A Book for the Hammock

There is a story told of some English sailors who, passing by the French Ambassador’s house, that was illuminated in celebration of a treaty of peace between France and Great Br...

And her people? As I live to write it, all hands were overboard! They had jumped—men, women, and boys—over the rail when they saw that the steamer was bound to come, and the foa...

Indeed, the history of our flags is the history of our Navy. Much of the interest one finds in reading the old accounts of naval battles lies in waiting to see who was the first...

It is very evident that Dryden perfectly understood the term as signifying the ropes at the clews or corners of sails. “_Quarter-deck_, the short upper deck.” This is as incorre...

I am not surprised, then, that many kinds of queer fish—of fish queerer than the trout with its rheumatically-warped tail, or the stickleback with the aspect of a mouse—should f...

Niceties in nomenclature may be found as low down even as the humble barge. For instance, there is the well-known sprit-sail barge; a vessel with a mainsail that sets on a sprit...

It is somewhat strange that Cornelius Vanderdecken, the well-known if not popular commander of the _Flying Dutchman_, should never have used the seabird as a messenger to his wi...

If the mermen were the pretty creatures’ husbands they would be driven wild with jealousy; for it is certain that in olden times—it may yet be the artless charmers’ practice—to...

It is true, nevertheless, that the mariners of certain nations in former times chose the eye in preference to the knotted line. The Dutch, in particular, though they always took...

Contrast such an experience with the cabins and food of a Holyhead boat—the swift journey, be the weather what it will, the brilliant, hospitable, comfortable hotels on either s...

At this juncture somebody who might have been the manager came sniffing curiously about me; the man went on with his work, and I moved off. Before quitting the yard, however, I...

In all naval history I can find nothing more remarkable than the immense courage and wonderful persistency of those old freebooters. Follow Dampier as he traverses the deep and...

Again, whither has vanished a feature of the old sea-life even yet more romantically interesting than the nautical masquerading of black-eyed Susans and yellow-haired Molls—the...

To _sag_ used to mean “to hang as a bag on one side.” I cannot find anything in this definition to correspond with the sea-term. It suggests the etymology, however, of the phras...

To those early eyes such monsters revealed themselves, that the like was never heard of before or since. A crew would come home and say that they had met with an extraordinary a...

Among strange vessels may be classed fabrics—no matter of what size—of copper, leather, canvas, cloth, and (for the age) iron. The ancient Briton’s coracle was the leather boat....

Lord Bacon amused his leisure by collecting the witty sayings of others; Horace Walpole delighted in ana; there is no choicer reading than the Menagiana, Selden’s Table-Talk, an...

The Portuguese had a custom of their own on crossing the Line. It was curiously tinctured with the superstitions of that age. Those on board who had never “cut the Equator,” wer...

It is a common saying at sea on a fine bright day, “That if it were always such weather, ships would go manned with ladies.” Possibly if the romance of women sailors terminated...

In 1609 Hugo Grotius wrote a book, which he called “Mare Liberum.” It is heavy reading in these times of Wilkie Collins and Miss Braddon, and the heavier, perhaps, for being in...

An old sailor once said to me, “If I were to write down one quarter of what I’ve seen, heard, and gone through, the reader would throw away the book, calling me all the evil nam...

Of course the electric feature is the novelty in this latest invented diving boat. But as a fabric that can be made to float or sink, as those who are inside her may choose, thi...

THE FROZEN PIRATE, the New Serial Novel by W. CLARK RUSSELL, Author of “The Wreck of the Grosvenor,” began in “Belgravia” for July, 1887, and will be continued till January, 188...

But all this will not do. Vanderdecken is no nobleman. There was a time when I was disposed to regard him as the Wandering Jew, who, having grown sick of marching about the worl...