Word: seamens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Very Sweet." Back in London after the war, Philip, now 6 ft. 2 in. and handsome, was one of the most popular bachelors at Mayfair parties. The Navy gave him shore duty at Corsham in Wiltshire, instructing seamen in current events and swimming. Many an evening Philip spent in the "local," The Methuen Arms, playing darts and taking good-naturedly a mild joshing from the townsmen on reports of his romance with the Princess...
Forgotten Faces. Her crew were not seamen but romantics who invested ?100 apiece in the venture. Of the ten men in her forecastle when she left Plymouth and plunged into a night of gale, only one had ever been to sea before. Soon almost all were seasick. Skipper Seligman felt a gloomy awe at his own temerity. He and the first mate, Lars, had to shout in melodramatic alarm to rouse hands to shorten sail. After the two-day gale had blown out, "faces that we had almost forgotten appeared blinking...
Even when practice had made good seamen of all the amateurs aboard the Cap Pilar, the vagaries of winds, currents and outdated charts continued to give Skipper Seligman moments of agonizing suspense. The Cap Pilar's adventures-standing off the great surf of lonely Tristan da Cunha, fleeing before the howling westerlies from the Cape of Good Hope across nearly 6,000 miles of ocean to Tasmania, delicately threading between the coral reefs of the South Seas-are fascinating reminders of the age of seamanship...
...brig Sophie, of Portland, Me., wallowed for 119 days in Atlantic gales while the sickened French passengers grew more & more scandalized at the improvidence of American seamen. Items: the captain rarely reckoned their position, the ship carried no spare sailcloth to repair the rags she sailed by, the logbook covers had to be unraveled for thread to patch the sails, food and liquor were so carelessly stowed that quantities of both were lost. Americans, observed Moreau, "rely on luck more than on anything else in making a voyage...
This is an up from serfdom story, relating the upward surge of beaten-down seamen to a position of self respect and the only dignity they have ever known. The Union, says Boyer, has gotten the men something they can put in their wallets, and in their stomachs. It has given them something to think about, a purpose. But more important, it has done something for the people as people, restoring to them a belief in themselves and in the possibilities of social action. There is a new kind of man in America, the union man. He is the forecast...