Hms Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Hms. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Jack, you've debauched my sloth.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
Why there you are, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'You are come home, I find.' That is true,' said Stephen with an affectionate look: he prized statements of this kind in Jack.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
Acting Rear Admiral Gillet said, “Captain Scultetus, please try to understand that Britain and Germany are at war! The HMS Armadale Castle has been ordered to wipe the Swakop River Radio station off the map!
Michael G. Kramer (His Forefathers and Mick)
They will not be pleased. But they know we must catch the monsoon with a well-found ship; and they know they are in the Navy--they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.' You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.' No, no, it is not quite that either. I mean--I wish you would not confuse my mind, Stephen.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
Killick was a cross-grained bastard, who supposed that if he sprinkled his discourse with a good many sirs, the words in between did not signify:
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
got HMS. Hormonal Man Syndrome.
J.B. Salsbury (Fighting to Forgive (Fighting, #2))
The captain of HMS Terror often thought that he knew nothing about the future - other than that his ship and Erebus would never again steam or sail - but then he reminded himself of one certainty: when his store of whiskey was gone, Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier was going to blow his brains out.
Dan Simmons (The Terror)
Of course I do know it is the French who are so wicked; but there are all these people who keep coming and going - the Austrians, the Spaniards, the Russians. Pray, are the Russians good now? It would be very shocking - treason no doubt - to put the wrong people in my prayers.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
Captain James Kirk was named after Captain James Cook and the USS Enterprise was named after the HMS Endeavour. Star Trek’s catchphrase “to boldly go where no man has gone before” was inspired by Cook’s journal entry “ambition leads me … farther than any other man has been before me”. Enterprise and Endeavour, the first and last space shuttles, were named after the ships of Kirk and Cook. There are bound to be other links between Captain Cook, Star Trek and the US Space Program and some Australian university will no doubt award a grant to explore this issue of undisputed national significance.
David Hunt (Girt (The Unauthorised History of Australia #1))
CHORUS What, never? CAPTAIN No, never! CHORUS What, never? CAPTAIN Well, hardly ever!
W.S. Gilbert (H.M.S. Pinafore)
...the men of the Ulysses had no need to stand in shame...many had found, or were finding, that the point of no return was not necessarily the edge of the precipice: it could be the bottom of the valley, the beginning of the long climb up the far slope, and when a man had once begun that climb he never looked back to that other side.
Alistair MacLean (HMS Ulysses)
Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family, and note the absorption of the person by the persona, the individual by the role. Then multiply the family, and the authority, by some hundreds and see the effect upon a sea-captain, to say nothing of an absolute monarch. Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human; unless it so happens that he is immune to the poison.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
Every night, around midnight GMT, the Sun sets on the Cayman Islands, and doesn’t rise over the British Indian Ocean Territory until after 1:00 a.m. For that hour, the little Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific are the only British territory in the Sun. The Pitcairn Islands have a population of a few dozen people, the descendants of the mutineers from the HMS Bounty. The islands became notorious in 2004 when a third of the adult male population, including the mayor, were convicted of child sexual abuse. As awful as the islands may be, they remain part of the British Empire, and unless they’re kicked out, the two-century-long British daylight will continue.
Randall Munroe (What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions)
The weather had freshened almost to coldness, for the wind was coming more easterly, from the chilly currents between Tristan and the Cape; the sloth was amazed by the change; it shunned the deck and spent its time below. Jack was in his cabin, pricking the chart with less satisfaction than he could have wished: progress, slow, serious trouble with the mainmast-- unaccountable headwinds by night-- and sipping a glass of grog; Stephen was in the mizentop, teaching Bonden to write and scanning the sea for his first albatross. The sloth sneezed, and looking up, Jack caught its gaze fixed upon him; its inverted face had an expression of anxiety and concern. 'Try a piece of this, old cock,' he said, dipping his cake in the grog and proffering the sop. 'It might put a little heart into you.' The sloth sighed, closed its eyes, but gently absorbed the piece, and sighed again. Some minutes later he felt a touch upon his knee: the sloth had silently climbed down and it was standing there, its beady eyes looking up into his face, bright with expectation. More cake, more grog: growing confidence and esteem. After this, as soon as the drum had beat the retreat, the sloth would meet him, hurrying toward the door on its uneven legs: it was given its own bowl, and it would grip it with its claws, lowering its round face into it and pursing its lips to drink (its tongue was too short to lap). Sometimes it went to sleep in this position, bowed over the emptiness. 'In this bucket,' said Stephen, walking into the cabin, 'in this small half-bucket, now, I have the population of Dublin, London, and Paris combined: these animalculae-- what is the matter with the sloth?' It was curled on Jack's knee, breathing heavily: its bowl and Jack's glass stood empty on the table. Stephen picked it up, peered into its affable bleary face, shook it, and hung it upon its rope. It seized hold with one fore and one hind foot, letting the others dangle limp, and went to sleep. Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
Wondering just how Mr Church thought he had deserved anything short of impalement, Stephen walked into the cabin.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
Stephen came on deck reflecting with satisfaction upon his sloth, now a parlour-boarder with the Irish Franciscans at Rio, and a secret drinker of the altar-wine.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them. John Boyne April 28, 1789: The real-life mutiny that inspired John Boyne's novel, Mutiny on the Bounty, took place aboard the HMS Bounty 224 years ago today. Half the ship's crew, seduced by several months of good life on Tahiti, rose up against Captain William Bligh. Some of the mutineers' descendants still live on Pitcairn Island
John Boyne (Mutiny on the Bounty)
Francis Crozier now understood that the most desirable and erotic thing a woman could wear were the many modest layers such as Sophia Cracroft wore to dinner in the governor's house, enough silken fabric to conceal the lines of her body, allowing a man to concentrate on the exciting loveliness of her wit
Dan Simmons (The Terror)
All your sea-omens are of disaster; and of course, with man in his present unhappy state, huddled together in numbers far too great and spending all his surplus time and treasure beating out his brother's brains, any gloomy foreboding is likely to be fulfilled; but your corpse, your parson, your St Elmo's fire is not the cause of the tragedy.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
This prophecy has turned out entirely and miserably wrong.
