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Updated: May 5, 2025
Wind, cold, and breakdowns of machinery the sailor accepts with dull indifference; shipwrecks, strandings, and disease he looks forward to as part of an inevitable fate; but fire goes nearer to cowing him than all other disasters put together; and the sight of his fellow-seamen attacked by these same desolating flames arouses in him the warmest of his sympathy, and the full of his resourcefulness.
There are strandings and strandings, but I am safe to say that 90 per cent. of them are occasions in which a sailor, without dishonour, may well wish himself dead; and I have no doubt that of those who had the experience of their ship taking the ground, 90 per cent. did actually for five seconds or so wish themselves dead.
To be "run ashore" has the littleness, poignancy, and bitterness of human error. That is why your "strandings" are for the most part so unexpected. In fact, they are all unexpected, except those heralded by some short glimpse of the danger, full of agitation and excitement, like an awakening from a dream of incredible folly.
A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, "Good! and now for the seizings."
A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, "Good! and now for the seizings."
She may be saved by your efforts, by your resource and fortitude bearing up against the heavy weight of guilt and failure. And there are justifiable strandings in fogs, on uncharted seas, on dangerous shores, through treacherous tides.
The waters of the Nile being already low my dahabiya delayed by strandings had not been able to reach Luxor, and we had moored ourselves, as the darkness began to fall, at a casual spot on the bank. "We are quite near," the pilot had told me before departing to make his evening prayer; "in an hour, to-morrow, we shall be there."
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