A Floating Home

‘The stormy evening closes now in vain, Loud wails the wind and beats the driving rain, While here in sheltered house, With fire-y painted walls, I hear the wind abroad, I hear...

‘I reckon there’s nawthen like sailormen’s wit To straighten a rop’ what ’as got turns in it; Ould Live Ashore Johnny ’ud pucker all day, An’ yit niver light on the sailorman’s...

In August of our first summer afloat, we went for a month’s cruise on the Essex coast. We had various mishaps of the kind which arrive out of the blue and remind the yachtsman t...

The primitive explorers who came up the Thames in their rough craft examined the site of what was afterwards to be London, and saw that it was good. London is where it is becaus...

_’Here are our thoughts--voyagers’ thoughts_, _Here not the land, firm land, alone appears_, may then by them be said; The sky o’erarches here--we feel the undulating deck benea...

‘Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets: Homme, nul n’a sondé le fond de tes abîmes, O mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes, Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secr...

We engaged two men to help us up the creek, which is narrow and was full of small boats difficult for a large craft to avoid. Unluckily, there was no wind, and we had to punt. T...

’Ef yaou’re a goin’ to buy a little ould barge, sir,’ said Elijah, ‘what yaou wants to know is ’er constitootion. My meanin’ is, ef yaou knaow who built she, yaou’ll know ef she...

A great merit of a barge as a house is that when she is ‘light,’ or almost ‘light,’ as the _Ark Royal_ is, she can be sailed out of rough water on to a sand and left there, prov...

‘Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon, Down with me from Lebanon to sail upon the sea. The ship is wrought of ivory, the decks of gold, and thereupon Are s...

One winter I made up my mind that it was necessary to live in some sort of vessel afloat instead of in a house on the land. This decision was the result, at last pressed on me b...

‘And around the bows and along the side The heavy hammers and mallets plied, Till after many a week, at length, Wonderful for form and strength, Sublime in its enormous bulk, Lo...

‘Get up, get up; for shame! the blooming morn Upon her wings presents the god unshorn. See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air; Get up, sweet slug-a...

The owner of the _Will Arding_, whom we met the next day, was a kindly simple man who told us all we needed to know about the vessel. We had prepared ourselves to cope with a co...

On Saturdays, when I was always at home, there was plenty to be done. The mainsail, which we had not unbent, had to be aired and the blocks had to be overhauled; and there were...

The next thing that happened was that we received an offer of £375 for our cottage. After an attempt to ‘raise the buyer one’--an attempt that would have been more persistent ha...

‘Ah! what a wondrous thing it is To note how many wheels of toil One thought, one word, can set in motion! There’s not a ship that sails the ocean, But every climate, every soil...

The wind hung mostly west and south, and was southerly enough at the end to make the _Will Arding’s_ passage a fast one, and bring her early on the tide to Bridgend. There by no...

’O, to sail to sea in a ship! To leave this steady, unendurable land! To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses; To leave you, O you solid, mot...