The Book of the Ocean

Neither ships of the stanchest steel, nor seamen however skilful, nor pilots never so knowing, can wholly avoid the dangers of a seafaring life. Experience in reading the signs...

As soon as the sea-routes between Europe and the far East were learned, and the American coasts had been mapped, the region within the Arctic circle became the most attractive f...

Naval warfare, properly speaking, begins with the battle of Salamis, 480 B. C., when the Greek fleet, under the guidance of Themistocles, destroyed or put to flight a horde of t...

The primitive idea of the ocean was that it was a vast desert, and a strange disbelief in its being inhabited by more than the very few forms that everybody was compelled to rec...

Wherever it may have been that man first appeared upon the earth, the period must certainly have been incalculably long ago, for he had time to spread to all parts of the habita...

Why to Spain? It is an “oft-told tale,” and the merest reminder is all that is needed here. Columbus was a young seafaring man, born at Genoa about 1434, and ambitious to become...

A very striking thing about the ocean is its flatness. Being water, it seeks always to find its level; and we commonly assume that it everywhere does so, and take the sea-level...

The introduction of steam made little difference in naval affairs at first, so far as either strategy or tactics are concerned, although it changed the conditions of naval actio...

The grandest sea-chase is that after the whale—the most gigantic of mammals, the most extraordinary in appearance and habits, and the most valuable to man, for the capture of on...

The history of shipping in an earlier chapter will also answer as a history of early international commerce. It began with the Egyptians and Phenicians, and was confined to thei...

As the sea has furnished opportunities for so much good,—for manly exertion, knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with people outside of one’s own country, and for gaining w...

Yacht is a word derived from the Dutch language, which has given to the English so many of its sea-terms, meaning, originally, a fast boat, such as was built for chasing pirates...

As late as 1861 an exploring ship was visited by natives of Western Australia, riding simple rough logs. To smooth and sharpen the log’s end and then to hollow it out has been t...

The ocean was the home of the first living thing, either plant or animal, that appeared on our planet; seaweeds and salt-water animals are found in much older rocks than any tha...

Looking at the land, we divide the surface of the earth into eastern and western hemispheres; but looking at the water, we make an opposite classification. Encircle the globe in...