Maiden Voyage Quotes

The ship's purser could not have been more helpful. He was able to supply Sebastian with an address for Miss Samantha Sullivan: 2043 Cable Street, Georgetown, Washington, DC, although he couldn't be sure if she was still living there, as she hadn't traveled on the ship since the maiden voyag~.

The perfect metaphor," he said, "looming up suddenly out of nowhere in the middle of your maiden voyage, unseen until it is nearly upon you, unavoidable even when you try to swerve, unexpected even though there have been warnings all along. [...]

The white cat Sal-al was lying on the straw matting in the empty conservatory. She looked at us with a wicked, conceited expression as if all her appetites had just been satisfied. She was beautiful. Vesta and I both said, "I wish I were a cat!" Before we got to the last word we smiled at each other in annoyance, not liking the idea that most human beings think very much alike.

Thank you, everyone, for coming to join us here on the Aurora on this, its maiden voyage,” he began.

We've lost sight of How simple the task Really is— Hunt. Gather. Live. It's all been overly simplified In a complicated way. Now we're left just looking at each other. What's worse Is when one's sight Is only as far as A cell phone's light— When one's reach Is only as far as A computer screen. Somedays, I could smash it all With my bare hands. This hand held devise Is trying to put my life In a rectangle &The wild Animal Doesn't. Quite. Like. It.

America’s first Sunday school had been founded in Savannah in 1736, America’s first orphanage in 1740, America’s first black Baptist congregation in 1788, America’s first golf course in 1796. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, had been the minister of Christ Church in Savannah in 1736, and during his tenure had written a book of hymns that became the first hymnal used in the Church of England. A Savannah merchant had bankrolled the first steamship ever to cross the Atlantic, the Savannah, which made its maiden ocean voyage from Savannah to Liverpool in 1819.

When God designed the Marquesas... he must have been high.

Mrs. Carstairs is terribly excited about being aboard this particular ship, as it is the Titanic's maiden voyage, and she is suppose to be the largest ever built.

He made the mistake of booking first-class passage on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. When that liner struck an iceberg, the crew asked him, because of his sailing expertise, to row a lifeboat full of passengers to safety. He was an honorable man—the president of the Standard Chemical Company and a major in the Queen’s Own Rifles—and he was doing a heroic deed.

The Chorus Line: The Birth of Telemachus, An Idyll Nine months he sailed the wine-red seas of his mother's blood Out of the cave of dreaded Night, of sleep, Of troubling dreams he sailed In his frail dark boat, the boat of himself, Through the dangerous ocean of his vast mother he sailed From the distant cave where the threads of men's lives are spun, Then measured, and then cut short By the Three Fatal Sisters, intent on their gruesome handcrafts, And the lives of women also are twisted into the strand. And we, the twelve who were later to die by his hand At his father's relentless command, Sailed as well, in the dark frail boats of ourselves Through the turbulent seas of our swollen and sore-footed mothers Who were not royal queens, but a motley and piebald collection, Bought, traded, captured, kidnapped from serfs and strangers. After the nine-month voyage we came to shore, Beached at the same time as he was, struck by the hostile air, Infants when he was an infant, wailing just as he wailed, Helpless as he was helpless, but ten times more helpless as well, For his birth was longed-for and feasted, as our births were not. His mother presented a princeling. Our various mothers Spawned merely, lambed, farrowed, littered, Foaled, whelped and kittened, brooded, hatched out their clutch. We were animal young, to be disposed of at will, Sold, drowned in the well, traded, used, discarded when bloomless. He was fathered; we simply appeared, Like the crocus, the rose, the sparrows endangered in mud. Our lives were twisted in his life; we also were children When he was a child, We were his pets and his toythings, mock sisters, his tiny companions. We grew as he grew, laughed also, ran as he ran, Though sandier, hungrier, sun-speckled, most days meatless. He saw us as rightfully his, for whatever purpose He chose, to tend him and feed him, to wash him, amuse him, Rock him to sleep in the dangerous boats of ourselves. We did not know as we played with him there in the sand On the beach of our rocky goat-island, close by the harbour, That he was foredoomed to swell to our cold-eyed teenaged killer. If we had known that, would we have drowned him back then? Young children are ruthless and selfish: everyone wants to live. Twelve against one, he wouldn't have stood a chance. Would we? In only a minute, when nobody else was looking? Pushed his still-innocent child's head under the water With our own still-innocent childish nursemaid hands, And blamed it on waves. Would we have had it in us? Ask the Three Sisters, spinning their blood-red mazes, Tangling the lives of men and women together. Only they know how events might then have had altered. Only they know our hearts. From us you will get no answer.

The Chilson District Library Bookmobile began its maiden voyage. Me, three thousand books, one hundred DVDs, a dozen jigsaw puzzles, two laptop computers-and one Eddie.

The SS Deutschland was one of a group of four ships that included the SS Albert Ballin, on which my father had originally come to the United States. The other two were the SS Hamburg, and the SS New York. The Deutschland was launched during the Roaring Twenties on April 28, 1923, at the Blohm and Voss shipyard along the Elbe River in Hamburg. Nearly a year later after sea trials, she inaugurated her regular run to New York City. From the beginning, the ship was beset by problems, but was still considered the pride of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, a company with rich traditions that was founded in 1847. So, when the Deutschland left Hamburg for the first time on March 27, 1924, she moved slowly down the Elbe River past Blohm und Voss, the massive dockyard where she had been built. At the time of her maiden voyage, the entire city celebrated when the Deutschland headed down the Elbe River towards the North Sea. Other ships in the harbor fittingly saluted her by blowing their deep throaty whistles, as small craft such as tugboats and fireboats pumped frothy white streams of the brackish river water high into the air.

The coast of Maine has many fishing villages and old seaports, and its past is steeped in maritime history. Twelve miles from Bath, we came into Wiscasset, known for the wrecks of two old sailing vessels: the four-masted cargo schooners the Hesper and the Luther Little. The Hesper was launched on the 4th of July, 1918. It was a wonderfully festive day when the Hesper was allowed to slide down the inclined ways, but because the ship builders had underestimated her weight, she only slid down the ways by about 10 yards before everything collapsed. The Hesper came to a grinding halt, but fortunately didn’t roll over. It was not until that August before the ship was once again shored up, and launched into the Sheepscot River. Her master was Captain Caleb A. Haskell from Deer Isle, who then sailed her to Lisbon, Portugal. On her maiden voyage she carried a 2,000 ton cargo of coal. I got to know Bo’sun, or Boatswain, Vernon Haskell, who drove the bus that later picked me up in Bangor. He also came from Deer Isle and sailed on these very same ships when he was a young man. Back in those days seafaring was a family tradition, and the Haskells were well-known seafaring folks in these parts. These two sailing ships are now gone and with their loss, some more maritime history is lost forever.

Above all, you will ascertain the state of the Christian population, in number and in spiritual fervor as well as the correctness of its religious practice, from the Rogations to All-Saints' Day and Christmas; the state of their morals will require your particular attention. You will investigate if wives are faithful to their husbands, and whether the husbands stay within the bounds of acceptable debauchery; or if, instead of limiting themselves to fornicating with their neighbors' wives and maidens, they do it with their own daughters or mothers, or even go so far as to engage in sodomy in the winter months.

But I am always surrounded by oceans, the crunch of unripened bodies between my teeth with the ghosts patrolling my shores, making way for this maiden voyage

the line between love and hate is so fine, so paper thin, that being in love is always one step away from madness.

He looked a bit crazed. They all did. They all smelled terrible too. Microgravity did something to both olfaction and body odor that wasn’t pleasant. She’d ceased to notice it long ago, except when she got too close to one of them. She put a lot of effort into avoiding that, though it was difficult. It was bad enough that they had to put water to their lips knowing that by now the lion’s share of it was recycled urine. There wasn’t enough water to do more than sponge-bathe and even that was done sparingly by necessity. The men could shave if they chose, with a built-in vacuum-assisted electric shaver, but they’d given up the pretense of civilized grooming months ago. They didn’t look like they belonged in this twenty-first-century ship on its maiden voyage. They looked like Neanderthal thugs who had hijacked it.

A month before the Treasure Fleet's maiden voyage, at the age of thirty-four, Zheng He commissioned an epitaph inscribed on a stone pillar over his father's grave in Yunnan province. He worshiped his father, who had died in battle. The epitaph, one of only three known testimonials from the admiral, described his father's character: 'He was content as an ordinary commoner, but he was brave and decisive in his ordinary life. There was no one in this community who did not look up to him. When he encountered the unfortunate, including widows, orphans, and others with no one to rely on, he routinely offered protection and aid. He cherished the bestowal of extraordinary favours. By nature, he was fond of doing good.' This revelation of a softer version of manhood as the ideal in much of Asia provided another piece of the answer to the question of how Westerners came to perceive Asians as less masculine.

Soon our culture's oldest dreams will be made real. Even the thought of sending a kind of flying craft to the moon is no longer nothing more than a child's fantasy. At this moment in the cities below us, the first mechanical men are being constructed that will have the capability to pilot the ship on its maiden voyage. But no one has asked if this dream we've had for so long will lose its value once it's realized. What will happen when those mechanical men step out of their ship and onto the surface of this moon, which has served humanity for thousands of years as our principal icon of love and madness? When they touch their hands to the ground and perform their relentless analyses and find no measurable miracles, but a dead gray world of rocks and dust? When they discover that it was the strength of millions of boyhood daydreams that kept the moon aloft, and that without them that murdered world will fall, spiraling slowly down and crashing into the open sea?

At about this time David hit on a scheme to end their financial problems. With his growing family, their limited income must have been the cause of constant worry to him. Stories of the rich strikes in the Klondike a decade earlier, perhaps bolstered by his spell of active service in South Africa, seem to have persuaded him that gold-mining might be the answer. On hearing that a new goldfield had been discovered in Ontario, he staked several claims to forty acres near the small township of Swastika, in the Great Lakes area. Only small quantities of gold had been found there so far, but a big seam was believed to exist. ---- Over the next twenty years or so, David would travel to Ontario many times to work the claim. He had already been there alone when, in the spring of 1912, he and Sydney decided to go together and – the biggest treat — they were to sail on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Fortunately, something happened to make this impossible, and their departure was delayed until autumn of the following year. ---- It is not difficult to see why David remained keen, although the mining project eventually came to nothing. Furthermore, he and Sydney were at their closest in the shack at Swastika through the winter in that inhospitable climate, and it was one of the happiest times of David’s life. It was there that Sydney conceived their fifth child. ---- The parents, still hoping for a second boy, were disappointed, but soon came round. There was time for another boy. In David’s absence Sydney called her Unity after an actress (Unity Moore) she admired, and then Grandfather Redesdale said that she must have a topically apposite second name so they added Valkyrie, after Wagner’s Norse war-maidens. Almost from the time of her birth she was known in family circles as ‘Bobo’, but with hindsight, Unity Valkyrie’s unusual name, combined with the place of her conception, Swastika, seems almost like an eerie prophecy which the fifth Mitford child had no alternative but to fulfil.

You did a fine job with those science nerds over the course of this past year, John. Very fine job. Nothing but praise from the lot of them. Well done.” His thick English accent had a soothing effect every time he spoke. John remembered him fondly as a young man. His father and the Admiral had gone to the academy together and served side by side for many years before John’s father met an untimely death. Sitting here with him now and listening to him speak brought him back to those simpler times. “I was just doing my duty, Sir.” “Oh come now. You know and I know that there isn’t a bloody captain in this entire fleet that wanted that assignment. There isn’t a bit of action when you have the lot of them aboard. And on a bloody science mission besides. No, no, you are a real hero for saving all of us from having to do such a duty. And for a year! Bloody hell.” He opened up a drawer and pulled out two thick, stubby glasses, and then extracted a bottle of rum. Of course he brought out the rum. “I suppose you heard that we’ve been hard at work getting our first Deep Space Class starship ready to launch this year?” he asked as he filled both glasses half full with the amber liquid. He Offered one glass to John who took it with reluctance. He had never been one who liked liquor. “Heard she’s a beauty. The engine is something of a marvel as well?” “Damn straight,” he said as he downed his first glass in one pull. He filled his glass up half full for round two. “Currently our fastest ship will get you to the Wild Space region in twenty years. This buggers going to do it in six months and I’d like you to take her out on her maiden voyage.” John sat back in shock. The thought of taking out the prototype of the future… it was a great honor and one that hundreds of captains in star fleet would give anything for. He certainly wasn’t worthy of such an honor. He didn’t have nearly the amount of years as everyone else in the fleet. “I don’t think it’d be right to accept, would it? I mean… there are some captains who’ve…” “Bumshnickles!” he shouted. “Your father was the captain of the first Earth Starship Independence. It’s only right that the second to bear her name should have an Avery in the chair.

It’s akin to proclaiming the Titanic’s maiden voyage a success because 99.8 percent of the journey proceeded without a hitch or that Abraham Lincoln enjoyed most of the play. Nonetheless,

The energy was very much like the prickly excitement of the first day at summer camp or a freshman dormitory on move-in day. The sense of camaraderie that they all shared that first night would evaporate over the months and years to follow and be replaced by a cold formality more befitting the passengers of an airplane or guests in a hotel lobby. If you walked into the commissary forty years from then, you would get the sense that the passengers knew nothing about one another, or that perhaps they all knew one another too well and had nothing left to say.

I feel sorry for them—human beings, not bugs. If their brains were just a tad bigger, they might make an admirable species—they might even be happy. But as it is, humans are always fighting endless battles to change the things over which they have little or no control.

Most other creatures in the universe have no concept of hope and can go on living without it. But humans need hope as much as they need air or water or food.

The tables were crowded and warm, and the room had a lively sense of camaraderie about it, an artificial camaraderie fostered by the strangeness and isolation of space and of having survived a traumatic experience together.

I have observed humans a long time through my superspectrum x-ray telescope, seeing into their homes, into their bodies, and into their lives. I have written numerous reports documenting their behavior, and I have come to be something of an expert on the human species on my own planet. And there is one thing I have learned about humans that in all my studies I find to be true: human beings are rarely ever happy.

In the big, wide universe, the real question is this: How did Homo sapiens sapiens, a relatively small subclass of sentient beings, manage to become so enormously divided?

Unfortunately, their wedding, which was to be a cause for celebration, took a tragic turn when, during the reception, Esmeralda Fincus realized with horror that young Jason Fincus was missing. Search as the wedding party might, Jason Fincus would not turn up again for twenty-one long years, or forty-three long years—depending on your frame of reference.

Yet the New York arrival time was not measured by when the liner docked but by when it passed the Ambrose Lightship, a navigation beacon moored off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, where it marked the main channel into New York harbor. On her maiden voyage the Olympic had passed the Ambrose Lightship at 2:24 a.m. on Wednesday, June 21, 1911. Ismay knew that to beat the Olympic’s maiden crossing record and “arrive on Tuesday,” the Titanic had simply to pass the Ambrose Lightship before midnight and best her sister’s time by only two and a half hours. On her second westbound crossing, the Olympic had, in fact, reached the lightship at 10:08 p.m. on Tuesday, July 18. With the Titanic already achieving average speeds of just under twenty-two knots over the last two days, she was well on her way to making the Tuesday arrival that Ismay had so enthusiastically predicted.

he was raised the right way — homophobia free. We had zero tolerance for that horseshit.

homemade rice.

smirked.

