Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
The `mounseers, as the Captain explained to Bob, were beaten off in the battle and most of their vessels captured, a result owing largely to the part played by the gallant Marie Rose; though, sad be it to relate, while resisting all the efforts made by the enemy to carry her by the board, being somewhat top-heavy, "she `turned the turtle' at the very moment when her guns were brought to bear a-starboard, to give a final broadside to the French admiral and settle the action, the poor thing then incontinently sinking to the bottom, where her bones yet lie."
"We'll give 'em a little hail this time, for they haven't the cover we have. If we don't get aboard before the other comes up, they get the trick." The nameless ship bounded forward into the night as he spoke, and, soon coming up with the helm a-starboard, she was not fifty yards away from her long opponent when the deadly steel storm began its havoc.
He was a giant Swede whose feet resembled twin scow models and whose clenched fists, properly smoked and cured, might have passed anywhere for picnic hams. He was intelligent, competent and belligerent, with a broad face, slightly dished and plentifully scarred, while his wide flat nose had been stove in and shifted hard a-starboard.
The guns were pointed so as to sweep the ship from stem to taffrail at about the level of the top of the bulwarks; and, had the men been standing erect, we must have lost half of them. "Starboard your helm! hard a-starboard!" cried I to the man at the wheel, as the schooner rebounded from the chain; "let fly your starboard braces! Gigs and quarter-boats away!
Then a 12-inch shell struck her fore-turret, wrecked its interior and, as we subsequently learned, glanced off, entered the conning tower, killed everybody in it except two, destroyed the compass, and killed the man at the wheel, who, as he fell, jammed the helm hard a-starboard, causing the ship to swerve sharply out of the line and wheel round in a wide circle, completely upsetting the formation and seriously imperilling many of her sister ships.
Give her as good at least as she has given us." True Blue, nothing loth, began to take a sight along the gun. Just then the Captain had ordered the Ruby's helm to be put hard a-starboard, by which she came suddenly round on the opposite tack, and brought her larboard guns to bear on the enemy. True Blue, finding the ship going about, knew that no time was to be lost.
On discharging this fatal broadside the helm was put hard a-starboard; but it was found that the ship would not fetch sufficiently to windward, and near to the Goliath, if she anchored by the stern.
"I'll manage them both, never fear," whispered I. "When she swings, mind you put the helm a-starboard, Tom," said Bramble in my ear.
And land was nearer than they thought, for one morning Thorstan saw a darkening in the fog, a kind of shape, and then, quick as the thought, he put the ship about. She came round slowly, and at that moment the spars and rigging seemed alive with sea-birds. As the ship went round a huge black wall reared itself a-starboard, and he heard the waves at its foot.
The lee maintopsail braces were then slackened, to shiver the maintopsail; and the wind being taken out of it, the whole pressure was thrown on the headsail; the helm was then put a-starboard, and her bow paying off, righting herself, away flew the ship rapidly before the gale on an even keel.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking