Word: longboat
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...steam, eventually (1944) became the gold-encrusted commodore of the Cunard-White Star Line and successively master of the world's greatest sea queens, Mary and Elizabeth. Now 75 and living in well-fed Australian retirement, Sir James Gordon Partridge Bisset sits in the lee of the longboat and spins a salty yarn of life in an oldtime square-rigger. On his first voyage, Bisset was seasick. The mate gave him an old-fashioned cure: a pannikin of sea water poured down his protesting gullet. Though he has never been seasick since, Commodore Bisset notes ruefully: "I have always...
...Aleutian island. The faces of some were painted blue, he says, and they were "screeching" at each other at the top of their lungs. The Russians sent men ashore to parley. The Aleuts held one of them captive, and tried with unmannerly glee to drag the Russian longboat on to the rocks by its painter. Waxell called for musketry, aimed high; the Aleuts fell flat on their faces from shock. All in all, the Russians were unimpressed with the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, especially with their custom of plugging the nose with tough grass: "When they took this...