Interjections, show excitement, or emotion. They’re generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point, or by a comma when the feelings not as strong,” Julia sang, mimicking the Saturday morning School House Rock cartoon.

It was a strange passage. Most of it seemed more a dream than reality. Such things as the tremendous gait we built up—far more than light speed— and the great distances we traveled were the realities, but I barely noticed them. More real was the unreality of the thin, lovely forms of the Nor maids moving about their mighty princess, the soft fires of their floating hair like seedling flames from the vast fire of Vanue’s god-life crowned by its floating cloud of yellow; our own eyes burning like the spotted wings of moths against the screen of her will; the sad faces of our own maids beside us, gazing first at the fierce white flame of her body and then at our own bemused selves; the vaulting of the vast ship walls about us; the unfamiliar instruments blinking and whirring. It was a very real dream to me—a dream I knew I would never stop dreaming. Strange passage. . . Ever the whisper of the feet of the Nor maids on some swift errand; the soft rumble of the voice of their living Goddess and the answering bright song of her worshipping maidens. Yes, it was a strange passage, and every mile of it brought home a fascinating realization. I had embarked on the most amazing voyage of my whole life. The very thought of what now certainly lay before me was enough to stun my mind into an apathy of thinking that was hard to overcome; yet my mind was so full of excitement that it did strive to think, to add to the realization of what the future would hold. A new life was at hand; opening to wonders that staggered me to think of them—and awed me into all-engulfing reverence. To live to become what this Nor princess had become; to have the love of people as she had the love of these Nor maids—that is the real dream. I knew that I must gain the key to the door of a way of living that would lead to the full value of the Nortan life. So it was, sitting in the thrall of that too-strong beauty of woman-life, we noted so little. How much time passed? I will never know. It was as if all body functions ceased, as though food and drink were not needed—as long as we were in the presence of Vanue of Nor. But I did know that she was in continual communication with the planet Nor over the space telescreens. Face after face appeared before her, murmured briefly and intensely, and vanished; only to be replaced by others. I knew vaguely that she was calling for a conference on the strength of our information; and sensed also that we would attend that conference at her side. The thought dawned on me slowly. Here was an honor few ro ever attain in the first century of their growth. By old Mother Mu! To see those Elders of Nor, the whole lot of them, male and female, all at once. . . ! That would be more than one could well stand. An overpowering, devastating ecstasy. . . . Well, it would be an interesting death.

The love of my life sits upstairs in a hospital room fighting for his life and I will be there every step of the way, fighting right along with him. My family grew tenfold today when the guys from Maiden Voyage entered Joey’s room. Diamond, Mickey, myself and even Joey will never be able to thank them enough for all they’ve done for us.” By then, my cries were so profuse I could hardly utter a word.

Among Morgan’s many “loads” at the time was a scheme to create a huge international shipping syndicate that could stabilize trade and yield huge returns from the lucrative transatlantic routes. By June of 1902 he had purchased Britain’s prestigious White Star Line for $32 million and combined it with other shipping acquisitions to form a trust called the International Mercantile Marine. In 1904 Morgan installed White Star Line’s largest shareholder, forty-one-year-old J. Bruce Ismay, son of the line’s late founder, as president of the IMM. The second-largest shareholder was Lord William J. Pirrie, the chairman of Harland and Wolff, the Belfast shipbuilders responsible for the construction of White Star’s ships. Pirrie had been the chief negotiator with Morgan’s men and was placed on the board of the new trust. The British government had acceded to Morgan’s flexing of American financial muscle in the acquisition of White Star but had also provided loans and subsidies to the rival Cunard Line for the building of the world’s largest, fastest liners, Lusitania and Mauretania—with the proviso that they be available for wartime service. By the summer of 1907, the Lusitania had made its record-breaking maiden voyage, and Pirrie and Ismay soon hatched White Star’s response. They would use Morgan’s money to build three of the world’s biggest and most luxurious liners. Within a year Harland and Wolff had drawn up plans for two giant ships, and by mid-December the keel plate for the first liner, the Olympic, had been laid. On March 31, 1909, the same was done for a sister ship, to be called Titanic. A third, named Britannic, was to be built later.

Up in the crow’s nest on the foremast, lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee could see the lights of the French coast in the distance and the mast lights of other ships. For a closer look, binoculars would have helped, but the pair they had used in the crow’s nest on the trip from Belfast to Southampton had gone missing. This had been reported to Second Officer Charles Lightoller, but he had said there wasn’t a replacement set available. No one seemed bothered about it, so the lookouts weren’t worried either. Binoculars were not standard equipment in the crow’s nest on many ships. And these things just seemed to happen on a maiden voyage.

Though bachelorhood, it must be noted, is not necessarily an indicator of homosexuality, it took considerable resilience to remain single in an era when marriage bestowed manhood. For lesbians the social pressure was less intense since “maiden ladies” living together drew little scrutiny. In America, these alliances between women were sometimes known as “Boston marriages,” a term coined from Henry James’s 1886 novel The Bostonians, which described two “new women” living together in a marriage-like relationship.

Morgan was no doubt pleased that Millet was sailing on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. He had planned to be on board himself before changing his plans in favor of a stay at a spa at Aix-les-Bains with his mistress.

Thomas Andrews, a shipbuilder and architect (who was on board for the maiden voyage and died in the sinking).

The collision with the Hawke affected the Titanic. Not only was a diversion of effort required, but the only speedy way of repairing the damaged propeller was to replace it with one destined for the Titanic. It forced White Star to shift the date of the Titanic’s maiden voyage—as announced in September 1911—from March 20, 1912, to April 10, 1912. If the Hawke and the Olympic had never met, then neither would the iceberg and the Titanic.

From the beginning, the SS Deutschland was beset by problems, She was known as the “Cocktail Shaker” when she was first launched in 1923. On her trials, it was noticed that the ship had a serious vibration problem due to an imbalance in her twin shafts or perhaps her massive bronze propellers. Because of a lack of funding, this vibration was accepted and remained so for the first six years of her existence. It was an embarrassment to have a ship represent the German Merchant Marine, Handelsmarine, that was handicapped from the start. However, she was still considered the pride of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, a company with rich traditions that was founded in 1847. So, when the Deutschland left Hamburg for the first time on March 27, 1924, she moved slowly down the Elbe River past Blohm und Voss, the massive dockyard where she had been built. At the time of her maiden voyage, the entire city celebrated when the Deutschland headed down the Elbe River towards the North Sea. Other ships in the harbor fittingly saluted her by blowing their deep throaty whistles, as small craft such as tugboats and fireboats pumped frothy white streams of the brackish river water high into the air. By the time I boarded her for my voyage to the United States in November, 1934, the SS Deutschland was over 11 years old and, although she was still Hamburg-Amerika Line’s flagship, she was beginning to show her age. Germans, who prided themselves in their knowledge of science and engineering, were falling behind other European countries. Paying retribution to the victors of World War I had drained the German treasury and as a nation, they resented it. Hostility had increased and the pressure it put on the people was obvious. Many looked to Hitler to make “Germany great again.

her maiden voyage on Wednesday, April 10, 1912.

page headline trumpeting the maiden commercial voyage of the Concorde. The supersonic jet had completed its first commercial flight between London and Bahrain, with roundtrip tickets on what the Daily Mail called “The World Shrinker” costing £676 ($1,370). The paper noted that the jet made its journey at the speed of sound—and Paul, having scanned the ether in search of an album title in recent weeks, suddenly had one—Wings at the Speed of Sound.*

There’s something unsettling about her. A bad omen. You wouldn’t want to catch her steady eye in the boisterous crowd celebrating a ship’s maiden voyage.