"Capstan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... considerably. This was an alarming and, I may say, terrible circumstance, and threatened immediate destruction to us. However, I resolv'd to risque all, and heave her off in case it was practical, and accordingly turn'd as many hands to the Capstan and Windlass as could be spared from the Pumps; and about 20 Minutes past 10 o'Clock the Ship floated, and we hove her into Deep Water, having at this time 3 feet 9 Inches Water in the hold. This ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... morning light. A wonderful stillness had fallen on the great city, as one by one the tired parties of friends had gone to rest, to shorten the day of fasting by prolonging their sleep till late in the hot afternoon. The clank of some capstan on one of the ferry-boats struck loud and clear on the still air, as the reluctant sailors and firemen prepared for their first run to the Black Sea, or across to Kadi Koei on the Sea of Marmara. Paul turned and looked towards the mighty dome of Santa Sophia, and his haggard face was almost ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... striker, just when he was to be made an engineer, when he thought he had smooth sailing, suddenly and provokingly found himself fast aground, with no spar or capstan by which he might help himself off, with no friendly craft alongside to throw him a hawser ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... some fine Summer morning when the Falmouth cocks were crowing I would set my capstan spinning to the chanting of all hands, And the milkmaids on the uplands would lament to see me going As I beat for open Channel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... holds by merely turning a handle, and the charts and the telephones and the telegraphs, and the under-water signaling, and the sounding-tubes, and the officers' piano; and I had descended by way of the capstan-gear (which, being capable of snapping a chain that would hold two hundred and sixty tons in suspension, was suitably imprisoned in a cage, like a fierce wild animal) right through the length of the vessel to the wheel-house aft. It was comforting ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... if it was going to work or not! On this particular occasion, as stated, we—self, foreman and one boy—actually had to go through this tedious and dangerous performance three times in succession! To pull out the piping great power is needed, and we at first used a capstan made on the ranch and worked by hand. But it was slow work, very slow, and very hard work too; afterwards we used a stout, steady team of horses, with double tackle, and found it to work much more expeditiously. But there was always a ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... the brackets of the with beckets for the wrist | carriage, near the breech. | One fire-bucket with lanyard |On gun-decks, close to the side, | near the beam over the gun; on | spar-decks, round the capstan and | the boats forward. | One bucket of prepared grease or oil | for rifle cannon |On the breast-piece. | One battle-lantern, with candle or | lamp trimmed and primed, but | provided for gun-decks ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... sun was within an hour of setting, and if the adventurers desired to reach the open sea again before nightfall—as they most assuredly did—it was time to bestir themselves. George, therefore, issued his orders, and while one party of his now pretty well exhausted crew manned the capstan and proceeded to get the Nonsuch's anchor, a second were set to work to pass a towing hawser aboard the prize and make it fast; after which the ships got under way, the Santa Maria being in tow of the Nonsuch, and safely accomplished ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... for one instant at the capstan, which was just behind where the jaunty young cadet was standing. There was an ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... the outside, they are then carried to the right and left of the drum on the axle-tree, and are tied there so as to stay fast. Then another rope is wound round the drum and carried to a capstan, and when that is turned, it turns the drum and the axle-tree, the ropes get taut as they wind round regularly, and thus they raise the loads smoothly and with no danger. But if a larger drum is placed either in the middle or at one side, without any capstan, men can tread in it and ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... were leaning on the trawl capstan, while our old landlord, with half-a-dozen pipes within a foot of his face, droned out some long sea-yarn about Ostend, and muds, and snow-storms, and revenue- cruisers going down stern foremost, kegs of brandy and French prisons, which ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... windy Saturday morning—a week after the death of my poor dog—I was loitering about the quays in the port, when I was attracted towards a little crowd that had gathered round an old capstan. The crowd consisted of several sailors and fishermen, with a sprinkling of townsfolk, who were evidently much interested in something that was going on ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... flags hung listlessly from the main truck and spanker gaff. The water of the harbor was unstirred except for the swirls at the oar blades of an incoming quarter boat and the warp paying out at her stern. The voice of the mate, the chantey of the crew heaving at the capstan bars, came to ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a capstan bar which he snatched up as a cudgel. Chivalry had taught him that a man should never reckon the odds when a woman appealed for succor. With a headlong rush he crossed the wharf and swung the hickory bar. The pirate dodged the blow and whipped out his dirk ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... the rank of a boatswain's mate. He was an old sailor, as salt as a barrel of pickled pork, and knew his duty from keel to truck. In a few moments his pipe was heard, and the seamen began to walk around the capstan. ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... four others looked quite picturesque, as they reclined on the heavy coils of the great cable. More central to the picture than was at all advantageous to it sat our friend Raw Material, with his head jammed recklessly into the capstan, abandoning himself to his misery. For the inevitable malady had fallen upon him among the first; and as he sat there, helpless and without hope, upon one of those life-preserving stools that remind one, by their shape, of the "properties" of Saturn ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... surly second mate, who seemed to take the loss of his vessel so much to heart that he hadn't said a word to anybody since the prize crew was put aboard of her. But Jack Gray was there with an object. When the end of the hawser had been wound around the capstan, and the bars were shipped, he took pains to place himself next to a couple of Green Mountain boys, whose courage had been proved in more than ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... eucalyptus. The tooart in the districts of Bunbury and the Vasse, and the blue-gum which abounds at Augusta and Nornalup, are woods of large size, and remarkably hard and close-grained in texture. It is well adapted for keel-pieces, stern-posts, capstan-heads, and heavy beams: and its fibres are so closely matted and interwoven together, that it is scarcely possible to split it. It grows in lengths of from 30 to 60 feet, and measures from 15 ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... beach; these the tide alone cannot efface—the bow of some hapless schooner it may be, wrenched from its hull, and sent whirling shoreward; the shattered mast and crosstrees of a stranded ship beaten to death in the breakers; or some battered capstan carried in the white teeth of the surf-dogs and dropped beyond the froth-line. To these with the help of the south wind, the tides extend their mercy, burying them deep with successive blankets of sand, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... good ship Gyascutus, All in the China seas, With the wind a-lee and the capstan free To ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of the best description, are tastefully polished or painted where necessary, and are so exactly fitted in every part as to baffle the detection of any conspicuous fault whatever. It is fully manned with a crew of little wooden men, and officers in uniform, and completely equipped with boats, capstan, blocks, hawsers, cables, davits, cat-heads, bars, bolts, buckets, chocks, compasses, and even three brass cannons; in short with everything that may be seen in a large ship. She bears the significant ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... than it was broad, peopled by human ants, and full of busy, honest industry, and displaying all the various mechanical science of the age in full operation. Here the lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the balance, there the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of fascines, mantelets, and rows of fire-barrels. Mantelets rolling, the hammer tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling up with materials. Only, on looking closer into ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... to navigation, the Bolo's heavy anchor was dropped. Luckily she carried six hundred feet of one inch manila, but even this was hardly enough for the depth of water and had to be eked out with every bit of chain and cable that could be spared. Fortunately under the circumstances the Bolo carried a capstan which could be thrown into a gear with the engine, otherwise it would have been impossible for her to anchor in that depth of water, as her crew could never have got up the mud-hook ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... for instead of gaping and stretching themselves about the deck, as had been the case with most of them a minute before, the men now commenced their duty in good earnest, calling to each other to come to the falls and the capstan-bars, and to stand by the heels of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... iceberg, all hands holding their breath, turned to stone, top-hamper giving 'way, sails blown to ribbons, first one stick going, then another, boom! smash! crash! duck your head and stand from under! when up comes Johnny Rogers, capstan-bar in hand, eyes a-blazing, hair a-flying . . . no, 'twa'n't Johnny Rogers. . . lemme see . . seems to me Johnny Rogers wa'n't along that voyage; he was along one voyage, I know that mighty well, but somehow it seems to me that he signed the articles ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stood a small collection of young men, who, by their similarity of dress, were the equals and companions of Griffith, though his juniors in rank. On the opposite side of the vessel was a larger assemblage of youths, who claimed Mr. Merry as their fellow. Around the capstan three or four figures were standing, one of whom wore a coat of blue, with the scarlet facings of a soldier, and another the black vestments of the ship's chaplain. Behind these, and nearer the passage to the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... machinery, with saw-mills, planing-mills, &c. Saw, among other inventions and improvements, anchor shanks made largest about one third of the distance from the crown, where they always bend or break; an original screw-cutter of uncommon merit; and a perpetual capstan for drawing in wood for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... now time to say a word or two to the hands. I therefore requested Mr Roberts to call everybody aft; and at the word they came shambling along the deck, bare-footed, and grouped themselves on the port side, between the main rigging and the capstan, while the two mates joined me upon the poop. I waited a moment until they were ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... birthday of the year. Potentates and capitalists who send down orders to Cowes or Southampton that their yachts are to be put in commission, and anon arrive to find everything ready (if they care to examine), from the steam capstan to the cook's apron, have little notion of the amusement to be found in fitting out a small boat, say of five or six tons. I sometimes doubt if it be not the very flower, or at least the bloom, of the whole pastime. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... up anchor!' The capstan revolves and creaks, as one and all of these willing men strain their starting muscles at the bars. The anchor reluctantly leaves its oozy bed; but the chinking of the cable, as it steadily ascends, reveals no change, until it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... Castle Cliff in a fiery glow, Margery comes out and sits on her father's knee; the lads, home from school, gather round and say, 'Now then, Master Sellar, tell us once more the story of thy absence from us, and about how thou wast pressed and taken on board the Royal Prince. Tell us about the capstan and the lashings; about how they beat thee; what the carpenter and the boatswain's mate did, and how the gunner went down three times on his bare knees on the deck to beg thy life. Let us hear it all again.' 'Yes, please do, Father dear,' ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... view of it than that. Whatever it was, another change was at hand. Since he was so exposed to the weather on the reef, Hazel had never been free from pain; but he had done his best to work it off. He had collected all the valuables from the wreck, made a new mast, set up a rude capstan to draw the boat ashore, and cut a little dock for her at low water, and clayed it in the full heat of the sun; and, having accomplished this drudgery, he got at last to his labor of love; he opened a quantity of pearl oysters, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Captain Hull resolved to try kedging his ship along, sending a boat half a mile ahead with a light anchor and all the spare rope on board. The crew walked the capstan round and hauled the ship up to the anchor, which they then lifted, carried ahead, and dropped again. The Constitution kept two kedges going all through that summer day, but the Shannon was playing ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... the capstan, and, in the shadow of the cypress forest, where the vessel lay moored for a change of wind, told in a patois difficult, but not impossible, to understand, the story of a man who chose rather to be hunted like a wild beast among ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... moon, all glistening pearl and silver, rose up out of the east with a royal air of white and wondering innocence, as though she proclaimed her entire blamelessness for any havoc wrought by storm. And in the full radiance of that silvery splendour Aubrey Leigh, leaning against the sea-weed covered capstan of the quay, round which coils of wet rope glistened like the body of a sleeping serpent, told to an audience of human hearers for the first time the story of his life, and adventures, and the varied experiences he had gone through in order ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I don't know what I answered, or what they rejoined; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then, I saw him standing alone, in a seaman's frock and trousers: a rope in his hand, or slung to his wrist: another round his body: and several of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Edward professed to discredit the information, and, apparently, took no steps in consequence. But when the ship was to be got under weigh, the lieutenant complained to him that the men were sulky, and would not go round with the capstan. He then came forward, and declaring his knowledge of their intentions, drew his sword, and ordered the officers to follow his example. "You can never die so well," he said, "as on your own deck quelling a mutiny; ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... they had killed one or two of ours, as the latter had no one to command or direct them—because the said Doctor, as soon as they came in to close quarters with the enemy, had thrown himself down behind the capstan of the ship with a number of mattresses—the troops became so demoralized that no one was able to accomplish anything. Although some of them went up to the said Doctor and told him to board the ship, or to send troops on board of it with an order, he would not do so, as he was ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... madrepores, through myriads of charming fish—girelles, glyphisidri, pompherides, diacopes, and holocentres—I recognised certain debris that the drags had not been able to tear up—iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, bullets, capstan fittings, the stem of a ship, all objects clearly proving the wreck of some vessel, and now carpeted with living flowers. While I was looking on this desolate scene, Captain Nemo said, in a ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... repel boarders!" cried Raoul, springing aft to the capstan and seizing his own arms—"Come up lively, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "After capstan here! Get a strain on the line, Mr. Rolfe!" And while the dripping rope crawled in through the fair-lead, cracking and twanging to the strain of the ship's arrested drift, he stood at the rail, rifle in ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... kid gloves, and pails, And candlesticks, and potted quails, And capstan-bars, and scales and weights, And ornaments for ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... rock at its bottom is established. A single workman may, by the aid of a rudder, direct the boat to any required part of the stream; and when it is necessary to move up the rapid, as the channel is cut, he can easily cause the boat to advance by means of a capstan. ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... rowboat stage of the journey, awoke on the deck of the Isis and gazed wonderingly about. In her ears was the sound of anchor chains upon the capstan. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... The fifth night after he was missing we heard a fearful noise right in a cage wot had a lion in it. We run to the place with shootin' irons an' spears and capstan bars, thinkin' the lion was loose. When we got there we found the orang-outang had twisted one o' the bars o' the cage loose an' got inside and disturbed Mr. Lion's best nap. Mr. Lion didn't like it, an' he gets up, and in about two minutes he makes mince meat o' the orang-outang. When we got there ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... position between the parallel vessels. A horizontal two-cylinder engine of the same power, fitted with reversing gear, placed in the middle of the foremost iron girder, raises and lowers the bucket ladder by the interposition of a strongly framed capstan, as shown on Fig. 5. The gearing throughout is of friction pulleys and worm and wormwheel. It is driven ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... here as elsewhere. For instance, a particular portion of the breech mechanism of a gun used to take one hour and twenty minutes to make. On the Dilution plan it is done on a capstan, and takes six minutes. Where 500 women were employed before the war, there are now close on 9,000, and there will be thousands more, requiring one skilled man as tool-setter to about nine or ten women. In a great gun-carriage shop, ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... between rollers, catching breath Between the advancing grave and breaking death, Then shooting up into the sunbright smooth To watch the advancing roller bare her tooth; And days of labour also, loading, hauling; Long days at winch or capstan, heaving, pawling; The days with oxen, dragging stone from blasting, And dusty days in mills, and hot days masting. Trucking on dust-dry deckings smooth like ice, And hunts in mighty wool-racks after mice; Mornings with buckwheat when ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... are in operation in Iowa, and they are giving excellent satisfaction, as attested by such men as Thos. B. Wales, Jr., of Iowa City, and Daniel H. Wheeler, Secretary of the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture. The apparatus is upon the old principle of the mole ditcher requiring the same capstan power. One team is sufficient to run it. The apparatus is composed of a beam or sill, horizontal in position, and a coulter seven feet long at the rear end of the beam, and perpendicular to it a spirit level attached to the beam, aids in regulating. The coulter can be run anywhere from ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... before we were aware, so that we had to drop anchor in the open sea, broke our cable and lost our anchor, and had to let fell another, in weighing which afterwards our men were sore distressed; for, owing to the heaving of the ship with the sea, the capstan ran round with so much violence as to throw the men from the bars, dashed out the brains of one man, broke the leg of another, and severely hurt several more. At length we hove up our anchor, and ran to a place called Tanay. where we rode under the lee of an island, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... her child,—Hermione's son, his son, born to the lot of a free man of Athens or a slave of Xerxes according as his elders played their part this day. Only a glimpse,—the throng of strangers opened to disclose them closed again; Glaucon leaned on a capstan. All the strength for the moment ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... sounded the death-knell of the shanty. Aboard the steamer there were practically no sails to be manipulated; the donkey-engine and steam winch supplanted the hand-worked windlass and capstan. By the end of the seventies steam had driven the sailing ship from the seas. A number of sailing vessels lingered on through the eighties, but they retained little of the corporate pride and splendour ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... break of the poop and frowned upon by the front of the warehouse. I plumped down on to my chest near the after hatch as if my legs had been jerked from under me. I felt suddenly very tired and languid. The ship-keeper, whom I could hardly make out hung over the capstan in a fit of weak pitiful coughing. He gasped out very low 'Oh! dear! Oh! dear!' and struggled for breath so long that I ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside; The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco, The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan; Evening—me in my room—the setting sun, The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Soon Earl Hakon's war-ship, crowded with rowers and fighting-men, entered the strait. Seeing, as he supposed, but two harmless merchant-vessels lying on either side of the channel, the young earl bade his rowers pull between the two. Suddenly there is a stir on the quiet merchant-vessels. The capstan bars are manned; the sunken cable is drawn taut. Up goes the stern of Earl Hakon's entrapped warship; down plunges her prow into the waves, and the water pours into the doomed boat. A loud shout is heard; the quiet merchant-vessels swarm with mail-clad men, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... which was to the westward of our present station; and next morning, the weather proving favourable, we endeavoured to weigh, in order to proceed thither, mustering all the strength we could, obliging even the sick, who could hardly stand on their legs, to assist; yet the capstan was so weakly manned, that it was near four hours before we could heave the cable right up and down: after which, with our utmost efforts, though with many surges and some additional purchases to increase our strength, we found it utterly impossible to start the anchor ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... anybody else laughed at, though he enjoyed some little jokes of his own that nobody else seemed to appreciate. Especially Mabel. She seemed to be enjoying herself at the other side of the table, laughing at the stories that Major Capstan was telling her. From the Major's expression, Luke diagnosed that the stories were not quite—well, not exactly—oh, you know. Would it be Doom Dagshaw or Major Capstan? Oh, what ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... topsails and fired a gun, followed soon after by another, as a signal to way. The merchantmen at once began to make sail, not so quick an operation as on board the man-of-war. The pipe played cheerily, round went the capstan, and in short time we, with fully fifty other vessels, many of them first-class Indiamen, with a fair breeze, were standing down Channel; the sky bright, the sea blue, while their white sails, towering upwards to the heavens, shone in the sunbeams ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... as she had cleared the Irish coast a sullen gray-headed old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat down on her steam-capstan used for hauling up the anchor. Now the capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly painted red and green; besides which, nobody likes ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... jumping off these breakwaters—and it really is rather a lark—you may tramp along the sea front quite near up to where the fishing-luggers lie, each with a capstan all to itself, under the little extra old town the red-tanned fishing-nets live in, in houses that are like sailless windmill-tops whose plank walls have almost merged their outlines in innumerable coats of tar, laid by long generations ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... morning over the round shoulder of the Calf, the little city awoke. There were the clicks of the capstan, and the shouts of the men as the nets came back to the boats, heavy and white with fish. All being aboard, the men went down on the deck, according to their wont, every man on his knee with his face in his cap, and then leapt up with a shout (perhaps an oath), swung to the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... drifted the boat out of hearing, and Hardenberg sat down on the capstan head, turning his back to his comrades. There was a long silence. Then ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... came rowing into the sound with a manned ship; and as they thought these were but two merchant-vessels that were lying in the sound, they rowed between them. Then Olaf and his men draw the cable up right under Hakon's ship's keel and wind it up with the capstan. As soon as the vessel's course was stopped her stern was lifted up, and her bow plunged down; so that the water came in at her fore-end and over both sides, and she upset. King Olaf's people took Earl Hakon and all his men whom they could get hold of out of the water, and made them ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... but it is everywhere recognized by the African who knows Europeans as "marimba." Thus Owen tells us (p. 308) "that at the mouth of the Zambesi it is called 'Tabbelah,'" evidently the Arabic "Tablah" Another favourite instrument is a clapper, made of two bamboos some five feet long, and thick as capstan bars,—it is truly the castanet ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... shore, and I am alone on board the ship 'Yorkshire,' bound for Melbourne. Everything is in confusion on board. The decks are littered with stores, vegetables, hen-coops, sheep-pens, and coils of rope. There is quite a little crowd of sailors round the capstan in front of the cabin door. Two officers, with lists before them, are calling over the names of men engaged to make up our complement of hands, and appointing ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... Downes in the highest terms. Percival seems to be the very pattern of old integrity; taking as much care of Uncle Sam's interests as if all the money expended were to come out of his own pocket. This quality was displayed in his resistance to the demand of a new patent capstan for the revenue-cutter, which, however, Scott is resolved in such a sailor-like way to get, that he will probably succeed. Percival spoke to me of how his business in the yard absorbed him, especially the fitting of the Columbus seventy-four, of which ship he discoursed ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The capstan was manned, and worked to a merry tune that struck chill to the bereaved; yards were braced for casting, anchor hove, catted, and fished, sail was spread with amazing swiftness, the ship's head dipped, and slowly and gracefully paid off towards the ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... was a single figure upon the deck that did not seem mad with terror. A huge fellow he was who stood leaning against the capstan watching the wild antics of his fellows with a certain wondering expression of incredulity, the while a contemptuous smile curled his lips. As Barbara Harding chanced to look in his direction he also chanced to turn his eyes toward the wheelhouse. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... finding we could get no more information from them, we weighed; the natives all left us very quietly as soon as the capstan was manned, and by signs appeared to wish us to revisit them. During the whole time they were on board, they behaved perfectly well, and did not make any attempt at stealing, though they must have seen many things most valuable ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... struck two fingers on the capstan after the manner of a tuning-fork, and, holding them gravely to his ear as if to get the right pitch, began in a really fine manly voice to chant the ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... the ship lay in four fathoms water. On the 16th we were busily employed rigging jury-masts. Towards the evening it moderated, and about four in the morning of the 17th we had the cheering happiness to find she had swung to her anchor. The hands were instantly turned to the capstan, and we hove short on the sheet cable. The night signal was then made for the assistance of boats, and having happily succeeded in warping her into deep water, we made sail (with which we steered her) with a fine breeze from the eastward, and anchored ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... the young beasts requiring to be broken in to the yoke. An experienced and expert stockman enters the enclosure carrying in his hand a pine sapling, 12 or 15 feet in length, at the end of which is a running noose of raw hide or strong hemp rope, attached to a strong rope which is passed round a capstan outside the stockyard and near to a corner post. With considerable dexterity, not infrequently accompanied by personal danger, the man slips the noose over the horns of the beast he wishes to secure, when he immediately jumps over the rails, and with ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... bent over a capstan; the great beam rose, became horizontal, reared itself almost vertically, and being overweighted at the end, bent like a huge reed. The soldiers, who were crowded together, were hidden up to their chins; only their helmet-plumes ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... the men. Their answer was, that she certainly was not. He then gave these orders,—"Veer the ship, and lay her head to the westward: let some of the best men be employed in refitting the rigging, and the carpenter in getting crows and capstan-bars to prevent our wounded spars from coming down: and get the wine up for the people, with some bread, for it may be half an hour good before we are again in action." But when the French came up, their comrade made signals of distress, and they all hoisted out their boats ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... boy, singing in a shrill treble the sea chantey which seamen sing the wide world over when they man the capstan bars and break the anchors out for "Frisco" port. It was only a little boy who had never seen the sea, but two hundred feet beneath him rolled the Sacramento. "Young" Jerry he was called, after "Old" Jerry, his father, from whom he had learned the song, as well as received his shock of ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... given two more bills, first, to find "whether in April 1643 Ingle, being then at Mattapanian,[15] St. Clement's hundred, said 'that Prince Rupert was Prince Traitor & Prince rogue and if he had him aboard his ship he would whip him at the capstan.'" This bill met the fate of the others, but the second charging him with saying "that the king (meaning o^r Gover L. K. Charles) was no king neither would be no king, nor could be no king unless he did ioine with the Parlam^t," caused the jury to disagree and no verdict having been reached ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... had been partaken of in the most deliberate way as far as he was concerned, he turned to the officers, all smiles, and began giving orders in the coolest of fashions and all guided by so much judgment that by carefully laying out anchors, the use of the capstan, haulage, and taking advantage of the wind, the sloop soon rose upon an even keel and rested at last in a safe position. The tide that ran up as far as the black king's city did the rest, and the next day the sloop lay at anchor just where the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... though there were long reaches in the river with depth sufficient for a ship of larger draught, yet every now and then we found ourselves in shoal water of about three feet. No sooner was the boat got off one bank by might and main, and steady hauling on capstan and anchor laid out ahead, almost never astern, and we got a few miles of fair steering, than again we heard that sound, abhorred by all of us—a slight bump of the bow, and rush of sand along the ship's side, and we were again fast for a few hours, or a ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... that took in he give tongue like a beagle-pup, an' was properly kicked down the ladder for so doin'. Well, there we lay—engines stopped, rollin' to the swell, all dark, yards cock-billed, an' that merry tune yowlin' from the upper bridge. We fell in on the foc'sle, leavin' a large open space by the capstan, where our sail-maker was sittin' sewin' broken firebars into the foot of an old 'ammick. 'E looked like a corpse, an' Mucky had another fit o' hysterics, an' you could 'ear us breathin' 'ard. It beat ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... inventor of the speaking-trumpet, and also greatly improved the capstan and other instruments. He owed his baronetcy to King Charles II., and was one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber and Master of Mechanics. He died in 1696, and was buried at Hammersmith. There ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... one anchor lifted and the other chain shortened in: her top-sails and topgallant sails were cast off, ready to cant her at the right moment for hauling in. An officer stood ready by the crew manning the capstan, and right aft two more officers were pacing back and forth with their hands clasped under ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... while after she had cleared the Irish coast a sullen, gray-headed old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat down on the steam capstan, used for hauling up the anchor. Now, the capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly painted red and green; besides which, nobody cares ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... way, so that it can easily be replaced by a spare screw should it be broken by the ice. But such an arrangement is not usual in the case of the rudder, and, while with our small crew, and with the help of the capstan, we could hoist the rudder on deck in a few minutes in case of any sudden ice-pressure or the like, I have known it take sealers with a crew of over 60 men several hours, or even a whole day, to ship a ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... would spend whole days on the wharves, all bustle and excitement, sometimes seated on the capstan of the Sprightly Bess or perched in the nettings of the Oriole, of which ship old Stanwix was now captain. He had grown gray in Mr. Carvel's service, and good Mrs. Stanwix was long since dead. Often we would mount together on the little horse Captain Daniel had given me, Dorothy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... It was made in Rome, in 1871, and, winning the first prize of a gold medal at Parma, in that year, was presented to the city of Boston by Mr. A. P. Chamberlain of Concord, Mass. It represents Columbus as a youth, seated upon the capstan of a vessel, with an open book in his hand, his foot carelessly swinging in an iron ring. In addition to this statue, a replica of the Old Isabella statue (described on page 171, ante), is, it is understood, to be presented ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Bunting, I would have the signal for sailing shown. Let each ship fire a recall-gun for her boats. Half an hour later, show the bunting to unmoor; and send my boat ashore as soon as you begin to heave on the capstan. So, good-morning, my fine fellow, and ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... on a rock and damaged her forepart. The usual measures in such a case were taken immediately, but outside the chain of madreporic rocks no depth could be sounded. It was consequently impossible to cast anchor, or to use the capstan. What course had best be pursued in this critical situation? The vessel beat violently against the rocks, and a host of pirogues waited in expectation of a shipwreck, eager to clutch their prey. Fortunately at the end ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... bamboo reefing battens, which although destroying the smooth set of the canvas are infinitely superior to our reefing points, inasmuch as the largest sail can be reefed from deck, or rather reefs itself, just as quickly as the capstan can lower it, and without that hard work, waste of time and risk which going aloft or along the spars in bad weather ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... Naples, trying to pick up the lost scent. With the same good fighting man he served at the Nile, where the men of his command sponged and rammed and trained until, when the last tricolour had come down, they hove up the sheet anchor and fell dead asleep upon the top of each other under the capstan bars. Then, as a second lieutenant, he was in one of those grim three-deckers with powder- blackened hulls and crimson scupper-holes, their spare cables tied round their keels and over their bulwarks to hold them together, which carried the ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which attaches the cable to the anchor (called an "anchor shackle", to distinguish it from a joining shackle) projects and is secured by a forelock; but since any projection in a joining shackle would be liable to be injured when the cable is running out or when passing around a capstan, the pins are made as shown at D, and are secured by a small pin d. This small pin is kept from coming out by being made a little short, and lead pellets are driven in at either end to fill up the holes in the shackle, which are made with a groove, so that as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... has seen an outward-bound clipper ship getting under way, and heard the "shanty-songs" sung by the sailors as they toiled at capstan and halliards, will probably remember that rhymeless ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... hardly know how long we were sailing home; it slipped my mind to take the time. About two o'clock I was halfway down the beach with Tony cursing above me and John doing the same below. Someone had 'messed up' our capstan wire. While Tony was putting that right in the dark—and pinching his fingers severely—the boat washed broadside on and began to fill. We had only five dozen fish. They ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... gold camps were carried from Glenora to Telegraph Creek in canoes, the steamers not being able to overcome the rapids except during high water. Even then they had usually to line two of the rapids—that is, take a line ashore, make it fast to a tree on the bank, and pull up on the capstan. The freight canoes carried about three or four tons, for which fifteen dollars per ton was charged. Slow progress was made by poling along the bank out of the swiftest part of the current. In the rapids a tow line was ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... and principal clearing about this lake, appeared to be quite a harbor for bateaux and canoes; seven or eight of the former were lying about, and there was a small scow for hay, and a capstan on a platform, now high and dry, ready to be floated and anchored to tow rafts with. It was a very primitive kind of harbor, where boats were drawn up amid the stumps,—such a one, methought, as the Argo might have been launched in. There were five ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... on the deck a few yards away, his back against a capstan. He looked supremely uncomfortable trying to read ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the sailor, now first observing that there were other men in the room. "'Tis that there's things for everything—there's the capstan for hawlin' up the anchor, and there's the woman for nussin'. They was ordained to it—not men—never, no—not men. Look at my hand." The sailor extended his arm across the table. "It's shakin' like a guitar-string when a nigger's playing—and all along of ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... leave her, with the prospect of a heavy blow, so near the Goblins, and they carried out the anchors in the wherry, and with the assistance of the capstan on the forward deck heaved her out into a secure position. The Woodville was safe for the night, and the supper-horn was sounding at the ferry-house. Nearly exhausted by their severe exertions, the boys ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... a scareder cook, for he dropped on the deck, and clapped his legs around a capstan and screamed, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... was wonderful to see how the cable was held in place during the rest of that night and a great part of the following day; and how, when they tried to improve the position of the ship by casting another anchor, they were able to raise the first one, which was very heavy, by working the capstan, although they found that the three cords of the cable were fretted, and only one remained entire—whereat they all were greatly astonished and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... in the right way," answered Noddy, as he took the end of the yard-arm rope, and, after passing it through a snatch-block, began to wind it around the barrel of the small capstan on the forecastle. ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... and then began to turn the capstan to loosen the moorings of the net. They loosened them at length and disengaged the imprisoned arm, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... ninety and odd hammocks were all stowed neatly in the netting, and covered with a snowy hammock-cloth; and the hands were active, unbitting the cable, shipping the capstan bars, &c. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... mate, with Walter, were standing with their sextants in hand taking an observation to ascertain the ship's latitude. Mr Lawrie having been in his surgery mixing some medicines for two men who were on the sick-list, was going forward when he observed a number of the crew with capstan-bars, boat-stretchers, and other weapons in their hands, the boatswain and Tom Hulk being among them. He at once hurried to the captain and told ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... me. I was in the boat with the captain some hours while he had it. But do you suppose he could hand a letter to a seaman? No, indeed; not even to an ordinary seaman. When we got to the ship he gave it to the first mate; the first mate gave it to the second mate, and he laid it, michingly, on the capstan-head, where I could ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... importation of household coal. Where Earl Godwin swooped down over twenty fathoms of water the little collier now painfully picks her way at high water. On shore stand the mariners of Hythe (in number four), manning the capstan. When the collier gets within a certain distance a hawser is thrown out, the capstan turns more or less merrily round, and the collier is beached, so that at low water she will stand ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... little beach of white shingle, just inside the harbour's mouth, so that all day long Kit could see the merchant-ships trailing in from sea, and passing up to the little town, or dropping down to the music of the capstan-song, and the calls and the creaking, as their crews hauled up the sails. Some came and went under bare poles in the wake of panting tugs; but those that carried canvas pleased Kit more. For a narrow coombe wound up behind the cottage, and down this coombe came not ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... minutes later, the clank of the capstan was heard and, going on deck, Harry found Lieutenant Hardy preparing to sail. As soon as the vessel was under way he came aft, ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... the fragment of dialogue which passed pretty often. Then the skipper inquired, "Do you want any cinder ashes?" The ashes were spread on the treacherous deck; the bars were fixed in the capstan, and the crew tramped on their chill round. Men often fell asleep at their dreary work, and walked on mechanically; sometimes the struggle lasted for an hour or two, until strong fellows were ready to lie down, and over the straining gang the icy wind roared and ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... on the deck-boards, and wormed his way slowly and ludicrously aft. He did not bring those uncouth vermiculations to a stop until he was well back in the shelter of a rusty capstan, cut off from the light by a lifeboat swinging on its davits. As he clambered to his feet again he saw this light suddenly go out and then reappear. As it did so he could make out a patrol-boat, gray and low-bodied, slinking forward through ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... windward of our buoy, we clewed up the light sails, backed our main topsail, and lowered a boat, which pulled off, and made fast a spare hawser to the buoy on the end of the slip-rope. We brought the other end to the capstan, and hove in upon it until we came to the slip-rope, which we took to the windlass, and walked her up to her chain, occasionally helping her by backing and filling the sails. The chain is then passed through the hawse-hole and round ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the schooner. I suppose some one had said that he heard a gun, and other's didn't. Of course the sound did not come to them under the shelter of the cliff as it did to me. Then came the sound of another gun, and then three or four close together; then orders were given sharply, the capstan was manned and the anchor run up, and they were not a minute getting her sails set. But under the shelter of the cliff there was not enough wind to fill them, and so the boats were manned, and she went gliding away until I could no longer make her out. They guessed, of course, that our ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the men ran down, the old capstan-bars were taken from the corners, and two men on each side inserted them into the holes, and waited for the order to tighten ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... possible. From now on there was to be no doubting, no turning back. A voice, high-pitched, echoed to me across the water, reaching my ears a mere thread of sound, the words indistinguishable. It must have been an order, for, a moment later, I distinguished the clank of capstan bars, as though men of the crew were engaged in warping the vessel off shore for greater safety. The movement was too deliberate and noiseless to mean the lifting of the anchor, nor was it accompanied by any flapping of sail, or shifting ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... performance, and a minute had scarcely passed before the upper masts were again in possession of their light sails. Then was heard the usual summons of, 'all hands up anchor, ahoy!' and the rapid orders of the young officers to 'man capstan-bars,' to 'nipper,' and finally to 'heave away.' The business of getting the anchor on board a cruiser and on board a ship engaged in commerce, is of very different degrees of labor, as well as of expedition. In the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... most horrible of all is flogging through the fleet. That's given for strikin' an officer, or tryin' to escape. It's a sickenin' thing. The victim is lashed by his wrists to a capstan-bar in the ship's long-boat, and all the ship's boats are lowered also, and each ship in harbour sends a boat manned by marines to attend. Then, with the master- at-arms and the ship's surgeon, the boat is cast off. The boatswain's mate begins the floggin', and the boat rows away to the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... warehouse at the mouth of the river was now to be begun. This was the building of a vessel above the cataract. The small craft which had brought La Motte and Hennepin with their advanced party had been hauled to the foot of the rapids at Lewiston, and drawn ashore with a capstan to save her from the drifting ice. Her lading was taken out, and must now be carried beyond the cataract to the calm water above. The distance to the destined point was at least twelve miles, and the steep ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... take downe top and top mastes: for the yce had so inuironed vs, that we could see neither land nor sea, as farre as we could kenne: so that we were faine to cut our cables to hang ouer boord for fenders, somewhat to ease the ships sides from the great and driry strokes of the yce: some with Capstan barres, some fending off with oares, some with plancks of two ynches thicke, which were broken immediatly with the force of the yce, some going out vpon the yce to beare it off with their shoulders from the ship. But the rigorousnes of the tempest ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... overgrown with ivy in large clusters and straggling creeping plants. We soon come upon a deep recess to the right, wherein stands a unique cumbersome screw-press, needing ten or a dozen men to work the unwieldy capstan which sets the juice flowing from the crushed grapes into the adjacent shallow trough. On our left hand are a couple of ancient reservoirs, formed out of huge blocks of stone, with the entrance to a long vaulted cellar filled with wine in cask. We advance slowly in the uncertain light along a succession ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... printed, and the quaintly phonetic spelling of the concluding word betrayed a rugged independence of thought which was certainly borne out by Captain John Stump's appearance. The written label might be wrong; not so that stamped by Neptune on a weather-beaten face and a figure like a capstan. Little more than five feet in height, he seemed to be quite five feet wide. If it be true that a poet is born, not made, Captain Stump was a master mariner from his cradle. Royson had never before seen such a man. Drawn out to Royson's stature he would yet ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... perambulation by visiting the promontory called "the Capstan"—or rather attempting that visit; for after mounting to nearly its height, by a circuitous path from the town, by which alone the ascent is possible, the side of the promontory being a mere precipice overlooking the ocean, a sudden gust of wind dashed ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... ye want a Southern Congressman fr'm th' cotton belt. A man that iver see salt wather outside iv a pork bar'l 'd be disqualified f'r th' place. He must live so far fr'm th' sea that he don't know a capstan bar fr'm a sheet anchor. That puts him in th' proper position to inspect armor plate f'r th' imminent Carnegie, an' insthruct admirals that's been cruisin' an' fightin' an' dhrinkin' mint juleps f'r thirty years. He must know th' difference ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... obliged to set her on fire and retreat. She continued burning for some time, and at last blew up with such an explosion as shook the whole town like an earthquake, unroofed three hundred houses, and broke all the glass and earthenware for three leagues around. A capstan that weighed two hundred pounds was transported into the place, and falling upon a house, levelled it to the ground; the greatest part of the wall towards the sea tumbled down; and the inhabitants were overwhelmed with consternation, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and no pay has made JACK a dull boy. His windpipe refuses to furnish the whilom exhilarating tooraloo for his hornpipe. Silent are the "yarns" with which he used to while away the time when off his watch and huddling under the lee of the capstan with his messmates. And then, when he comes ashore, it is only to be devoured by the sharks that lie in wait for him and drag him away bodily to their obscene ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... Upon the capstan bar sat a sailor in oilskin clothes, who had probably been on shore the previous night and not closed his eyes, and who was making great efforts to keep awake. His head, however, would still keep nodding; and from time to time he stood up and tried to keep himself warm by exercising ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... or three hours, the first net is hauled on board, when, if it is found that a number of fish have been caught, the whole of the net is hauled in by means of a capstan and the warp to which the nets are fastened. The fish are then shaken out, and the vessel beats up again to the spot from which the net was first shot, and the process ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm, I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm; I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw, And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw; I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark, I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark; I had ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... her time," said the captain angrily. "He don't know what he's talking about, gentlemen," he continued, turning to the brothers. "I'm very sorry, but I'm not going to have any more time wasted. Now then, my lads, capstan bars, and bring that anchor up with a run. You, James Lynton," he went on, as the men ran to obey their orders, "I'm ashamed of your goings-on. What have you been about? Walking ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... desist, persist, resist, insist, assist, exist, consistent, stead, rest, restore, restaurant, contrast; (2) stature, statute, stadium, stability, instable, static, statistics, ecstasy, stamen, stamina, standard, stanza, stanchion, capstan, extant, constabulary, apostate, transubstantiation, status quo, armistice, solstice, interstice, institute, restitution, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... watch of this, the "Iron Duke's" first night on the Chinese territory, the steel hawser was brought to the capstan, but a piece of yarn would have been equally efficacious; for, under the immense strain, it snapped like a bow string, and, as there was now nothing to keep the stern in check, away she went broadside on ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... discharged cargo, dropped down with the stream on the 15th, leaving us to reflect in undisturbed solitude on the dreary prospects before us. The clank of the capstan, while the operation of weighing was being executed, echoing from the surrounding hills, suggested the question, "When shall that sound be heard again?" From the melancholy reverie which this idea suggested I was roused by the voice of my fellow exile, "the companion of my joys ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... afterwards, but the carcases, which were to have done the greatest execution, being wet, did not take fire; yet the shock was so terrible, that it threw down part of the town wall, shook every house in the town, and overthrew the roofs of above 300 which were nearest. The capstan, weighing above a ton, was thrown over the wall on the top of a house, which it beat down. A similar machine had been used for blowing up the bridge at the siege of ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... small and heavily equipped vessel for hauling the logs thru the lakes. When its operations in one lake are finished, a wire cable is taken ashore and made fast to some tree or other safe anchorage, the capstan on its forward deck is revolved by steam and the "alligator" hauls itself out of the water across lots to the next ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... they in the ship were busy at staying the stump of the mizzen-mast, this being the one to which they proposed to attach the big rope, taking it through a great iron-bound snatch-block, secured to the head of the stump, and then down to the mizzen-capstan, by which, and a strong tackle, they would be able to heave the line ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... the capstan. He could smell the sea, and through the open window of the cabin could distinguish the light in the chaplain's house on the hill. The trampling ceased, the vessel began to move slowly—the Commandant's boat appeared below him for an instant, making her way back—the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... condition was little bettered by the downfall of Napoleon: with the accession of Charles X. they were more oppressed even than before—more than they could bear; for so hard were they pressed, that, as one has seen when sailors are working a capstan, back of a sudden the bars flew, knocking to the earth the men who were endeavoring to work them. The Revolution came, and up sprung Caricature in France; all sorts of fierce epigrams were discharged at the flying monarch, and speedily were prepared, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee stains, and bearing a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin, walked upon a dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the visiting "watch below," transformed into graceless ladies ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me,'Sir,' and they named me Puddinghead; till at last we might be called friends. During many a night-watch, when I have sneaked away for a snooze among the hen-coops, has Tom saved me from detection, and the consequent pleasant occupation of carrying about a bucket of water on the end of a capstan bar. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... properly on the bottom when replacing the action is obviated. Other methods also are employed which are readily understood upon slight examination, but are essentially similar to the above. Instead of the bottom, a capstan screw is used in some ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... inadequately, to these calls. Men in truth were worn out with labor and excitement. "My people were so extremely jaded," wrote Captain Miller of the "Theseus," who obeyed a summons to move, "that as soon as they had hove our sheet anchor up they dropped under the capstan bars, and were asleep in a moment in every sort of posture, having been then working at their fullest exertion, or fighting, for near twelve hours." Nelson, in common with other great leaders, could not be ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... is the trader of Stepney Town? Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending! Where is the trader of Stepney Town? His gold's on the capstan, his blood's on his gown, All for bully Rover Jack, Reaching on the weather tack ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and eight of the best men jumped into her, but she had scarcely got to the ship's stern, when she was whirled to the bottom, and every soul in her perished. The rest of the boats were soon washed to pieces on the deck.—We then made a raft of the davit, capstan-bars and some boards, and waited with resignation, for divine Providence ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... the rock, his arms folded, and his thoughts all absorbed in that one thing. A low railing ran round the quarter-deck. The helmsman stood in a sheltered place which rose only two feet above the deck. The captain stood by the companion-way, looking south at the storm; the mate was near the capstan, and all were intent and absorbed in their expectation of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... for supper, instead of bread-and-milk. In the morning, my uncle took me with him to the docks, where he had some business to do. That was the first time I ever really saw big ships, and that was the first time I spoke with the sailors. There was a capstan on one of the wharves, and men were at work, heaving round it, hoisting casks out of a West Indiaman. One of the men said, "Come on, young master; give us a hand on the bar here." So I put my hands ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... got in a horse-trough, which my partner borrowed from the Indians up there at Selma while they were at prayers, and went down to sound around No. 8, and while I was gone my partner got aground on the hills at Hickman. After three days' labor we finally succeeded in sparring her off with a capstan bar, and went on to Memphis. By the time we got there the river had subsided to such an extent that we were able to land where the Gayoso House now stands. We finished loading at Memphis, and loaded part of the stone for the present St. Louis Court House ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... rowed to the reef, one on either side. The anchors were firmly fixed into the rock and, one being taken from the head and the other from the stern, the crews set to work at the capstan, and speedily had the vessel safely moored, broadside on, across the ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... continued the excited old man, as though he were bossing a capstan crew starting one of ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... of, requiring judgment and discretion as well as courage. At length we went out to Spithead and took our powder on board. Blue Peter was flying, the remainder of the stores for the officers came on board, the ship was cleared, the band struck up, the seamen tramped round with the capstan bars to a merry tune, the topsails were sheeted home, and with a blue sky above us and bright water below, we stood down the Solent towards the Needle passage. It was a gay and beautiful sight. I had been so long on shore that I had almost ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... day we worked with the warps. Nooses were dropped over the upright ends of the logs at the foot of the jam, and the whole gang was set to pull on them. Later in the day, a heavy capstan was rigged. The hawsers broke like twine. It was impossible to start a log, so tremendous was the weight of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... decided at once. From daybreak Jeanne was up and waiting for her father, who dressed more slowly. They walked in the dew across the level and then through the wood vibrant with the singing of birds. The vicomte and Pre Lastique were seated on a capstan. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... couldn't make this billiard table move an inch if I talked to it from now till the end of days—could I? Well, the governor is like that, too, when the fits are on him. He's bored. Nothing's worthwhile, nothing's good enough, that's mere sense. But if I saw a capstan bar lying about here, I would soon manage to shift that billiard table of yours a good many inches. And that's all there is ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad |
