sail on through the night. As darkness gathered he took his bearings from the stars. With the going-down of the sun the wind moderated, but it still held fair and strong enough to give him good steerage-way. After an hour or two the shores began to close around him. He could not find the outlet of the river in the dark, so he drove into the reeds, and, taking down his sail, supped on cold bread and lake-water and lay down in ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... Italians live on bread and beer, never wash, wear the same filthy clothes night and day, and are despised. After two or three years they want to live better, wear decent clothes, and be respected. They ask for more wages, the bosses bring in another train-load from the steerage, and the partly Americanized Italians follow the American miners 'down the road.' No wonder the estimate of government experts as to the number of our floating casual laborers ranges up ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... one could remain there: some few poor fellows, sick in their cots, had long been smothered, for they had been forgotten. The swell had much subsided, and there was not a breath of wind: the smoke which rose from the hatchways ascended straight up in the air, which, as the vessel had lost all steerage way, was fortunate. The boats were soon in the water, and trusty men placed in them: the spars were launched over, arranged by the men in the boats, and lashed together. All the gratings were then collected and firmly fixed upon the spars for the people to sit upon; and Philip's ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... next morning they boarded the "Washington," bound for New York, that was to loose anchor at the turn of the tide; and while Staunton, the detective, was making inquiries of the captain about the steerage passengers, Maurice's sharp eyes had caught sight of a young sailor with a patch over his eye, apparently busy with a coil of ropes, and he walked up to him carelessly; but as he loitered at his side a ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... passed through wide stretches of small loose floes and brash. Progress was good until darkness made a stop necessary. The next morning the pack was denser. Stenhouse shipped a preventer jury-rudder (the weighted spanker gaff), but could not get steerage way. Broad leads were sighted to the north- west in the afternoon, and the ship got within a quarter of a mile of the nearest lead before being held up by heavy pack. She again bumped severely during the night, and the watch stood ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... after I got my allowance, and unluckily I changed my bicycle, and the rascals put a lot more on the new one, and I haven't got above seven pounds left, and I must keep some for the rail from New York and for getting home, for I can't take the kid home in the steerage. The bicycle's worth something, and so is my watch, if I put them in pawn; so I think I can do it that way, and I'm quite seaman enough to get employment, only I don't want ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... bumping and straining. Great confusion for a time prevailed, but soon I realized that the captain had taken all proper precautions to secure his boats, of which there were six at the davits. These are the first things that steerage-passengers make for in case of shipwreck, and right over my head I heard the captain's voice say in a low tone, but quite decided: "Let go that falls, or, damn you, I'll blow your head off!" This seemingly harsh language gave me great comfort at ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... for her, who knows what mischief might have been prevented? I could at least—whatever the consequences—have called a warning to Captain Coffin to give his enemy a wide-berth. But I was unnerved; the impulse came too late; and as the foresail filled and she picked up steerage way, I stood helpless under the lamp at the quay-head—stood and stared after her, alone with the sense ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... perfect right to do, and when it is done the foreign holders will be on their way here as fast as the first ship can take them. The despised steerage and all will be full ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood

... Percival said. "Yes, these are ship's timbers, all right. She must have struck hard to make such a gash. We are on a level with the lower deck. I can't see much cargo around, but there is a way aft. This must be a sort of steerage, and the lower hold where the cargo is stored is below us. I believe we could walk right ahead to the after bulkhead, and if there happens to be a door in it, as is often the case, straight into the ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh

... countrymen, did not yet dread their vacillation; but we did. Nothing seemed possible to save us, but the interposition of Heaven; for the storm-jib and reefed foresail were the only sails on the cutter, and they were barely sufficient, in such a sea, to give her steerage way. Every wave that struck the yacht hurled her near and nearer to the breakers; but the courage of the men continued indomitable, and promptly, with the most cheerful expressions, they performed any, the most perilous task ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines began to cut steerage rates. The translators, too, have put an extra burden upon her. "Liberty Lighting the World" (as her creator christened her) would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size of it, than that of ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... common seaman. His dress and manner, too, militated fatally against any such proposal as the latter; and yet he was reduced to making it; for even if he could have contemplated the being set down in America totally without money, he had not enough left now for a steerage passage and the poorest ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... San Francisco we had a grand "feed." We agreed to meet every year and perpetuate the occasion. Of course we didn't invite Fagg. Fagg was a steerage passenger, and it was necessary, you see, now we were ashore, to exercise a little discretion. But Old Fagg, as we called him—he was only about twenty-five years old, by the way—was the source of immense amusement to us that day. It appeared that he had conceived the idea ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... dollar extra for doing the washing. And when she goes to Europe for the summer on the same ship with the Astors and the Vanderbilts, it sounds more magnificent than it really is. She is on the same ship, but about eleven decks down, in a corner of the steerage close to the stern, where the smells are rich and undisturbed. And she doesn't visit ruins and art galleries in Europe, but a huge circle of loving relatives, who pass her around from farm to farm for months, while ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch

... of the 3d March, upon the tide of ebb, and having a light gale from the north, sufficient to give steerage-way to our ships, we hastened to get up our anchors, meaning to set sail in the prosecution of our voyage, though our friends, the Malabars, who had desired to go with us, made no attempt to come out. At this time we saw another ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... Frederick store-ship, under my command: And this day I took on board, among other things, three thousand weight of portable soup, and a bale of cork jackets. Every part of the ship was filled with stores and necessaries of various kinds, even to the steerage and state-room, which were allotted to the slops and portable soup. The surgeon offered to purchase an extraordinary quantity of medicines, and medical necessaries, which, as the ship's company might become sickly, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... another fatality threatened the doomed crew—it was what might have been expected: the steerage passengers, mostly a low and brutalized order of men, in whom the mere animal instinct of love of life and fear of death was predominant over every nobler emotion, came rushing in a body up the deck, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... stomach, a fiery throbbing in his young heart, a sickening craving for some expression of human love. The boyish tendrils, although touched in truth by spring frosts, were outreaching still for some object upon which to fasten; yet he shrank from human touch and sympathy on that voyage in the steerage lest in his grief and ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... Light air or just sufficient to give steerage way. 2. Light breeze { or that in which a well- } 1 to 2 knots. 3. Gentle breeze { conditioned man of war, } 3 to 4 knots. 4. Moderate breeze { with all sail set, and } 5 to 6 knots. { clean full, would go in } { smooth ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt

... and the steamship officers thought there might be some trouble. Besides the soldiers, there were eight hundred emigrants from different parts of Europe, mostly from Ireland and about fifty cabin passengers. The voyage was very rough and occupied twenty-one days. Many a wild trick was played in that steerage. Many a skirmish was nipped in the bud through the watchful care of the officers of the Virginia, which otherwise might have led to bloodshed. The favorite amusement was cutting down hammocks. Dark forms might ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... correction. "I was born above it, and I've never travelled second class. First or steerage, but ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... says he. 'A boat's a boat. That's all it is. Annything ye can get at sea ye can get betther on land. A millyonaire is made as comfortable on an ocean liner as a longshoreman on earth an' ye can play that comparison all th' way down to th' steerage. Whin I read about this here floatin' palace I says to mesilf: I'll add a little money and go acrost in oryental luxury. Whin I got aboord th' decks were crowded with happy people worryin' about their baggage an' ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... drifting, we heard, first, the creaking of a block, then a faint wash of sea; and out of the white depths of the fog came the bulky hull of a full-rigged ship. Her sails were set, but she made scarcely steerage way. Her rusty sides and general look bespoke a long voyage just concluding; and we found on hailing her that she was the British ship Marathon, from Calcutta for San Francisco. We boarded the Marathon, though almost in ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... down to half-speed, or just enough to give her steerage way, while the anxious captain peered from the wheelhouse with one hand grasping the signal cord, ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... for a moment only, and find ourselves in an apartment about fifteen feet square. We can touch the ceiling on tiptoe, yet there are three tiers of bunks placed with