Charles Darwin (The Voyage of the Beagle: Journal of Researches into the Natural History & Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of HMS Beagle Round the World (Classics))
To all things an end. To every night a dawn. Even to longest night when dawn never comes, there comes, at last, the dawn.
Alistair MacLean (HMS Ulysses)
Every man is what environment and heredity make him.
Alistair MacLean (HMS Ulysses)
Good heavens,’ cried Mr White. ‘To fire great iron balls at people you have never even spoken to – barbarity is come again.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
She was still doing forty knots, driving in under the guns of the enemy, guns at maximum depression, when "A" magazine blew up, blasted off the entire bows in one shattering detonations. For a second, the lightened fo'c'sle reared high into the air" then it plunged down, deep down, into the shoulder of a rolling sea. She plunged down and kept on going down, driving down to the black floor of the Arctic, driven down by the madly spinning screws. The still thundering engines her own executioners.
Alistair MacLean (HMS Ulysses)
Valuable and ingenious he might be, thought Jack, fixing him with his glass, but false he was too, and perjured. He had voluntarily sworn to have no truck with vampires, and here, attached to his bosom, spread over it and enfolded by one arm, was a greenish hairy thing, like a mat - a loathsome great vampire of the most poisonous kind, no doubt. ‘I should never have believed it of him: his sacred oath in the morning watch and now he stuffs the ship with vampires; and God knows what is in that bag. No doubt he was tempted, but surely he might blush for his fall?’ No blush; nothing but a look of idiot delight as he came slowly up the side, hampered by his burden and comforting it in Portuguese as he came. ‘I am happy to see that you were so successful, Dr Maturin,’ he said, looking down into the launch and the canoes, loaded with glowing heaps of oranges and shaddocks, red meat, iguanas, bananas, greenstuff. ‘But I am afraid no vampires can be allowed on board.’ ‘This is a sloth,’ said Stephen, smiling at him. ‘A three-toed sloth, the most affectionate, discriminating sloth you can imagine!’ The sloth turned its round head, fixed its eyes on Jack, uttered a despairing wail, and buried its face again in Stephen’s shoulder, tightening its grip to the strangling-point.
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
Never mind the disappointment. Salt water will wash it away. You will be amazed how unimportant it will seem in a week’s time – how everything will fall into place.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
there never was a ship that fought well without she was a happy ship.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, ‘Jack, you have debauched my sloth.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
God,’ he thought, ‘never let me outlive my wits.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
The second HMS Warspite (also spelt Warspight)
Iain Ballantyne (Warspite: Warships of the Royal Navy)
This is the times of betrays and traitors, they even betray themselves, their limit is the Sky HMS Ogiel
El Hadi M. SulimanM. Suliman
True heroism consists of being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge to the combat.’ Napoleon on board HMS Northumberland, 1815
Andrew Roberts
While Britain has preserved the HMS Victory as a tribute to Nelson, as well as other ships from key periods of British history, not a single slave ship survives.- You have to stand in awe of the intellectual obedience it takes to still cheer for empire after the revelation that the government hid or burned a good portion of the evidence of what that empire actually consisted of, but such is the use to which we put our free thinking.
Akala (Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire)
Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains,
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path?
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
Oh yes, they assured him, with grave, anxious faces; they were in horrid danger of foundering, broaching-to, running violently into Australia; but there was a hope, just a very slight hope, of their meeting with a mountain of ice and clambering on to it – as many as half a dozen men might be saved.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
You were always grossly obese,' observed Stephen. 'Were you to walk ten miles a day, and eat half what you do in fact devour, with no butcher's meat and no malt liquors, you would be able to play at the hand-ball like a Christian rather than a galvanized manatee, or dugong. Mr Goodridge, how do you so, sir? I hope I see you well.' This to Jack's opponent, a former shipmate, the master of HMS Polychrest and a fine navigator, but one whose calculations had unfortunately convinced him that phoenixes and comets were one and the same thing - that the appearance of a phoenix, reported in the chronicles, was in fact the return of one or another of the various comets whose periods were either known or conjectured. He resented disagreement, and although in ordinary matters he was the kindest, gentlest of men, he was now confined for maltreating a rear-admiral of the blue: he had not actually struck Sir James, but he had bitten his remonstrating finger.
Patrick O'Brian (The Reverse of the Medal (Aubrey/Maturin, #11))
Denning had a mind like a battleship. Most ideas simply bounced off his hull. When an idea of sufficient caliber penetrated his armour, it was treated as a calamity. The HMS Ignorance’s crew frantically worked to seal off bulkheads, dog hatches, and do all they could to keep intelligent thought from ricocheting through his mind and doing any more damage.
Nathan H. Green (My Late Life)
Time heals all wounds,yes its true,but can't erase the memories.
a'isha hms
He shivered uncontrollably and turned his back on the driving wind. ‘Anyway, I wish to God I had his job,’ he added feelingly. ‘This is worse than winter in Alberta!
Alistair MacLean (HMS Ulysses)
they know they are in the Navy – they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.’ ‘You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.’ ‘No, no, it is not quite that, neither.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
Nature wanted to show mankind, an irreverent, over-venturesome mankind, just how puny and pitifully helpless a thing mankind really is…
Alistair MacLean (HMS Ulysses)
When on board H.M.S. 'Beagle,' as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America,
Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species)
what would be left of it by that time—would be in the Kola
Alistair MacLean (HMS Ulysses)
there is here a striving, avid and worldly civilisation, of course; these huge and eager markets, to this incessant buying and selling, that make that self evident; but I had no conception of the ubiquitous sense of the holy, no notion of how another world can permeate the secular. Filth, stench, disease, "gross superstition" as our people say, extreme poverty, promiscuous universal defecation, do not affect it: nor do they affect my sense of humanity with which I am surrounded. What an agreeable city it is, where a man may walk around naked in the heat if it so please him
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
HMS Beagle, essentially as dinner company for the captain, Robert FitzRoy, whose rank precluded his socializing with anyone other than a gentleman. FitzRoy, who was very odd, chose Darwin in part because he liked the shape of Darwin’s nose. (It betokened depth of character, he believed.) Darwin was not FitzRoy’s first choice, but got the nod when FitzRoy’s preferred companion dropped out.
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
Since the dawn of time, nearly every man (and I'd wager to guess most women) has, at his most visceral level, secretly desired for one thing - to be standing triumphantly atop a heaping pile of his slain enemies, holding a gigantic axe aloft while some unbelievably attractive member of whatever gender he's attracted to desperately clutches his leg like it's the last life raft on the HMS Titanic.
Ben Thompson (Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch: Skull-Crushing True Stories of the Most Hardcore Duels, Showdowns, Fistfights, Last Stands, Suicide Charges, and Military Engagements of All Time (Badass Series))
Few had much room to cast stones, but hypocrisy has never failed the English middle class in any latitude, and they flung them in plenty with delighted, shocked abandon – rocks, boulders, limited in size only by fear for their husband’s advancement. Conciliating discretion had never been among Mrs Villiers’s qualities, and if subjects for malignant gossip had been wanting she would have provided them by the elephant-load.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
Nor did the inquiry ever delve into why the Lusitania wasn’t diverted to the safer North Channel route, and why no naval escort was provided. Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path?
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
Nor did the inquiry ever delve into why the Lusitania wasn’t diverted to the safer North Channel route, and why no naval escort was provided. Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path?
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
. . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae,’ he repeated yet again, and felt the lap of water on his foot. He looked up. The people had gone; the pyre was no more than a dark patch with the sea hissing in its embers; and he was alone. The tide was rising fast.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
HMS Belfast is a gunship of 11,000 tons, commissioned in 1939, which saw active service in the Second World War. Since then it has been moored on the south bank of the Thames, in postcard-land, between Tower Bridge and London Bridge, opposite the Tower of London. From its deck one can see St. Paul’s Cathedral and the gilt top of the columnlike Monument to the Great Fire of London erected, as so much of London was erected, by Christopher Wren. The ship serves as a floating museum, as a memorial, as a training ground.
Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere)
The first criticism I ever read was of my first book, H.M.S. ‘Ulysses.’ It got two whole pages to itself in a now defunct Scottish newspaper, with a drawing of the dust jacket wreathed in flames and the headline ‘Burn this book.’ I had paid the Royal Navy the greatest compliment of which I could conceive: this dolt thought it was an act of denigration.
Alistair MacLean (The Lonely Sea)
The country remained the same, and was extremely uninteresting. The complete similarity of the productions throughout Patagonia is one of its most striking characters. The level plains of arid shingle support the same stunted and dwarf plants; and in the valleys the same thorn-bearing bushes grow. Everywhere we see the same birds and insects. Even the very banks of the river and of the clear streamlets which entered it, were scarcely enlivened by a brighter tint of green. The curse of sterility is on the land, and the water flowing over a bed of pebbles partakes of the same curse. Hence the number of waterfowl is very scanty; for there is nothing to support life in the stream of this barren river. (In regards to the steppes of Patagonia)
Charles Darwin (Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World, Under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N.)
When have we ever believed that the world wasn’t ending? “I had a fascinating conversation with my mother once, where she talked about the guilt she and her friends had felt about bringing children into the universe. This was in the mid-2160s, in Colony Two. It’s hard to imagine a more tranquil time or place, but they were concerned about asteroid storms, and if life on the moon became untenable, about the continued viability of life on Earth—” Olive’s mother drinking coffee in Olive’s childhood home: yellow flowered tablecloth hands clasped around a blue coffee mug her smile “—and my point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.” In a world that no longer exists but whose exact end date is unclear, Captain George Vancouver stands on the deck of the HMS Discovery, gazing anxiously out at a landscape with no people in it “But all of this raises an interesting question,” Olive said. “What if it always is the end of the world?” She paused for effect. Before her, the holographic audience was almost perfectly still. “Because we might reasonably think of the end of the world,” Olive said, “as a continuous and never-ending process.
Emily St. John Mandel (Sea of Tranquility)
In 1831, the Royal Navy sent the ship HMS Beagle to map the coasts of South America, the Falklands Islands and the Galapagos Islands. The navy needed this knowledge in order to be better prepared in the event of war. The ship’s captain, who was an amateur scientist, decided to add a geologist to the expedition to study geological formations they might encounter on the way. After several professional geologists refused his invitation, the captain offered the job to a twenty-two-year-old Cambridge graduate, Charles Darwin. Darwin had studied to become an Anglican parson but was far more interested in geology and natural sciences than in the Bible. He jumped at the opportunity, and the rest is history. The captain spent his time on the voyage drawing military maps while Darwin collected the empirical data and formulated the insights that would eventually become the theory of evolution.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
In 1831, the Royal Navy sent the ship HMS Beagle to map the coasts of South America, the Falklands Islands and the Galapagos Islands. The navy needed this knowledge in order to tighten Britain’s imperial grip over South America. The ship’s captain, who was an amateur scientist, decided to add a geologist to the expedition to study geological formations they might encounter on the way. After several professional geologists refused his invitation, the captain offered the job to a twenty-two-year-old Cambridge graduate, Charles Darwin. Darwin had studied to become an Anglican parson but was far more interested in geology and natural sciences than in the Bible. He jumped at the opportunity, and the rest is history. The captain spent his time on the voyage drawing military maps while Darwin collected the empirical data and formulated the insights that would eventually become the theory of evolution.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Fleeing first, in November 1813, Presley represented the greatest blow, for a body servant was a master’s favorite and confidante: no one knew Jones better than Presley did. Presley, however, preferred to serve a Royal Navy captain. In 1815 a visitor to HMS Havannah recognized Presley, whom he praised as “uncommonly likely & trained as a House Servant.” The visitor noted that Presley had renamed himself “Washington,” evidently after the great revolutionary leader who had won liberty and independence for the Americans.3 As a black Washington, Presley returned to free his friends and family left behind. In October 1814, Presley guided a British raiding party to Kinsale, liberating the rest of the slaves and casting Jones out. Presley’s return represents a common pattern in the slave escapes during the war. Runaways tended to bolt in two stages: in the first, a pioneer runaway made initial contact with the British, and then in the second stage, he returned home to liberate kin and friends.
Alan Taylor (The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832)
argumentative.” “Sorry. It wasn’t on the schedule.” “Sarcasm’s also typical, but it’s unbecoming.” Susan opened her briefcase, checked the contents. “We’ll talk about all this when I get back. I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Bristoe.” “I don’t need therapy! I need a mother who listens, who gives a shit about how I feel.” “That kind of language only shows a lack of maturity and intellect.” Enraged, Elizabeth threw up her hands, spun in circles. If she couldn’t be calm and rational like her mother, she’d be wild. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” “And repetition hardly enhances. You have the rest of the weekend to consider your behavior. Your meals are in the refrigerator or freezer, and labeled. Your pack list is on your desk. Report to Ms. Vee at the university at eight on Monday morning. Your participation in this program will ensure your place in HMS next fall. Now, take my garment bag downstairs, please. My car will be here any minute.” Oh, those seeds were sprouting, cracking that fallow ground and pushing painfully through. For the first time in her life, Elizabeth looked straight
Nora Roberts (The Witness)
It is 1839. England is tumbling towards anarchy, with countrywide unrest and riots. The gutter presses are fizzing, fire-bombs flying. The shout on the streets is for revolution. Red evolutionists - visionaries who see life marching inexorably upward, powered from below - denounce the props of an old static society: priestly privilege, wage exploitation, and the workhouses. A million socialists are castigating marriage, capitalism, and the fat, corrupt Established Church. Radical Christians join them, hymn-singing Dissenters who condemn the 'fornicating' Church as a 'harlot,' in bed with the State. Even science must be purged: for the gutter atheists, material atoms are all that exist, and like the 'social atoms' - people - they are self-organizing. Spirits and souls are a delusion, part of the gentry's cruel deceit to subjugate working people. The science of life - biology - lies ruined, prostituted, turned into a Creationist citadel by the clergy. Britain now stands teetering on the brink of collapse - or so it seems to the gentry, who close ranks to protect their privileges. At this moment, how could an ambitious thirty-year-old gentleman open a secret notebook and, with a devil-may-care sweep, suggest that headless hermaphrodite molluscs were the ancestors of mankind? A squire's son, moreover, Cambridge-trained and once destined for the cloth. A man whose whole family hated the 'fierce & licentious' radical hooligans. The gentleman was Charles Darwin: well heeled, imperturbably Whig, a privately financed world traveller who had spent five years aboard HMS Beagle as a dining companion to the aristocratic captain.
Adrian J. Desmond (Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist)
The nymphs in green? Delightful girls.’ ‘It is clear you have been a great while at sea, to call those sandy-haired coarse-featured pimply short-necked thick-fingered vulgar-minded lubricious blockheads by such a name. Nymphs, forsooth. If they were nymphs, they must have had their being in a tolerably rank and stagnant pool: the wench on my left had an ill breath, and turning for relief I found her sister had a worse; and the upper garment of neither was free from reproach. Worse lay below, I make no doubt. “La, sister,” cries the one to the other, breathing across me – vile teeth; and “La, sister,” cries the other. I have no notion of two sisters wearing the same clothes, the same flaunting meretricious gawds, the same tortured Gorgon curls low over their brutish criminal foreheads; it bespeaks a superfetation of vulgarity, both innate and studiously acquired. And when I think that their teeming loins will people the East . . . Pray pour me out another cup of coffee. Confident brutes.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
Na zlomeček věčnosti oběma lodím nic nebránilo ve volné střelbě na protivníka a v tom okamžiku dva různé počítače odstartovaly své palebné plány. Žádný lidský smysl nedokázal postřehnout, co se odehrálo potom; žádný lidský mozek by si to neuměl přebrat. Vzájemná vzdálenost činila dvacet tisíc kilometrů a řízené střely, lasery a grasery dštily zkázu přes tu miniaturní propast vakua jako rozzuření démoni. Ahmed zavrávoral, když jeho bočním štítem bez námahy prošel první graserový svazek. Jeho boky byly opatřeny metrovým pancířem z nejtvrdší slitiny keramiky a kompozitu, jakou se člověk doposud naučil odlévat, a přesto se jí graser prodral pohrdavě snadno. Od strašlivé rány se rozlétly obrovské úlomky a vzájemný pohyb lodi změnil to, co by bývalo kruhovým otvorem, v dlouhou zející trhlinu. Paprsek rozpáral bok lodi, jako když vyvrhovací nůž rozpáře žraloka, a z rány vytryskl vířící cyklon vzduchu, trosek a lidských těl. Ale to byl pouze jeden z osmi takových graserů. Všechny do jednoho zaznamenaly přímé zásahy a na bitevním křižníku nikoho ani ve snu nenapadlo, že by přestavěná obchodní loď mohla nést takové zbraně. Zatímco si zuřivý úder Poutníka s křižníkem pohrával, komunikační obvody zahlcovala kakofonie výkřiků bolesti, šoku i hrůzy a potom se přihnaly řízené střely Q lodě a znovu a znovu křižník probodávaly jednorannými lasery, aby dokončily strašlivé dílo graserů. Zbraňová stanoviště se rozlétala na kusy, výboje bláznivě sršely a kabely syčely, pukaly a explodovaly. Příďová místnost gravitoru vybuchla, když jeden graser zasáhl naplno generátory, a tlaková vlna změnila sto metrů pancéřovaného trupu v pokroucené trosky. Všechny tři fúzní jednotky se automaticky nouzově zastavily a po celé lodi se zavírala vzduchotěsná vrata. Ale v příliš mnoha případech neměla ta vrata v čem zadržovat vzduch, neboť grasery Poutníka se propálily naskrz celým trupem a křižník se převaloval v prostoru jako umírající bezmocný vrak. Ale nezahynul sám. Poutník vypálil o zlomek sekundy dříve než Ahmed - ale jen o zlomeček a na rozdíl od Ahmeda neměl žádný pancíř a žádná hermeticky uzavíratelná oddělení. Byla to obchodní loď, jenom tenká slupka kolem obrovského prázdného prostoru pro náklad, a to nemohla žádná přestavba změnit. Zbraně, které přežily, aby se mohly zakousnout do jeho trupu, byly mnohem lehčí než ty, jež rozpáraly Ahmeda, ale proti tak zranitelnému cíli byly děsivě účinné. Celý pravobok od přepážky třicet jedna dozadu po přepážku šedesát pět byl na padrť. Prázdné doky LAC se rozlétly jako rozšlápnuté sklenice. Zásobníky dva a čtyři byly roztrhány na kusy, stejně jako všechny výmetnice kromě čísla dva. Šest z osmi graserových stanovišť vybuchlo a prakticky celá jejich obsluha zahynula. Jeden laser se prořízl až k jádru lodě, zničil fúzní reaktor jedna a prorazil palubní vězení, z něhož už Randy Steilman a jeho druhové nikdy neměli vyjít před soud, a další se prořízl až na samotnou velitelskou palubu. Můstek zametla tlaková vlna, přepážky a podélníky se trhaly jako papír a zuřící hurikán vytrhl Jennifer Hughesovou navzdory tlumícímu postroji z křesla a odnesl ji do prostoru mimo loď. Její tělo už nikdo nikdy nenajde, ale na tom sotva záleželo, protože svištící příval atmosféry s ní udeřil o okraj trhliny v trupu a na místě jí roztříštil přilbu. John Kanehama zaječel do interkomu, když ho jako oštěp probodla dlouhá letící tříska slitiny. Staršího seržanta O’Haleyho přesekl vejpůl plochý úlomek, dlouhý jako on sám, a Aubrey Wanderman se pozvracel do přilby, když tentýž úlomek prolétl mezi osazenstvem jeho stanoviště a roztrhal Carolyn Wolcotovou a poručíka Jansena. Tento výjev z pekla se po obrovském trupu Poutníka opakoval znovu a znovu. Další výbuchy a odletující trosky zasahovaly lidi, které minula palba Ahmeda, jako by se umírající loď mstila posádce za to, do čeho ji přivedla, a HMS Poutník se potácivě převaloval pryč s nefunkčním pohonem, zničeným hypergenerátorem a s osmi sty mrtvými a umírajícími lidmi v rozbitých odděleních.
David Weber (Honor Among Enemies (Honor Harrington, #6))
I’ve never sailed on HMS Penultimate, and as luck would have it she has the finest reputation for turn of speed.”    “Is that important?”    “Essential when enemy ships are spied making sail in order to evade conflict.
Francine Howarth (Venetian Encounter)
Misfortune struck again when Warspite managed to ram HMS Valiant amidships on returning from some night shooting. Warspite’s bows were stoved in again while Valiant’s oil tanks were cracked open. Warspite was out of action for more than a month. An inquiry into
Iain Ballantyne (Warspite: Warships of the Royal Navy)
This time, the cable held strong as HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara sailed toward their respective destinations flying specially designed flags that incorporated the stars of Old Glory with the stripes of the Union Jack.
Anonymous
Since graduating from HMS my greatest satisfaction has unequivocally been my family. My main disappointment is that I have wasted too much time in personal pursuits and been less of an influence for good than I might have been.
Norris B. Finlayson
The nymphs in green? Delightful girls.’ ‘It is clear you have been a great while at sea, to call those sandy-haired coarse-featured pimply short-necked thick-fingered vulgar-minded lubricious blockheads by such a name. Nymphs, forsooth. If they were nymphs, they must have had their being in a tolerably rank and stagnant pool: the wench on my left had an ill breath, and turning for relief I found her sister had a worse; and the upper garment of neither was free from reproach. Worse lay below, I make no doubt.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
Shortly after midnight on September 7, 1776, a young Army sergeant named Ezra Lee climbed into a tiny one-man submarine, pulled the hatch shut over his head, and submerged beneath the waters of New York harbor.  His target was HMS Eagle, a sixty-four–gun man-of-war that served as the flagship of the British fleet.  (In a tiny stroke of irony, the British Admiral Lord Howe had anchored Eagle within a few hundred yards of Bedloe’s Island, which would one day be renamed Liberty Island—the site for the Statue of Liberty.)
Jeff Edwards (Sea of Shadows (USS Towers #1))
occasionally or alternately I should not complain,
Frederick Lewis Maitland (The Surrender of Napoleon Being the narrative of the surrender of Buonaparte, and of his residence on board H.M.S. Bellerophon, with a detail of the principal ... the 24th of May and the 8th of August 1815)
day André set out northward with the goal of reaching HMS Vulture, a fourteen-gun sloop docked near Teller’s Point, by evening. Because it was a British ship, he arrived not as “John Anderson, Patriot merchant” but as himself, bearing letters from General Clinton that
Brian Kilmeade (George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution)
On and on she sailed, in warmer seas but void, as though they alone had survived Deucalion’s flood; as though all land had vanished from the earth; and once again the ship’s routine dislocated time and temporal reality so that this progress was an endless dream, even a circular dream, contained within an unbroken horizon and punctuated only by the sound of guns thundering daily in preparation for an enemy whose real existence it was impossible to conceive.
