Word: whalebacks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Atlantic the sailors in them were called rats. Packet rats talked in a peculiar idiom. To them the ocean was a slope, as it was to Virgil's sailors. From west to east they called "downhill," from east to west "uphill." Last week a 20-foot whaleback lifeboat with four Dutchmen in it sailed out of the Thames into the Channel. One of the Dutchmen is 70 years old. He, Jacob Schuttvaer, designer of the lifeboat, wants to prove it is unsinkable. His boat has neither wireless nor auxiliary motor. With him are Captain Smith, Helmsman Gelissen, First Officer...
...Great Lakes freighters are long, na-row-beamed, flattish-decked vessels, modifications of the original roundish-decked "whalebacks." The "whalebacks" were so eminently fitted for transporting bulk cargoes like ore, coal and grain that they became world-famed. So now, in popular usage, "whaleback" is often wrongly applied to any lake carrier. Sculptor Daniel Chester French (designer of the Lincoln at Washington, the John Harvard at Cambridge) followed this popular conception when, in his symbolic group before the unwashed Cleveland postoffice, he placed a whaleback on the arm of Commerce to typify modern lake traffic...