head boards to the wall, and each bunk just broad enough for two occupants. It is like the steerage in an emigrant vessel, eminently shipshape. Every bunk is filled; some of the smokers have had their dream and lie in grotesque attitudes, insensible, ashen-pale, having the look of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... deck-wall forming a swell, in which were three broad windows which gave a view of the sea for a full half-circle of the horizon. It also overlooked the forward deck, the watchful lookout on the bridge, the busy sailors at their tasks, and gave glimpses of the steerage at long range. It was richly paneled in leather, with much gilding, the draperies were of crimson damask, and the seat which followed the window's swell was cushioned in crimson plush, all of which gave it a snug, shut-in look. A large ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... scholars, ever busy with the dead, are suffering crick in the neck from looking backward to the good old days when Romance wore a tin helmet on his head or lace in his sleeves—in such an age Simon Binswanger first beheld the high-flung torch of Goddess Liberty from the fore of the steerage deck of a wooden ship, his small body huddled in the sag of calico skirt between his mother's knees, and the sky-line and clothes-lines of the lower East Side dawning upon his ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... tell you, Lester," he said, "that your guess was right. The mysterious Frenchman came over on La Touraine, landing at noon yesterday. He came in the steerage, and the stewards know nothing about him. What time was it he got ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... eighteen miles an hour, with never an instant's pause between sight and stroke. The Indian in the stern took his cue from Dominique; now paddling for dear life, now flinging his body back as with a turn of the wrist he checked the steerage. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Archie's ear, "when we get abreast of Islay, for we shall then be sheltered from the sea from the west, and can run more boldly with only a following sea; but till we get out of this cross tumble we must not carry on, we only want steerage way to keep her ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... of baggage upon the deck, where some seamen were at work lowering it down into the hold through a square opening in the deck of the ship. As for the trunk, my father took that with him to the place where he was going to be himself during the voyage. This place was called the steerage. It was crowded full of men, women, and children, all going to America. Some talked French, some German, some Dutch, and there were ever so many babies that were too little to talk at all. Pretty soon ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... act of obeying, when Cato, the cook, was seen rising through the steerage-hatch, dragging after him the dark poll of another black, whom he had gripped by the wool. In an instant both were on deck, when, to my astonishment, I discovered the agitated countenance of Nebuchadnezzar Clawbonny. Of course the secret was out, the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt came to New Amsterdam as a "settler"—the euphemistic name for an immigrant who came over in the steerage of a sailing ship in the seventeenth century instead of the steerage of a steamer in the nineteenth century. From that time for the next seven generations from father to son every one of us was born ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... she set out at a brisk, swinging stride which told its own tale of pulsing life and joyous energy. After half a dozen turns, she paused to lean over the rail which shuts off the carefully caged creatures of the steerage ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... thank God you saved your skins." Everybody has forgotten what war means—forgotten that folks get hurt. But they are coming around to it now. A United States Senator telegraphs me: "Send my wife and daughter home on the first ship." Ladies and gentlemen filled the steerage of that ship—not a bunk left; and his wife and daughter are found three days later sitting in a swell hotel waiting for me to bring them stateroom tickets on a silver tray! One of my young fellows in the Embassy rushes into ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... Canada from Ireland. This aid consisted of a free ocean passage. Many who could not convince the Government of their desirability and yet could raise the money, came with them, paying their regular steerage rate of $15. These were alike to the outside world, but not to themselves. Those who paid their way were "passengers," and were, in their own opinion, many social worlds above the assisted ones, who were called "Emmy Grants." This distinction was never forgotten among ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... excessively dangerous. The seas rise up as if some power is moving the water from beneath, and letting it suddenly fall down again. When it thus falls down on the deck of a small vessel, all steerage-way being lost, she is drifted along, utterly helpless, by the tide, and if heavily laden, possibly sent to the bottom. Vessels, however, when passing the Bill of Portland, keep outside the Race, or, when the wind is off the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... Abe interrupted, "did we come over here paying first-class fares for practically steerage accommodations to discuss life insurance, or did we come over here to buy model garments and get through with it, because believe me, it is no pleasure for me to stick around a country where you couldn't get no ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass

... suit of sailor's clothes that Dan had bought for him. Vincent had given him full instructions as to the course he was to pursue. The ship was bound for Liverpool; on his arrival there he was at once to go round the docks and take a passage in the steerage of the next steamer going ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... Because dukes are emigrating and sending the price of shippingspace into brackets which make the export of any commodity but diamonds or their own hides a dubious investment, even the pawning of all the family assets would not buy steerage passage for a year old baby. Besides there are not enough bottoms in the world to transport a hundred and fifty million people. If the Grass is not stopped, except for a negligible few, it will cover Americans when it ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... the first winter; which leads one to wonder what the land of the Mayflower and the nation of George Washington will be in three hundred years, when the descendants of each shipload of immigrants of to-day will have increased in like ratio. From a single steerage passenger cargo, of the Lusitania or Mauretania, let us say, we shall have twenty, thirty, or forty thousand Lusitanians or Mauretanians as descendants; and from a single year's immigration thirty millions. The descendants ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... them. Sanitary inspection of emigrant ships was at the time all but unheard of, and statistics show that the densely crowded condition of the vessels which took them away produced the most terrible mortality amongst the already enfeebled people who crowded them, a full fifth of the steerage passengers in many cases, it is said, dying upon the voyage, and many more immediately after landing. The result of all this has been that the inevitable horrors of the time have been deepened and intensified ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... the taffrail, by the side of the man who stood idle at the wheel, for the brig had not motion enough to give her steerage-way. This time Captain 'Siah listened longer than usual. From far away to seaward, between the peals of thunder, came a confused, roaring sound. At the same time a slight puff of air swelled the sails of the brig, and the helmsman threw over the wheel to meet her, as the ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic

... sat up by the steersman in intense enjoyment—a bright sun and glittering blue sea; and we tore along, pitching and tossing the water up like mad. It was glorious. At night, I was calmly reposing in my cot, in the middle of the steerage, just behind the main hatchway, when I heard a crashing of rigging and a violent noise and confusion on deck. The captain screamed out orders which informed me that we were in the thick of a collision— of course I lay still, and waited till the row, or the ship, went down. I ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... letter to him in the waist, for he knew nothing of his quality, position, or anything else about him, and he did not know where to berth him, though there was room enough in the ward room or the steerage. He was dressed like a gentleman, and brought two very handsome valises on board ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic

... in the cabin—Captain Whidden, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Falk, and Roger, whose duties included oversight of the cargo, supervision of matters purely of business and trade in foreign ports, and a deal of clerical work that Captain Whidden had no mind to be bothered with; three in the steerage—the cook (contrary, perhaps, to the more usual custom), the steward, and the carpenter; and fourteen in ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... see it everywhere in our surroundings? If we lean over the railing and watch the steerage in the crowded ship, is there really less gayety among the fourth-class passengers than among the first-class? Where are the gifts of life which bring happiness to every one? I have friends to whom a cigar, a cocktail, and a game of cards are delightful sources ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... that illuminates the east end of the north avenue of the Main Building, in opposition to the trophy at the other end of the same avenue illustrating the history of the American flag. But he will look in vain for selected specimens of the emigrant-runner, the luxuries of the steerage and Castle Garden, or for photographs of the well-fed post-trader and Indian agent, agricultural products from Captain Jack's lava-bed reservation and jars of semi-putrescent treaty-beef. He will alight, next door to the penniless immigrant, the red man ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... the arrows of the Phoenician pelted over the Nausicaae like hail. Rowers fell as they sat on the upper benches; on the poop the proreus lay with half his men. Glaucon never counted how many missiles dinted his helmet and buckler. The next instant the two ships were drifting without steerage-way. The grappling-irons dashed down upon the Athenian, and simultaneously the brown Phoenician boarders were scrambling ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... sight-seeing, Mr. and Mrs. Mott started homeward. He had spoken less frequently than his wife, but always had been listened to with deep interest. Her heart was moved toward a large number of Irish emigrants in the steerage, and she desired to hold a religious meeting among them. When asked about it, they said they would not hear a woman preacher, for women priests were not allowed in their church. Then she asked that they would come together and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... the water, although we had by this time got up the fore-topgallant and royal-masts again and were once more under all plain sail; while, as for the two Indiamen, built as cargo-carriers rather than for speed, they appeared to scarcely have steerage-way, and seemed to maintain their luff only with the utmost difficulty—indeed, there were times when they fell so broad off as to present their full broadsides to us. But although their capture might now be regarded as practically certain, they were evidently not disposed to yield ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... desire to impose our kultur on others. But after that day on the deck the Princess lost her lure for Henry and me! So we went to the front stoop of the boat and watched the Armenians drill. A great company of them was crowded in the steerage and all day long, with a sergeant major, they went through the drill. They were returning to Europe to fight with the French army and avenge the wrongs of their people. When they tired of drilling, they ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... good deal of sickness on board and plenty for Gudrid to do. The wind blew gaps in the fog, and as it stiffened tore it into flying shreds and rags. The ship heaved and lurched in water now inky-black. They got steerage way, and ran before a gale which they judged came from the south-west; they held this course for many days, hoping to get a sight of land. And land was nearer than they thought, for one morning Thorstan ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett

... brusquely, "those people are actually going steerage? I'd no idea of it. Mr and Mrs Cotterill kept it from me, and I should not have heard of it only from something Nellie said. That's why they've gone to-day. The boat ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... descended from the poop, and, wrapped in thought, was passing near a dark hatchway, leading down into the steerage, when, perceiving motion there, he looked to see what moved. The same instant there was a sparkle in the shadowy hatchway, and he saw one of the Spanish sailors, prowling there hurriedly placing his ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... uneasy and discontented. In the end they gave up the grocery and their little home, Hansche not without some tears; but she dried them quickly at the thought of the good times that were waiting. With these ever before them they bore the hardships of the steerage, and in good season reached Hester Street and the longed-for haven, only to find—this. A rear basement, dark and damp and unwholesome, for which the landlord, along with the privilege of keeping a stand in the street, which was not his to give, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... be peeling potatoes in the galley," remarked the Captain. "I understand they are short-handed there. Or sweeping out bunks in the steerage. Ethics of the dust! What would ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... thorough-going democrat I always travel steerage; I'd sooner eat my Sunday hat Than take a nasty Peerage; Such sops the snobbish crowd may soothe, But ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... I shall like North Queensland. There were quite a number of diggers on board the Carea, and one night we held a concert in the saloon and I sang 'The Kerry Dance'—I'm an Irishwoman—and next morning a big man named O'Hagan, one of the steerage passengers, came up and asked me if I would 'moind acceptin' a wee bit av a stone,' and he handed me a lovely specimen of quartz with quite two ounces of gold in it. He told me he had found it on ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke

... But that was no reason she should blame me for it, and look on me as a cold deck; but she did—ay, she did. Why didn't she give me a show? Why didn't the world? Why did I go broke in Seattle? Why did I take the steerage, and live like a hog to Nome? Why did I go to the El Dorado? I was heading for Big Pete's and only went for matches. Why didn't I have matches? Why did I want to smoke? Don't you see? All worked out, every bit of it, all parts fitting snug. Before I was born, like as not. I'll put the sack I never ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... Daggett's purpose. He had begun to burn his vessel, for there was now no alternative; but he was doing it on a system which, as he explained it to Roswell, was not only to leave him materials with which to construct a smaller craft in the spring, but which would allow of his inhabiting the steerage and cabin as long ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... luggage, innumerable bags and rugs and hampers and sea-chairs, and were composed largely of ladies of various ages, a little pale with anticipation, wrapped also in striped shawls, though in prettier ones than the nursing mothers of the steerage, and crowned with very high hats and feathers. They darted to and fro across the gangway, looking for each other and for their scattered parcels; they separated and reunited, they exclaimed and declared, they ...