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
Some Continental army officers joined the search, looking for African Americans they had once owned. General Washington was one who spent some time combing the countryside. He found two of his slaves who had escaped in the raid of the HMS Savage. He sent them back to Mount Vernon and a lifetime of servitude.35 In this hour of triumph for a revolution waged for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Washington also found the time to congratulate his army on the victory that had brought “Joy” to “every Breast.
John Ferling (Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It)
We believed Harriet had been collected in 1835 by Charles Darwin himself. She was brought to Australia from England in 1841 by Captain Wickham aboard the HMS Beagle. Actually, three giant Galapagos tortoises had been donated to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, after Darwin realized they did not flourish in England, where he had originally taken them in 1835. How could we determine whether Harriet was one of the Darwin Three? Scott Thomson found a giant tortoise in the collection of the Queensland Museum that had been mislabeled an Aldabran tortoise. Carved on the carapace was the animal’s name. “Tom,” and “1929.” We now had potentially found two of the three Darwin tortoises. Harriet and Tom had been seen together in living memory. The third tortoise was never found and was presumed buried somewhere in the botanic gardens. Harriet lived on. Steve and I became very excited at this news. Our studies and research into Harriet’s history continued for years, and it was amazing to learn what a special resident we had at the zoo. Despite her impressive background, Harriet remained attractively modest. She had a sweet personality like a little dog. She loved hibiscus flowers, and certain veggies were her favorites. Steve carried on a practice that his parents had implemented: Whatever you feed animals should be good enough for you to eat. Thus Harriet got the most beautiful mustard greens, kale, eggplant, zucchinis, and even roses. In return, Harriet gave zoo visitors a rare chance to watch her keepers cuddle and scratch one of the grandest creatures on earth. She was the oldest living chelonian and the only living creature to have met Charles Darwin and traveled aboard the Beagle. And she gave us all something else, too--a lesson in how to live a long life. Don’t worry too much. Take it easy. Stop and munch the flowers. It was a lesson Steve noted and understood but could never quite take to heart. He was a meteor. Harriet was more of a mountain. In this world, we need both.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
It’s early evening when HMS Anthony
Susan Hood (Lifeboat 12)
not far from the lonely telegraph station that picked up the last distress signals of the HMS Titanic, is still more fossil graffiti left on old ocean rocks by these pseudo-creatures—hieroglyphic echoes of life in the perpetual midnight of the ancient deep.
Peter Brannen (The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions)
Before there was a Human Mind System, there was the Sovereign Integral. The HMS is the most opaque and distorted veil that has stood between humanity and its true self, perverting its self-expression within the domains we call reality. The Human Mind System is separated into three primary functional mechanisms: The unconscious or genetic mind, the subconscious, and the conscious. These three components intermingle to form what most people term consciousness. The unconscious, genetic mind is the repository of all humanity; the subconscious is the repository of the family bloodlines; and the conscious mind is the repository of the individual. However, and this is important to understand, the foundational patterns of thought are primarily from the subconscious and genetic mind structures of consciousness. Thus, while the individual believes themselves to be individual, unique, separate, and one-of-a-kind, in reality they are not. Not in the context of HMS. You can conceptualize yourself as a copy of the human family folded inside a copy of your parents and bloodlines, placed into an individualized expression: you. The “You” is an HMS particularized into one expression, but its roots are entirely planted in the soil of humanity and parental lineage, all of which is downloaded into the developing fetus before birth. This is precisely why, after ten thousand generations, we continue to operate in the same patterns of greed, separation, and self-destruction. The image in the mirror is upgraded with better “clothing” and more sophisticated masks, but underneath, the image remains the same feelings, the same thoughts, and the same behaviors. Social and cultural engineering via the entertainment and educational systems conspire to entrain the individual during their developmental years (3-14 years old), activating the programs and subsystems of the HMS to ensure that the individual is properly prepared to conform to the reality matrix of their time and place. Even those who are non-conformists, who fancy themselves “outside the box”, are well within the perimeter of the HMS.
James Mahu (WingMakers Anthology James Interview (Japanese Edition))
During World War II pets were allowed aboard British war ships and Blackie was the HMS Prince of Wales's ship's pet cat. . In August 1941 he became famous after the ship carried Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic to Canada where he net Franklin D. Roosevelt to agree on the Atlantic Charter. After the declaration of the Charter, as Churchill prepared to depart from the ship, Blackie approached him at the gangway and bid Prime Minister Churchill farewell. In honor of that moment Blackie was renamed Churchill. Later Blackie survived the sinking of Prince of Wales by the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service later that year, and was rescued and taken to Singapore with the other survivors
Hank Bracker
There are many stories about seagoing cats. My research indicates that cats were domesticated about 9,500 years ago. I really don’t know anyone who was around at that time to verify this, but I also don’t have any reason to doubt this little bit of trivia. It is documented that the Egyptians who kept cats around to bring the good luck, also used them to catch thicket birds that lived in the tall grass along the riverbanks. I guess that these small birds were a treat and a welcome substitute for the usual river fish that the sailors would catch with hooks fashioned from bones. In time it was the Phoenicians who inadvertently brought cats from the middle east to Europe. It seems that sailors had cats with them on their ships from the beginning of recorded history. They successfully used the excuse that the cats would keep the rat population under control. I don’t believe that this was really true since there are stories of where the cat befriended the rats, but in most cases the cats did keep the rats from invading their living spaces. Six-toed cats were thought to be better hunters and to this day many islands in remote areas are overrun by these cats and rats that managed to get ashore from ships that foundered along the island’s shore. Sailors are notoriously superstitious and have always believed that cats can predict the weather and bring luck. There are many accounts concerning this and there may be some truth to this but you’ll have to be the judge. Because of their sensitive inner ears cats can sense barometric pressure drops, indicating foul weather and being warned frequently crawl into their safe hidey-hole prior to a storm. A cat named Oscar, or Oskar in German, was the mascot on the German Battle Cruiser Bismarck when she was sunk by the British. Found floating on a wooden plank, Oskar was rescued by the crew of the British ship the HMS Cossack. No sooner recued and with Oskar renamed Oscar, the HMS Cossack was sunk by the Germans. This time Oscar was rescued by the crew of the HMS Arc Royal, which was then also sunk by the German navy. Not believing their bad luck the Brit’s blamed poor Oscar and renamed the cat to the German Oskar. Thinking Oskar to be the harbinger of bad luck they contacted the German Navy and offered to return their cat. The Germans refused the offer, so the British retired Oskar to a home in Plymouth, England. This time they banned poor Oskar from ever sailing on a British Naval Vessel again and changed his name to Sam. The British Navy banned cats from sailing on British war ships in 1975. Even though the British Navy has banned cats from their ships, other countries and merchant ships still have cats aboard.
