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The merchantman must, before sailing, obtain or endeavour to obtain, the sailing orders issued by the convoying squadron. The value of a convoy appointed by Government arises in a great degree from its taking the ships under control, as well as under protection; but this control cannot be exercised except by means of sailing orders.
"Look'ee here, matey," said one of his fellow-workers to him, in a transient fit of good-fellowship which the prospect of approaching sprees had engendered in him even towards one whom all on board had felt vaguely to be of a different order, and disliked accordingly, "you don't seem to like a jolly merchantman but, maybe, you wouldn't take more kindly to a man-o'-war.
Roger, slinging the telescope over his shoulders, climbed up the rigging, and took a steady look at the stranger. She appeared to him to be a large ship a man-of-war carrying probably forty guns or more, with which the Tiger would be utterly unable to cope. On coming down he told Hamet his opinion. "If she is a merchantman, the larger her size the better prize she will prove," he observed.
They could look down on the brown roofs of the port-town, the forest of masts, the merchantman unloading lumber from the Euxine, the merchantman loading dried figs for Syria; but most of all on the numbers of long black hulls, some motionless on the placid harbour, some propped harmlessly on the shore. Hermione clouded as she saw them, and glanced away.
He had made up his mind to ship as an apprentice on a merchantman, but I have talked the matter over with him, and he has now decided to join a man-of-war.” “A very good choice,” the officer said. “I suppose you can read and write, lad?” “Yes, sir,” Will said, suppressing a smile. “Know a bit more, perhaps?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, if you are civil and well behaved, you will get on.
They were close alongside one of the largest ships a heavy merchantman, she seemed when the loud barking of a dog was heard. Still no one was aroused. It increased in fury as they approached. At last one of the watch must have seen the strange boats, for he shouted to his shipmates. They did not understand their danger till the British seamen were climbing up the ship's sides.
Though he had been some years at sea, he had never contrived to learn anything about nautical affairs; and one day, in Malta harbour, he went on board a large merchantman, which happened to be brought up at no great distance from his ship, and was going below before he discovered that he had got into the wrong box. The assistant-surgeon, O'Farrall, was an Irishman, and much more of a character.
It only remains now to be told that he escaped to America, where he entered as a sailor on board a merchantman; and although his superior acquirements and conduct might have easily bettered his fortune in his new walk in life, the dread of detection never left his mind, and he preferred the hardships before the mast to the vacillation of hope and fear a more conspicuous position would have exposed him to.
The brig under reduced sail, seen through the fog, looked probably more like a merchantman than a man-of-war. The lugger ran up the tricolour and fired a round-shot at the brig. The first lieutenant, springing on deck with his trousers in one hand and his coat in the other, ordered the brig to be put about, and then all hands to make sail, and the guns to be cast loose and run out.
And again flags decked the château and town, and cannon roared. The Henri IV was part merchantman and part man-of-war. Her ports bristled with cannon, her marines wore formidable cutlasses, and the law on board was military in the strictest sense.
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