— Pandora • Henry James

... fought shy of their camps. The laborers were mainly Irish, trans-shipped from steerage, dock, and Bowery, and imported from Western mining centers; turbulent in their relaxations and plentifully supplied with whiskey: companies, they, not at all to the Mormon mind. Consequently we halted apart from them—and well so, for those were ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... this time the first of the gunboats reached the squadron, and the young men of the steerage were intensely amused at the smallness of the vessel. A midshipman from the flagship visited the "Reefer." He went alongside of her in the barge, and, not knowing any better, stepped over her port-quarter. Lieutenant Sterrett, in command, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... York's patricians. John Jacob Astor, who acted as royal consort to the cooper's regal daughter in the quadrille d'honneur, is likewise descended from noble Knights (of Labor) and dames of high degree. He traces his lineage in unbroken line to that haughty Johann Jakob who came to America in the steerage, wearing a Limburger linsey-woolsey and a pair of wooden shoes. Beginning life in the new world as a rat-catcher, he soon acquired a gallon jug of Holland gin, a peck of Brummagem jewelry, and robbed the Aborigines right and left. He wore the same ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... out into the river," said Sam, "she will float pretty rapidly on the high water, and we need only use the paddles to give her steerage, and to paddle ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... ten will more than suffice; unless, indeed, the captain wants some for the cabin. How is it with your steerage messes, Mr. Archer—do ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... main and fore masts were ripped out of her as if by a giant's hand. The crew managed to cut the wreckage away before it had pounded a hole in her side, and with what canvas they could set on the mizzen the captain attempted to drive her before the wind. But naturally enough the ship had no steerage-way and simply revolved ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... every convenience on board a Lake Ontario mail-packet, which is about as large as a small frigate, and has the usual sea equipment of masts, sails, and iron rigging. The fare is five dollars in the cabin, or about L1 sterling; and two dollars in the steerage. In the former you have tea and breakfast, in the latter nothing but what is bought at the bar. By paying a dollar extra you may have a state-room on deck, or rather on the half-deck, where you find a good bed, a large looking-glass, washing-stand and towels, and a night-lamp, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... Calais by easy stages from village to village. Thus they become a paying investment from the beginning. This journey occupies the greater portion of the summer months; and after a long trip in the steerage of a sailing-vessel, the unfortunate children land at Castle Garden. As the parents never hear from them again, they do not know whether they are ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... have seen Jenny in London she would have turned him back. Indeed, that first stage was to consult her, but he fancied he saw the face of the Wil'sbro' Superintendent in a cab, and the instinct of avoiding arrest carried him to Southampton, where he got a steerage berth in a sailing vessel, and came out to the Cape. He has lived hard enough, but his Scots blood has stood him in good stead, and he has made something as an ivory-hunter, and now has a partnership in an ostrich farm in the Amatongula country. Still he ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the early years of her schooldays Betty had observed that America appeared upon the whole to be regarded by her schoolfellows principally as a place to which the more unfortunate among the peasantry emigrated as steerage passengers when things could become no worse for them in their own country. The United States was not mentally detached from any other portion of the huge Western Continent. Quite well-educated persons spoke casually of individuals having "gone to America," ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... his Design, resolutely leap'd after him, and reaching him with his Sabre, laid him dead the Moment he going to set Fire to the Powder. The Victoire pouring in more Men, the Mahometans quitted the Decks, finding Resistance vain, and fled for Shelter to the Cook Room, Steerage and Cabbins, and some run between Decks. The French gave 'em Quarters, and put the Prisoners on board the Victoire, the Prize yielding nothing worth mention, except Liberty to about fifteen Christian Slaves; ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe

... there was nothing for him to do. The ship had no steerage way. She lay with her head to the westward, the everlasting Koh-ring visible over the stern, with a few small islets, black spots in the great blaze, swimming before my troubled eyes. And but for ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... on an English steamer visited the steerage, and after some friendly talk proposed a singing service—it something could be started that "everybody" knew—for there were hundreds of emigrants there from nearly ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... down the beach of the sea, crying his terrible cry, and roused the Achaian warriors. And they who before were wont to abide in the circle of the ships, and they who were helmsmen and kept the steerage of the ships, or were stewards there and dealt out food, even these came then to the place of assembly, because Achilles was come forth, after long ceasing from grievous war. Limping came two of Ares' ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... reader may be disappointed if I do not tell him how I got over, I shall first inform him that we were thirty-eight in the cabin, and 160 men, women, and children, literally stowed in bulk in the steerage. I shall describe what took place from the time I first went up the side at Spithead, until the ship was under weigh, and then make a very ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Our thrust shaft has cracked!" The words came faintly. "Our Captain was washed from the bridge. . . . Tried to put out sea anchor, but couldn't make it hold without steerage way. . . . It broke adrift. . . . This . . . the Veiled Ladye, with Mr. Horace Howland and ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... as they rested on the long swell that bore them along, and everything in sea and sky bespoke the calm. No sailor trod the deck; no watch was stirring; the very tiller ropes were deserted; and as they traversed backwards and forwards with every roll of the vessel, told that we had no steerage-way, and lay a ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... was, he led him ruthlessly down the narrow steps, past the long line of curious passengers, then down again to the steerage deck, where he deposited him on a coil of rope and bade him stay there ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... that we made up our mind to try what luck there was in store for us in Australia, we were on board of a clipper ship, and with some two dozen other steerage passengers (for Fred and myself were determined to be economical) we were passing through the Golden Gate on our way to a strange land, where we did not possess a friend or acquaintance that we ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... heard, but could not answer for the moment, the steerage claiming all his attention. When he turned towards the bank she was no longer there. He looked back over his shoulder. She had come to a dead halt and stood watching, her print gown glimmering in the dusk. And so, as the boat rounded the bend by the Brewery, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... mentioned her "cross" and everybody knew that the cross was Luther. She carried him, but it is no more than fair to say that she didn't provide him with cushions. She never let him forget that he was a steerage passenger. However, Lute was well upholstered with philosophy, of a kind, and, so long as he didn't have to work his passage, was happy, even if the voyage was a ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... what he would be like; whether he would be agreeable, or disposed to look down upon me as a boy, I went back on deck, and stood about watching the busy scene, and learning which was the quarter-deck, steerage, forecastle, and the like. By virtue of being an officer, I found myself at liberty to go where I pleased, and noted which were passengers and which were ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... advice of Mr. Lindsay himself I took steerage passages for them. He shrewdly remarked, "They will be there as soon and as safely as the cabin-passengers, and their money will be saved." This sounded so like an axiom in practical economy that my dear boy never ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... caused a turmoil to which we had been for months unaccustomed. It must have been fairly bewildering to our passengers, fresh from their humdrum existence. The arrangements on their behalf were made in a few hours, and our poor fellow-countrymen were soon off for England in the steerage of a huge cotton-loaded freight-steamer, having a new experience in the companionship of Bengalese, Maltese, Arabs, English navvies and riff-raff of all tongues and complexions. In fact, the Overland route, at that time especially, afforded about the most curious aggregation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... to our boat. As father was poor and wished to economize, he took steerage passage, as we had warm clothes and plenty of bedding, he thought this the best that he could afford. Our headquarters were on the lower deck. In a short time steam was up, and we bade farewell to Buffalo, where we had spent a sleepless night, and with about six-hundred ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin









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