Hank Bracker
HMS Somerset
Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference)
The Captain drew a long breath, conscious deep within him of an enormous satisfaction. 'Write this down, and then send it to them. "To Flag Officer in Charge, Londonderry, v Marlborough. HMS Marlborough will enter harbour at 1300 today. Ship is severely damaged above and below waterline. Request pilot, tugs, dockyard assistance, and burial arrangements for one officer and seventy-four ratings." Got that?
Nicholas Monsarrat (Three Corvettes)
Jack,’ said Stephen, ‘a signal has just come in. It has not all been decoded, but the opening is addressed to you by name and ship and if you choose I will read you what has been made out and try to decode the rest as I go – it has been crumpled in the journey and I may miss some words. But here is the essence: ‘Immediately upon receipt of the present order you will proceed to the River Plate, there joining the South African squadron: you will go aboard HMS Implacable, hoisting your flag, blue at the mizzen and take command of the blue squadron.’ Jack sat down, bowing his face in his hands: he was almost unmanned, but after a moment he did say, ‘Read that again, will you, Stephen?
Patrick O'Brian (Blue at the Mizzen (Aubrey & Maturin, #20))
variety of other wise saws sprang to Stephen’s indignant mind – words and feathers are carried off by the wind; as is the wedding, so is the cake; do not speak Arabic in the house of the Moor; pleasures pass but sorrows stay; love, grief and money cannot be concealed
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
Captain Joseph Frye One of the nicest parks in present day downtown Tampa, Florida, is the Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park. The 5-acre park, which lies between the Tampa Bay Times Forum (Amalie Arena) and the mouth of the Hillsborough River at the Garrison Channel, is used for many weddings and special events such as the dragon boat races and the duck race. Few people give thought to the historic significance of the location, or to Captain Joseph Frye, considered Tampa’s first native son, who was born there on June 14, 1826. Going to sea was a tradition in the Frye family, starting with his paternal great-grandfather Samuel Frye from East Greenwich, Rhode Island, who was the master of the sloop Humbird. As a young man, Joseph attended the United States Naval Academy and graduated with the second class in 1847. Starting as an Ensign, he served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy until the Civil War, at which time he resigned and took a commission as a Lieutenant in the Confederate Navy. The Ten Years’ War, also known as “the Great War,” which started in 1868 became the first of three wars of Cuban Independence. In October 1873, following the defeat of the Confederacy and five years into the Cuban revolution, Frye became Captain of a side-wheeler, the S/S Virginius. His mission was to take guns and ammunition, as well as approximately 300 Cuban rebels to Cuba, with the intent of fighting the Spanish army for Cuban Independence. Unfortunately, the mission failed when the ship was intercepted by the Spanish warship Tornado. Captain Frye and his crew were taken to Santiago de Cuba and given a hasty trial and before a British warship Commander, hearing of the incident, could intervene, they were sentenced to death. After thanking the members of his crew for their service, Captain Frye and fifty-three members of his crew were put to death by firing squad, and were then decapitated and trampled upon by the Spanish soldiers. However, the British Commander Sir Lambton Lorraine of HMS Niobe did manage to save the lives of a few of the remaining crewmembers and rebels.
Hank Bracker
A possible explanation may be this: in addition to professional competence, cheerful resignation, an excellent liver, natural authority and a hundred other virtues, there must be the far rarer quality of resisting the effects, the dehumanising effects, of the exercise of authority. Authority is a solvent of humanity: look
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
On June 12, 1775 the Rhode Island Assembly commissioned armed ships to fight the British Navy. That Fall on October 13, 1775 the Second Continual Congress established the United States Navy marking this date as the Navy’s official birthday. The first United States naval vessel was the USS Ganges, built in Philadelphia as a merchant vessel. She was bought by the US Navy, fitted out with 24 guns for a crew of 220 men, and commissioned on 24 May 1798. Following this, John Paul Jones was appointed Commander of the French ship Duc de Duras, which had been in service as a merchant ship between France and the Orient. Her design was such that she could easily be converted to a man of war, which she was, when fitted out with 50 guns and an extra six 6-pounder and renamed the Bonhomme Richard. On September 23, 1779 the Bonhomme Richard fought in the Battle of Flamborough Head, off the coast of Yorkshire,England where, although winning the battle, caught fire from the bombardment and sank 36 hours later. John Paul Jones commandeered a British ship named the HMS Serapis and sailed the captured ship to Holland for repairs. The Serapis was transferred her to the French as a prize of war, who then converted her into a privateer. In 1781, she sank off Madagascar to an accidental fire that reached the powder locker, blowing her stern off. Following the Revolutionary War the Continental Navy was disbanded, however George Washington responded to threats to American shipping by Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean with the Naval Act of 1794, which created a permanent U.S. Navy. As a part of this Act, the first ships that were commissioned were six frigates, which included the USS Constitution and the USS Constellation.
Hank Bracker (Suppressed I Rise)
He had played to Rasputin on the night of his murder. Rasputin, for all his psychic powers, had clearly not picked up on any of the tension in the atmosphere.
Frances Welch (The Russian Court at Sea: The voyage of HMS Marlborough, April 1919)
In fact, the “women and children first” protocol for abandoning ship was not a particularly ancient one. It began with the HMS Birkenhead, a British troopship that was wrecked off Cape Town, South Africa, on February 26, 1852. The soldiers famously stood in formation on deck while the women and children boarded the boats, and only 193 of the 643 people on board survived. Hymned as the “Birkenhead drill” in a poem by Rudyard Kipling, it became a familiar touchstone of Britain’s imperial greatness and AS BRAVE AS THE BIRKENHEAD was a much-used heading in UK Titanic press coverage. A story that Captain Smith had exhorted his men to “Be British!” further burnished the oft-cited claim that Anglo-Saxon men had not forgotten how to die.
Hugh Brewster (Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World)
Kelp forests could be one way to expand the seas’ annual carbon absorption capacity. Their near-surface seaweeds capture CO2 through photosynthesis. One of the fastest-growing forms of plant life, kelp expands by up to two feet in length per day. As Charles Darwin commented upon his kelp encounters during his mid-nineteenth-century voyage on the HMS Beagle: “I can only compare these great aquatic forests with terrestrial ones. The number of living creatures of all orders, whose existence depends on kelp, is wonderful.
John Doerr (Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now)
The Queen’s decisions to voluntarily pay income taxes, to mothball the royal yacht HMS Britannia, and to end primogeniture—the thousand-year-old rule stipulating that males have precedence over females in the line of succession—all grew out of Way Ahead Group deliberations.
Christopher Andersen (Brothers and Wives: Inside the Private Lives of William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan)
The same crew that would blow your ship full of holes and set it ablaze was just as apt to risk their own lives to rescue imperiled men in a storm.
Cal Clement (H.M.S Valor: Treachery And Triumph: A war time adventure on the high seas)
The sun was shining brightly on the day that I died. It blazed from the heavens. It sang from the skies. On a day the world seemed born again, the HMS Nightingale met her end. She took us with her, every one of us: the Old Man, me, the Doc, the Chief, the babyfaced killer in A-Turret, the fat man from Swansea, all the rest. She took us to the bottom. Saved our souls.
Garth Ennis (War Stories, Volume 1)
According to Eden’s personal secretary, Oliver Harvey, his master was ‘horrified’ by Churchill’s plan and tried to talk him out of it. He failed. In despair, he rang the US ambassador, John Winant, who, similarly taken aback, advised that such a visit would not be appropriate until the New Year at the earliest. Harvey too was appalled, noting, ‘I am aghast at the consequence of both [Churchill and Eden] being away at once. The British public will think quite rightly that they are mad.’ If Eden called off his Moscow mission, however, it would send the wrong message entirely to the Kremlin, since ‘it would be fatal to put off A.E.’s visit to Stalin to enable PM to visit Roosevelt. It would confirm all Stalin’s worst suspicions.’20 Eden persisted. He phoned the deputy prime minister, Clement Attlee, who agreed with him wholeheartedly and undertook to oppose the prime minister’s scheme at Cabinet. His objection had no effect: nothing would divert Churchill from his chosen course. When Cadogan spoke to him later that evening, to explain that Eden was ‘distressed’ at the idea of their both being out of the country at the same time, Churchill brushed him aside, saying, ‘That’s all right: that’ll work very well: I shall have Anthony where I want him.’21 Though he did not put it quite so bluntly when discussing this personally with Eden, Churchill left him in no doubt that ‘a complete understanding between Britain and the United States outweighed all else’.22 This conviction was reinforced by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and, according to the new CIGS, Brooke, the pressing need ‘to ensure that American help to this country does not dry up in consequence’.23 Eden’s opposition to Churchill’s visit had genuine diplomatic validity, but neither was he entirely disinterested, for, as Harvey put it, the prime ministerial trip would ‘take all the limelight off the Moscow visit’.24 The unfortunate Foreign Secretary was not only unwell but also disconsolate as HMS Kent set off into rising seas and darkening weather. The British party of Eden, Cadogan and Harvey, accompanied by Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Nye (the newly appointed Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff) and a phalanx of officials, set foot on Russian soil on 13 December. Their arrival gave Cadogan (who was not a seasoned
Jonathan Dimbleby (Barbarossa: How Hitler Lost the War)
Arma virumque cano,
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
HMS Nitwit?
Dave Villager (The Legend of Dave the Villager Books 16–20: a collection of unofficial Minecraft books (Dave the Villager Collections Book 4))
But there is nothing so tedious as sitting by when two old shipmates are calling out, “Do you remember the three days’ blow in the Mona Passage? – Do you remember Wilkins and his timenoguy? – What has happened to old Blodge?
Patrick O'Brian (HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3))
The results were so clear that one would expect the British Navy to adopt citrus juice for scurvy prevention on all its ships. But it was not until 1747, about 150 years later, that James Lind, a British Navy physician who knew of Lancaster’s results, carried out another experiment on the HMS Salisbury.
Everett M. Rogers (Diffusion of Innovations)
Nicholas Pateshall, A Short Account of a Voyage Round the Globe in H.M.S Calcutta 1803–1804, ed. Marjorie Tipping, Queensberry Hill Press, Melbourne, 1980, 56–64.
Tim Flannery (The Explorers: Text Classics)
Nodding once, she stuck out her hand. “Very well, then. I am Captain Lizzy of the recently sunk HMS Voyager. I am recruiting crew members skilled in sailing, carpentry, and shooting
J. Dawn King (River of Dreams (Dreaming of Darcy #2))
JWPianoMan: HMS kids r such morons.
Gordon Korman (Restart)