United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
However, the storm was so violent, that I saw what is not often seen, the master, the boatswain, and some others more sensible than the rest, at their prayers, and expecting every moment when the ship would go to the bottom.
The boatswain looked greatly disconcerted, for he had evidently counted on being joined by the greater part of his shipmates. "Now," said the captain, "I am averse to putting men in irons, but as these have shown a spirit of insubordination which would have been destructive, if successful, to all on board, they must take the consequences.
Truly it must have been a sinecure." "I don't know what that last may be," replied old Tom, "but I heard our boatswain, in the Minerve, who talked politics a bit, say, `as how half the pensions were held by a pack of damned sharks; but in this here shark's case, it wasn't in money, master; but he'd regular rations of bullock's liver to persuade him to remain in the harbour, and no one dare swim on shore when he was cruising round and round the ships.
That large mind, equal to the highest duties of the general and the statesman, contracted itself to the most minute details of naval architecture and naval discipline. The chief ambition of the great conqueror and legislator was to be a good boatswain and a good ship's carpenter. Holland and England therefore had for him an attraction which was wanting to the galleries and terraces of Versailles.
What his object was in so doing it was difficult to say, unless he thought that he should keep the midshipmen more in his power by preventing them from knowing whereabouts they were. Just before breakfast the boatswain came out of his cabin, carefully locking the door behind him.
The petty officers seldom interfered; one old boatswain remarking, when he heard the noise of blows in the forecastle, "Blast them, let 'em slug one another's heads off; it will keep 'em out of mischief." And it generally did, for the combatants were usually fast friends the next day. As soon as the new ship was cleaned up, and put in order, drill began.
Hurrying on, they saw dimly through the gloom numberless wings flapping in the air, circling in the darkness, now advancing, now rising, while the figure of the stout boatswain appeared in their midst whirling round his fowling-piece, with which he every now and then caught a bird more daring than its companions, and brought it to the ground or sent it shrieking away.
By good fortune the pistol did not go off, but only flashed in the pan; by the light of which the carpenter, observing that he should have been shot instead of me, it so provoked him that he ran in the dark to the boatswain, and having wrenched the pistol out of his hand, he beat him to such a degree that he almost killed him.
"You observe," he said, taking a piece of chalk and making a triangle on the table, "in this figure we have three points, each equidistant from each other; and we have three combatants, so that, placing one at each point, it is all fair play for the three. Mr. Easy, for instance, stands here, the boatswain here, and the purser's steward at the third corner.
Where the Admiralty scored, in the matter of ship protections, and scored heavily, was when the protected person went ashore. For when on shore the protected master, mate, boatswain, carpenter, apprentice or seaman no longer enjoyed protection unless he was there "on ship's duty." The rule was most rigorously, not to say arbitrarily, enforced. John Roberts, 11 July 1746. Capt.
Word Of The Day