"Merchant vessels" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intervals, between the two ports. No: she was only what is called a regular trader to Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very much as she pleased, being bound by no obligations of any kind: though in all her voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for her destination. Merchant vessels which are neither liners nor regular traders, among sailors come under the general head of transient ships; which implies that they are here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... conduct of Berecroft was so completely in unison, that even the most idle and thoughtless acknowledged that he was a good man, and quitted the ship with regret. Such was Mr Berecroft; and we have little further to add, except that he was very superior to the generality of masters of merchant vessels. His family, it was reported, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the general principles of visit and search and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international law, such vessels, both within and without the area declared as naval war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving human lives, unless these ships attempt to escape ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... it, or rather to be swindled out of it. It is these fellows that raise such reports against the English navy, that frighten the poor fellows so; they hear of men being flogged until they die under the lash, and all the lies that can be invented. Not that the masters of the merchant vessels are at all backward in disparaging the service, but threaten to send a man on board a man-of-war for a punishment, if he behaves ill—that itself is enough to raise a prejudice against the service. Now, sir, I can safely swear that there is ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... to enable her to turn around without unduly exposing herself. While she was doing this the firing diminished greatly, owing to the disinclination on the part of either, I imagine, wantonly to damage harmless merchant vessels. No sooner had she started on her way out of the harbor, however, than ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... as if their ensign-staffs, bowsprits, and topmasts were decorated with the same ensigns, or nearly the same, with those which the Latins displayed upon them, when, by the Emperor's order, they were transported towards Palestine; so methinks the voyage back again resembles that of a fleet of merchant vessels, who have been prevented from discharging their cargo at ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... both on account of the facility of access, and for the purpose of destroying the powerful fleet of gunboats which had taken refuge in its creeks. This object was successfully accomplished on the 20th of August— thirteen of the gunboats being destroyed and one captured, together with fourteen merchant vessels. The army, under the command of General Ross, on the following day disembarked. It numbered, including some marines, three thousand five hundred men, with two hundred sailors to drag ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... they were, upon which he was very polite, and calling a pilot out of the boat, the schooner was taken charge of by him, and we very soon afterwards, having wind and tide in our favour, were anchored alongside of two large merchant vessels and a French privateer of sixteen guns, which I instantly recognized as our old antagonist off Hispaniola, in the action in which the Revenge was captured, and Captain Weatherall lost his life. However, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... the present war are known throughout Europe. The bad faith of the King of England, who has violated his treaties by refusing to restore Malta to the order of St. John of Jerusalem, and attacked our merchant vessels without a previous declaration of war, together with the necessity of a just defence, forced us to have recourse to arms. I therefore wish you to order prayers to be offered up, in order to obtain the benediction of Heaven on our enterprises. The proofs I have received of your ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... carpenter's and sailmaker's lockers, etc., were doubtless well forward under her forecastle, easily accessible from the spar-deck, as was common to merchant vessels of her class and size. Dr. Young, in his "Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers" (p. 86, note), says: "This vessel was less than the average size of the fishing-smacks that go to the Grand Banks. This ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... appeared like two extensive and magnificent galleries. The admiral's palace, which commanded a view of the mouth of the harbour and of the sea, was also a building of considerable taste. Each harbour had its particular entrance into the city: a double wall separated them so effectually, that the merchant vessels, when they entered their own harbour, could not see the ships of war; and though the admiral, from his palace, could perceive whatever was doing at sea, it was impossible that from the sea any thing in the inward harbour could ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... "marchantable, middling, and refuse." The first grade was sold chiefly to Roman Catholic Europe, to supply the constant demands of the fast-days of that religion, and also those of the Church of England; the second was consumed at home or in the merchant vessels of New England; the third went to the negroes of the West Indies, and was often called Jamaica fish. The dun-fish or dumb-fish, as the word was sometimes written, were the best; so called from the dun-color. Fish was always eaten ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... forced to do what Captain Barker from the first had meant him to do. The four galleys that had started after the convoy were by this time sweeping along on the full tide of success. In another five minutes the pathway to the Thames would be blocked and all the merchant vessels at ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Grand Canal, where as yet there were few boats and no gondolas at all, and soon he turned the corner of the Salute and rowed out slowly upon the Giudecca, where the merchant vessels lay at anchor, large and small, galliots and feluccas and many a broad 'trabacolo' from the Istrian coast, with huge spreading bows, and hawse ports painted scarlet like great red eyes. The old sailor's heart ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... dispatch-boat "Telegraph." On the contrary, he was resolved to multiply the chances of finding some trace of the missing "Viking." Would it not be possible to excite a spirit of emulation in the captains of merchant vessels and fishing-smacks that navigated the waters of Iceland and the Faroe Islands? Unquestionably. So a reward of two thousand marks was promised in the name of the government to any vessel that would furnish any information in regard to ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... in the year 1809 that the American brig Dover, one of the few of American merchant vessels which had managed to escape the ruin of Jefferson's embargo act, was sailing among the lesser Antilles. The master-captain Parson was a thorough seaman with a heart as big ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... Medicis, had become the admiral of a piratical fleet in the Calvinist interest, so far winked at the Queen Elizabeth that it had its head-quarters in the Channel Islands, and thence was a most formidable foe to merchant vessels on the northern and eastern coasts of France; and often indulged in descents on the coast, when the sailors—being in general the scum of the nation—were apt to comport themselves more like American buccaneers than like champions of ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... southwest of Greenland, at least a fortnight's sail, there were, for 300 years after the beginning of the 11th century, Norse colonies on the coast of America, with which colonies the home country maintained commercial intercourse. The country to which the merchant vessels ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... in small things; also he had to be something of an enthusiast, something of an orator, some one subtly persuasive. Against all the disagreeables of the strenuous life of the corsair he had to hold before the dazzled eyes of Selim, Ali, or Mahomet the promise of fat captures of the merchant vessels of the foe; when they had but to slit a few throats and to return with their brigantines laden to the gunwale with desirable plunder. Again he had to hearten them for possible encounters with Spaniards, with the terrible ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... present year the Imperial German Government informed this Government and the other neutral governments of the world that it had reason to believe that the Government of Great Britain had armed all merchant vessels of British ownership and had given them secret orders to attack any submarine of the enemy they might encounter upon the seas, and that the Imperial German Government felt justified in the circumstances in treating all armed merchantmen ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... the Genoese;[200] and then, in consideration of the injury done to English commerce by the Genoese letters of marque, Henry recommends the English merchants to accept the offer made by the Genoese, provided they stipulate that the English merchant vessels shall have as free course of trade to Genoa as the Genoese desired to have to the ports of England. This correspondence is found among the "Proceedings of the Privy Council." The whole is well deserving ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... conversational gifts that induced him to call so frequently at Cumberland street.... James was unexpectedly ordered to join the U. S. schooner Grampus at Norfolk, Va., for a winter cruise on the Southern coast for relief of distressed merchant vessels. The cruise continued for some weeks without entering any port, but about the 20th of March, 1843, the Grampus appeared off the bar of Charleston, S. C., and sent in a letter-bag for mailing. That night ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Sea ports are to be evacuated by Germany; all Russian war vessels of all descriptions seized by Germany in the Black Sea are to be handed over to the Allies and the United States of America; all neutral merchant vessels seized are to be released; all warlike and other materials of all kinds seized in those ports are to be returned and German materials as specified in Clause Twenty-eight are ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... did not fulfill the requirements of a valid blockade, because it cut off only a very small percentage of British commerce, and the first requirement of a blockade is that it must be effective. The decree was aimed directly at enemy merchant vessels and indirectly at the ships of neutrals. It utterly ignored the well-recognized right of neutral passengers to travel on merchant vessels of belligerents. The second decree announcing unrestricted submarine warfare after February 1, 1917, was ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... this search, the English especially. The Dutch sought the short cut for their merchantmen because the voyage around the Cape of Good Hope was very dangerous, being controlled by Spanish and Portuguese, who unhesitatingly preyed upon the merchant vessels that tried to pass that way. The result of the Dutch expeditions into the North was the discovery of the possibilities of the whaling industry, which they may be said to have originated, and which ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... pity that some other arrangement is not made in merchant vessels with regard to the liberty-day. When in port, the crews are kept at work all the week, and the only day they are allowed for rest or pleasure is Sunday; and unless they go ashore on that day, they cannot go at all. I have heard of a religious captain who gave his crew liberty ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... blockade is to cut off supplies and stop all communication with the enemy by sea. When this is done, merchant vessels of all nations are therefore forbidden to pass or even to approach the line, and the penalty for disobedience is the confiscation of both ship and cargo, whether the latter is contraband or not. If a ship does not stop when hailed, she may be ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... of Government favoritism to shipping, however, began far back in the dim ninth century with Alfred the Great. Under the inspiration of this Saxon of many virtues, his people increased the number of English merchant vessels and laid the foundation for the creation and maintenance of a royal navy.[B] The Saxon Athelstan, Alfred's grandson, whose attention to commerce was also marked, first made it a way to honor, one of his laws enacting that a merchant ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... Achin is represented to have arrived at a considerable height, and its friendship to have been courted by the most powerful states. No city in India possessed a more flourishing trade, the port being crowded with merchant vessels which were encouraged to resort thither by the moderate rates of the customs levied; and although the Portuguese and their ships were continually plundered, those belonging to every Asiatic power, from Mecca in the West to Japan ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... sea as well as on land. The South sent out privateers to catch the merchant vessels of the North, and so bring ruin on their trade. But Lincoln replied by proclaiming a ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... stones, and 70 asses. Lead and various kinds of wood and stone, together with 608 jars of Lebanon wine, 2080 jars of oil, and 690 jars of balsam, were also received from Southern Syria, and posting-houses were established along the roads of the land of Zahi. A fleet of Phoenician merchant vessels was next sent to Egypt laden with logs of wood from the forests of Palestine and the Lebanon for the buildings of the king. At the same time, "the king of Cyprus," which now was an Egyptian possession, forwarded his tribute to the Pharaoh, consisting of 108 bricks of copper ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... one national flag, which is flown alike on buildings, men-of-war, and merchant vessels, and to us Americans its ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... French and Spanish fleets were menacing the English coasts, a dreadful sea-fight took place between the British and the Dutch. On returning from the Baltic with a convoy of merchant vessels, Rear Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, in the beginning of August, fell in with Admiral Zouttman, with a convoy of Dutch traders, off Dogger Bank. Parker's fleet consisted of six line-of-battle ships and several frigates; and Zouttman's, of ten ships of the line, eight ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... slaves of the South. He was able to temper his indignation for their oppression with a humorous perception of what was droll in its agents and circumstances; and I wish I could recall all that he said once about sea-etiquette on merchant vessels, where the chief mate might no more speak to the captain at table without being addressed by him than a subject might put a question to his sovereign. He was amusing in his stories of the Pacific trade in which he said it was very noble to deal in furs from the Northwest, and very ignoble to deal ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... British vessel had struck her colors, when a fleet of the enemy came upon the scene and the victorious Wasp was forced to fly. In a few days Blakeley, thus cruising over the crowded seas surrounding England, captured fifteen merchant vessels. On one of these, the brig Atlanta, he put a prize crew and sent ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... some five miles from the port, which then possessed a fine wooden pier, alongside of which and in the adjacent roadstead, lay many fine merchant vessels and steamers awaiting their cargoes of wool, etc. The port and city were connected by a railway, the first constructed in Australia, and almost parallel with it wound the River Yarrow, so named from its usually ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... defensive war, and how important it would be to dislodge the enemy from the Malucas Islands, it seems to me an easier and more advisable method for your Majesty to send the soldiers and sailors who could be a reenforcement, at the account of Philipinas, in the merchant vessels of the trading-fleets [from Espana], so that in due time they might be taken from San Juan de Ulua, together with the men raised in Nueva Espana, to the port of Acapulco. For if sufficient money be sent from Nueba Espana, better ships can be built no-where than here; and thereby could be attained ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... of hard, uncompromising, square-built habitations stretched away to the little harbor, in which two or three merchant vessels and a couple of colliers were anchored. Beyond the harbor there loomed, gray and cold upon the wintry horizon, a dismal barrack, parted from the Wildernsea houses by a narrow creek, spanned by an iron drawbridge. The scarlet coat of the sentinel ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... the sea does not mean immunity from the risks of naval warfare or from loss by the capture or sinking of merchant vessels. It does not imply absolute security for British coasts, for British coasts have been raided in every great war that Britain has waged. It does not even involve the defeat or destruction of the enemy's naval forces, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... swiftly over the blue waters; she flew like a hawk in comparison with the slow merchant vessels, and in a week after the five Simeons had left their native land they sighted the island ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... States. The ownership of the guns, left for shipment to Savannah, would ordinarily have been promptly settled in a local court; but the detention now became an affair of national importance, involving the governors of two States and leading to the seizure of half a dozen merchant vessels lying peacefully at anchor in Savannah harbour. Instead of entering the courts, the consignor telegraphed the consignees of the "seizure," the consignees notified Governor Brown of Georgia, and the Governor wired Governor Morgan of New York, demanding their ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander |
