Sailors Short Quotes

I’ve heard people speak of themselves as addicted to reading, but I think those people never stole from their family so they could afford this month’s serial, or sucked off a sailor for a new book of short stories.

A child of about eleven, garbed in a very short, very tight, very ugly dress of yellowish-gray wincey. She wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat, extending down her back, were two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her face was small, white and thin, also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were her eyes, which looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others.

I was working the hole with the Sailor and we did not bad fifteen cents on average night boosting the afternoons and short timing the dawn we made out from the land of the free but I was running out of veins.

Several sailors, sheltered behind the curved bottoms of their boats, were watching this battle of the sky and the sea.

It is at once imaginative and metaphysical,—in short, Greek.

When he was a little boy his mother kept him in dresses and long curls; then she dressed him in Scottish regalia. Eventually, at the age of seven, he wore pants—short pants that were part of miniature sailor suits. Evidently, before age nine he had never taken a bath by himself.

Time heals all wounds. Time is of the essence. Time is short. Time is on my side. Lies. All lies. Time is the enemy. Time was playing for the other team. Timed stretched like an endless desert. The only thing time does is stagger along like a drunk sailor and give you wrinkles. And syphilis.

A single German submarine, Unterseeboot-9—U-9, for short—commanded by Kptlt. Otto Weddigen, had sunk all three ships, killing 1,459 British sailors, many of them young men in their teens.

The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it--cockroaches as large as peach leaves--fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they stuck. I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck. The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life.

The ill-fated dodo. Slow, flightless and dangerously trusting, the dodo was driven to extinction just seventy years after first being spotted by European sailors on its island home of Mauritius.

being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every prisoner's dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well. But I learned that the 'system' required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, 'the system' put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered.

Oh, hush your croaking, Parlay,” chided one of the captains. “It ain’t going to blow.” “If I was a strong man, I couldn’t get up hook and get out fast enough,” the old man retorted in the falsetto of age. “Not if I was a strong man with the taste for wine yet in my mouth. But not you. You’ll all stay, I wouldn’t advise you if I thought you’d go, You can’t drive buzzards away from the carrion. Have another drink, my brave sailor-men. Well, well, what men will dare for a few little oyster drops! There they are, the beauties! Auction to-morrow, at ten sharp.

His father, a civil servant, had raised him and his sister singlehanded after their mother’s death; the sickly old man had worked overtime in order to send Ryuji to school; despite everything, Ryuji had grown up into a strong, healthy man; late in the war his home had been destroyed in an air raid and his sister had died of typhus shortly after; he had graduated from the merchant-marine high school and was just starting on his career when his father died too; his only memories of life on shore were of poverty and sickness and death, of endless devastation; by becoming a sailor, he had detached himself from the land for ever. ... It was the first time he had talked of these things at such length to a woman.

MY FIRST ASSIGNMENT AFTER BEING ORDAINED as a pastor almost finished me. I was called to be the assistant pastor in a large and affluent suburban church. I was glad to be part of such an obviously winning organization. After I had been there a short time, a few people came to me and asked that I lead them in a Bible study. “Of course,” I said, “there is nothing I would rather do.” We met on Monday evenings. There weren’t many—eight or nine men and women—but even so that was triple the two or three that Jesus defined as a quorum. They were eager and attentive; I was full of enthusiasm. After a few weeks the senior pastor, my boss, asked me what I was doing on Monday evenings. I told him. He asked me how many people were there. I told him. He told me that I would have to stop. “Why?” I asked. “It is not cost-effective. That is too few people to spend your time on.” I was told then how I should spend my time. I was introduced to the principles of successful church administration: crowds are important, individuals are expendable; the positive must always be accented, the negative must be suppressed. Don’t expect too much of people—your job is to make them feel good about themselves and about the church. Don’t talk too much about abstractions like God and sin—deal with practical issues. We had an elaborate music program, expensively and brilliantly executed. The sermons were seven minutes long and of the sort that Father Taylor (the sailor-preacher in Boston who was the model for Father Mapple in Melville’s Moby Dick) complained of in the transcendentalists of the last century: that a person could no more be converted listening to sermons like that than get intoxicated drinking skim milk.[2] It was soon apparent that I didn’t fit. I had supposed that I was there to be a pastor: to proclaim and interpret Scripture, to guide people into a life of prayer, to encourage faith, to represent the mercy and forgiveness of Christ at special times of need, to train people to live as disciples in their families, in their communities and in their work. In fact I had been hired to help run a church and do it as efficiently as possible: to be a cheerleader to this dynamic organization, to recruit members, to lend the dignity of my office to certain ceremonial occasions, to promote the image of a prestigious religious institution. I got out of there as quickly as I could decently manage it. At the time I thought I had just been unlucky. Later I came to realize that what I experienced was not at all uncommon.

Men sitting doubled up in the upper bunks smoked short pipes, swinging bare brown feet above the heads of those who, sprawling below on sea-chests, listened, smiling stupidly or scornfully. Over the white rims of berths stuck out heads with blinking eyes; but the bodies were lost in the gloom of those places, that resembled narrow niches for coffins in a white-washed and lighted mortuary. Voices buzzed louder. Archie, with compressed lips, drew himself in, seemed to shrink into a smaller space, and sewed steadily, industrious and dumb. Belfast shrieked like an inspired Dervish: — ‘... So I seez to him, boys, seez I, “Beggin’ yer pardon, sorr,” seez I to that second mate of that steamer — “beggin’ your-r-r pardon, sorr, the Board of Trade must ‘ave been drunk when they granted you your certificate!” “What do you say, you — !” seez he, comin’ at me like a mad bull... all in his white clothes; and I up with my tarpot and capsizes it all over his blamed lovely face and his lovely jacket... “Take that!” seez I. “I am a sailor, anyhow, you nosing, skipper-licking, useless, sooperfloos bridge-stanchion, you! That’s the kind of man I am!” shouts I... You should have seed him skip, boys! Drowned, blind with

So, boy, how does it feel to be pouring out a never-ending stream of--?” “Stop that!” I scowled at my brothers as I shooed them away from Milo. “How can you make such jokes in front of him?” “To be honest, the only thing in front of him right now is the sea and the supper he ate three days ago.” Castor’s grin got wider. Polydeuces was contrite. “We mean well, Helen. We’re only trying to make him laugh. A good laugh might take his mind off being so ill.” “It’s a shame we’re bound straight for Corinth,” the old sailor said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Since nothing else seems to be working for this lad, could be that a short rest on dry land would steady his stomach.” “You think we’d ever be able to get him back on board afterward?” Castor asked. The sailor shrugged. “What would he have to say about it? He’s your slave, isn’t he?” “He’s our sister’s slave, or was,” Castor replied. “She freed him as soon as she bought him.” “And still he came onto this ship with you, sick as seafaring makes him?” “This is his first voyage,” I said, stooping beside Milo to place one arm protectively around him. “He didn’t know he’d get sick.” “Oh, he’d have come along even if he’d known that a sea monster was waiting to gobble him up,” Castor said, with another of those annoying, conspiratorial winks to his twin. “Anything rather than be separated from you, little sister.” Polydeuces eagerly took up his brother’s game. “That’s true,” he hastened to tell the old sailor. “If you could have seen the way he’s been gazing at her, all the way from Calydon!” “Can we blame him, Polydeuces?” Castor asked with mock sincerity. “Our little sister is the most beautiful woman in the world.” They collapsed laughing into each other’s arms. Milo made a great effort and pushed himself away from the rail, away from me. He took two staggering steps, fists clenched. “She is.” Then he spun around and lurched for the ship’s side once more. My brothers exchanged a look of pure astonishment. The old sailor chuckled. “He may have been a slave, Lady Helen, but he’s braver than many a free man, to talk back to princes that way! But it wouldn’t be the first time a man found courage he never knew he had until he met the right woman.” My face flamed. I wanted to thank Milo for putting an end to my brothers’ teasing--whether or not it was all in fun, I still found it annoying--but I was strangely tongue-tied. Fortunately for me, the old sailor chose that moment to say, “That’s not something you see every day, a mouse trying to take a bite from a lion’s tail. Mark my words, this lad has the makings of a great hero. Why, if I had it my way, I’d put in at the next port and carry him all the way to Apollo’s temple at Delphi, just to see what marvels the Pythia would have to predict about his future.

The dinosaurs, built of concrete, were a kind of bonus attraction. On New Year’s Eve 1853 a famous dinner for twenty-one prominent scientists was held inside the unfinished iguanodon. Gideon Mantell, the man who had found and identified the iguanodon, was not among them. The person at the head of the table was the greatest star of the young science of palaeontology. His name was Richard Owen and by this time he had already devoted several productive years to making Gideon Mantell’s life hell. A double-tailed lizard, part of the vast collection of natural wonders and anatomical specimens collected by the Scottish-born surgeon John Hunter in the eighteenth century. After Hunter’s death in 1793, the collection passed to the Royal College of Surgeons. (credit 6.8) Owen had grown up in Lancaster, in the north of England, where he had trained as a doctor. He was a born anatomist and so devoted to his studies that he sometimes illicitly borrowed limbs, organs and other parts from corpses and took them home for leisurely dissection. Once, while carrying a sack containing the head of a black African sailor that he had just removed, Owen slipped on a wet cobble and watched in horror as the head bounced away from him down the lane and through the open doorway of a cottage, where it came to rest in the front parlour. What the occupants had to say upon finding an unattached head rolling to a halt at their feet can only be imagined. One assumes that they had not formed any terribly advanced conclusions when, an instant later, a fraught-looking young man rushed in, wordlessly retrieved the head and rushed out again.

Nostromo is the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels which belong to the period following upon the publication of the Typhoon volume of short stories. I don’t mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending change in my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing life. And perhaps there was never any change, except in that mysterious, extraneous thing which has nothing to do with the theories of art; a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration; a phenomenon for which I can not in any way be held responsible. What, however, did cause me some concern was that after finishing the last story of the Typhoon volume it seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about. This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little time; and then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint for Nostromo came to me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote completely destitute of valuable details. As a matter of fact in 1875 or ’6, when very young, in the West Indies or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short, few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a revolution. On the face of it this was something of a feat. But I heard no details, and having no particular interest in crime qua crime I was not likely to keep that one in my mind. And I forgot it till twenty-six or seven years afterwards I came upon the very thing in a shabby volume picked up outside a second-hand book-shop. It was the life story of an American seaman written by himself with the assistance of a journalist. In the course of his wanderings that American sailor worked for some months on board a schooner, the master and owner of which was the thief of whom I had heard in my very young days. I have no doubt of that because there could hardly have been two exploits of that peculiar kind in the same part of the world and both connected with a South American revolution.

The wooden ship objected with loud creaks as the heavy wind strained its sails to the limits, pushing it forwards through the waves. A rather petite vessel, it was the smallest she’d sailed. It was old and worn, too. Nora looked up at the yellowed sails fondly. It was a miracle that they’d lasted this long, cooperating with the buffeting winds without rest for many seasons now. And Nora and the ship had been through some strong gales together. Excellent craftsmanship, Nora thought and, as she often did, pondered the ship’s origins: who’d made it and what waters it’d sailed before she stole it. She’d been certain that the ship wouldn’t last long on the high seas, and that she’d soon have to find a replacement, but she’d been pleasantly surprised. Her ship might not cover vast distances in as short a time as the bigger, heavier sailing ships she was used to, but Nora could turn Naureen around or change direction in a matter of minutes. She could swiftly put distance between her and the ships she plundered. Sometimes, it seemed as if the ship responded to her thoughts, as if there was a weird invisible bond between the two of them. ‘Naureen. Us sailor gals must stick together,’ she said aloud, as if the ship could hear her. Nora always talked to her ship. Clearly a sign she’d been on the sea for too long, she mused. Naureen. Nora didn’t know who’d named the ship or what the name meant, but she thought it strangely fitting. It graced the bow of the ship, painted in beautiful calligraphy. Nora saw it whenever she was aboard another vessel, rummaging for furs or bones of extinct animals she could sell, or food. The sight of her ship always made her heart flutter with happiness. There was a time when Nora would steal the ships she plundered, if she liked them and was in the mood for a change. But not after she stole Naureen. Well, not stole, she corrected herself. When she’d come across the tiny ship, she’d found the salt-rimed corpse of the hollow-cheeked owner sprawled face down on the deck. He’d probably starved to death. His body had not been the first one Nora’d found drifting at sea, nor the last.

In the very midst of this panic came the news that the steamer Central America, formerly the George Law, with six hundred passengers and about sixteen hundred thousand dollars of treasure, coming from Aspinwall, had foundered at sea, off the coast of Georgia, and that about sixty of the passengers had been providentially picked up by a Swedish bark, and brought into Savannah. The absolute loss of this treasure went to swell the confusion and panic of the day. A few days after, I was standing in the vestibule of the Metropolitan Hotel, and heard the captain of the Swedish bark tell his singular story of the rescue of these passengers. He was a short, sailor-like-looking man, with a strong German or Swedish accent. He said that he was sailing from some port in Honduras for Sweden, running down the Gulf Stream off Savannah. The weather had been heavy for some days, and, about nightfall, as he paced his deck, he observed a man-of-war hawk circle about his vessel, gradually lowering, until the bird was as it were aiming at him. He jerked out a belaying pin, struck at the bird, missed it, when the hawk again rose high in the air, and a second time began to descend, contract his circle, and make at him again. The second time he hit the bird, and struck it to the deck. . . . This strange fact made him uneasy, and he thought it betokened danger; he went to the binnacle, saw the course he was steering, and without any particular reason he ordered the steersman to alter the course one point to the east. After this it became quite dark, and he continued to promenade the deck, and had settled into a drowsy state, when as in a dream he thought he heard voices all round his ship. Waking up, he ran to the side of the ship, saw something struggling in the water, and heard clearly cries for help. Instantly heaving his ship to, and lowering all his boats, he managed to pick up sixty or more persons who were floating about on skylights, doors, spare, and whatever fragments remained of the Central America. Had he not changed the course of his vessel by reason of the mysterious conduct of that man-of-war hawk, not a soul would probably have survived the night.

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.

The seventh day, and no wind—the burning sun Blister’d and scorch’d, and, stagnant on the sea, They lay like carcasses; and hope was none, Save in the breeze that came not; savagely They glared upon each other—all was done, Water, and wine, and food,—and you might see The longings of the cannibal arise (Although they spoke not) in their wolfish eyes. At length one whisper’d his companion, who Whisper’d another, and thus it went round, And then into a hoarser murmur grew, An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound; And when his comrade’s thought each sufferer knew, ’Twas but his own, suppress’d till now, he found: And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood, And who should die to be his fellow’s food. But ere they came to this, they that day shared Some leathern caps, and what remain’d of shoes; And then they look’d around them and despair’d, And none to be the sacrifice would choose; At length the lots were torn up, and prepared, But of materials that much shock the Muse— Having no paper, for the want of better, They took by force from Juan Julia’s letter. The lots were made, and mark’d, and mix’d, and handed, In silent horror, and their distribution Lull’d even the savage hunger which demanded, Like the Promethean vulture, this pollution; None in particular had sought or plann’d it, ’Twas nature gnaw’d them to this resolution, By which none were permitted to be neuter— And the lot fell on Juan’s luckless tutor. He but requested to be bled to death: The surgeon had his instruments, and bled Pedrillo, and so gently ebb’d his breath, You hardly could perceive when he was dead. He died as born, a Catholic in faith, Like most in the belief in which they’re bred, And first a little crucifix he kiss’d, And then held out his jugular and wrist. The surgeon, as there was no other fee, Had his first choice of morsels for his pains; But being thirstiest at the moment, he Preferr’d a draught from the fast-flowing veins: Part was divided, part thrown in the sea, And such things as the entrails and the brains Regaled two sharks, who follow’d o’er the billow The sailors ate the rest of poor Pedrillo. The sailors ate him, all save three or four, Who were not quite so fond of animal food; To these was added Juan, who, before Refusing his own spaniel, hardly could Feel now his appetite increased much more; ’Twas not to be expected that he should, Even in extremity of their disaster, Dine with them on his pastor and his master. ’Twas better that he did not; for, in fact, The consequence was awful in the extreme; For they, who were most ravenous in the act, Went raging mad—Lord! how they did blaspheme! And foam and roll, with strange convulsions rack’d, Drinking salt water like a mountain-stream, Tearing, and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing, And, with hyaena-laughter, died despairing. Their numbers were much thinn’d by this infliction, And all the rest were thin enough, Heaven knows; And some of them had lost their recollection, Happier than they who still perceived their woes; But others ponder’d on a new dissection, As if not warn’d sufficiently by those Who had already perish’d, suffering madly, For having used their appetites so sadly. And if Pedrillo’s fate should shocking be, Remember Ugolino condescends To eat the head of his arch-enemy The moment after he politely ends His tale: if foes be food in hell, at sea ’Tis surely fair to dine upon our friends, When shipwreck’s short allowance grows too scanty, Without being much more horrible than Dante.

In the early 1680s, at just about the time that Edmond Halley and his friends Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke were settling down in a London coffee house and embarking on the casual wager that would result eventually in Isaac Newton’s Principia, Hemy Cavendish’s weighing of the Earth, and many of the other inspired and commendable undertakings that have occupied us for much of the past four hundred pages, a rather less desirable milestone was being passed on the island of Mauritius, far out in the Indian Ocean some eight hundred miles off the east coast of Madagascar. There, some forgotten sailor or sailor’s pet was harrying to death the last of the dodos, the famously flightless bird whose dim but trusting nature and lack of leggy zip made it a rather irresistible target for bored young tars on shore leave. Millions of years of peaceful isolation had not prepared it for the erratic and deeply unnerving behavior of human beings. We don’t know precisely the circumstances, or even year, attending the last moments of the last dodo, so we don’t know which arrived first a world that contained a Principia or one that had no dodos, but we do know that they happened at more or less the same time. You would be hard pressed, I would submit to find a better pairing of occurrences to illustrate the divine and felonious nature of the human being-a species of organism that is capable of unpicking the deepest secrets of the heavens while at the same time pounding into extinction, for no purpose at all, a creature that never did us any harm and wasn’t even remotely capable of understanding what we were doing to it as we did it. Indeed, dodos were so spectacularly short on insight it is reported, that if you wished to find all the dodos in a vicinity you had only to catch one and set it to squawking, and all the others would waddle along to see what was up. The indignities to the poor dodo didn’t end quite there. In 1755, some seventy years after the last dodo’s death, the director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford decided that the institution’s stuffed dodo was becoming unpleasantly musty and ordered it tossed on a bonfire. This was a surprising decision as it was by this time the only dodo in existence, stuffed or otherwise. A passing employee, aghast tried to rescue the bird but could save only its head and part of one limb. As a result of this and other departures from common sense, we are not now entirely sure what a living dodo was like. We possess much less information than most people suppose-a handful of crude descriptions by "unscientific voyagers, three or four oil paintings, and a few scattered osseous fragments," in the somewhat aggrieved words of the nineteenth century naturalist H. E. Strickland. As Strickland wistfully observed, we have more physical evidence of some ancient sea monsters and lumbering saurapods than we do of a bird that lived into modern times and required nothing of us to survive except our absence. So what is known of the dodo is this: it lived on Mauritius, was plump but not tasty, and was the biggest-ever member of the pigeon family, though by quite what margin is unknown as its weight was never accurately recorded. Extrapolations from Strickland’s "osseous fragments" and the Ashmolean’s modest remains show that it was a little over two and a half feet tall and about the same distance from beak tip to backside. Being flightless, it nested on the ground, leaving its eggs and chicks tragically easy prey for pigs, dogs, and monkeys brought to the island by outsiders. It was probably extinct by 1683 and was most certainly gone by 1693. Beyond that we know almost nothing except of course that we will not see its like again. We know nothing of its reproductive habits and diet, where it ranged, what sounds it made in tranquility or alarm. We don’t possess a single dodo egg. From beginning to end our acquaintance with animate dodos lasted just seventy years.

When he was a little boy his mother kept him in dresses and long curls; then she dressed him in Scottish regalia. Eventually, at the age of seven, he wore pants—short pants that were part of miniature sailor suits.

Thus FDR, being a shrewd, smart sonofabitch now in his third term as President, knew that despite the cries of the isolationists who wanted Amer ica to have nothing to do with another world war it was only a matter of time before the country would be forced to shed its neutral status. And the best way to be prepared for that moment was to have the finest intelligence he could. And the best way to get that information, to get the facts that he trusted because he trusted the messenger, was to put another shrewd, smart sonofabitch in charge-his pal Wild Bill Donovan. The problem was not that intelligence wasn't being collected. The United States of America had vast organizations actively engaged in it-the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Military Intelligence Division chief among them. The problem was that the intelligence these organizations collected was, in the word of the old-school British spymasters, "coloured." That was to say, the intel tended first to serve to promote the respective branches. If, for example, ONI overstated the number of, say, German submarines, then the Navy brass could use that intelligence to justify its demands for more funds for sailors and ships to hunt down those U-boats. (Which, of course, played to everyone's natural fears as the U-boats were damn effec tive killing machines.) Likewise, if MID stated that it had found significantly more Axis troop amassing toward an Allied border than was previously thought, Army brass could argue that ground and/or air forces needed the money more than did the swabbies. Then there was the turf-fighting FBI. J. Edgar Hoover and Company didn't want any Allied spies snooping around in their backyard. It followed then that if the agencies had their own agendas, they were not prone to share with others the information that they collected. The argument, as might be expected, was that intelligence shared was intelli gence compromised. There was also the interagency fear, unspoken but there, as sure as God made little green apples, that some shared intel would be found to be want ing. If that should happen, it would make the particular agency that had de veloped it look bad. And that, fear of all fears, would result in the reduction of funds, of men, of weapons, et cetera, et cetera. In short, the loss of im portance of the agency in the eyes of the grand political scheme. Thus among the various agencies there continued the endless turf bat tles, the duplications of effort-even the instances, say, of undercover FB agents arresting undercover ONI agents snooping around Washington D.C., and New York City.

FROM OTHER SOURCES Pre–race and Venue Homework Get hold of any history of past events at the venue, plus any information that the conducting club may have about weather and expected conditions. Go to the weather bureau and get history for the area. Speak to sailors from your class who have this venue as their home club or who have sailed there on a number of occasions. Boat, Sails, Gear Preparation Checklist Many times the outcome of a race is as dependent on what you have done prior to the race as to what you do out on the course. Sometimes no matter how good your tactics and strategy are a simple breakage could render all that useless. Hull – make sure that your hull is well sanded and polished, centreboard strips are in good condition, venturis if fitted are working efficiently, buoyancy tanks are dry and there are no extraneous pieces of kit in your boat which adds unwanted weight. Update any gear that looks tired or worn especially control lines. Mast, boom and poles – check that all halyards, stays and trapeze wires are not worn or damaged and that pins are secure, knots tight and that anything that can tear a sail or injure flesh is taped. Mark the full hoist position on all halyards. Deck hardware – check all cam cleats for spring tension and tape anything that may cause a sail tear or cut legs hands and arms. Check the length of all sheets and control lines and shorten anything that is too long. This not only reduces weight but also minimises clutter. Have marks on sheets and stick or draw numbers and reference scales for the jib tracks, outhaul and halyards so that you can easily duplicate settings that you know are fast in various conditions. Centreboard and rudder – ensure that all nicks and gouges are filled and sanded and the surfaces are polished and most importantly that rudder safety clips are working. Sails – select the correct battens for the day’s forecast. Write on the deck, with a china graph pencil, things like the starting sequence, courses, tide times and anything else that will remind you to sail fast. Tools and spares – carry a shackle key with screwdriver head on your person along with some spare shackles and short lengths of rope or different diameters. A tool like a Leatherman can be very useful to deal with unexpected breakages that can occur even in the best prepared boat.

Cast Fiction To The Wind (The Sonnet) The candle's purpose is to be lost in light, The heart's purpose is to be lost in love. The ocean may try the sailor all it wants but, The naive sailor is lost in the ocean's love. The sailor and the sea are not two but one, The candle and the light are not two but one. The heart and love are not two but one, Individual and collective are not two but one. Purpose of human is conquest over the inner animal, Purpose of a human is the expansion of humanity. Everybody grows old, not everybody grows up, To die without growing up, is the greatest tragedy. Life is too short to be wasted on half-cocked may be's! Cast fiction to the wind, and make the most of reality.

At the end of it I sat (…) denouncing the short-sighted timidity of the Martians. So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.

I’ll tell you what: I’ll say yes if you agree to something.” That didn’t sound good. “What is it you want?” “I want you to drop this fantasy you have of me dressing like a sailor.” “Oh, but—” He rolled onto his back, holding up a hand to cut her off. “No, no, I am not dressing like a fucking sailor.” She pouted. “Oh, come on! After the first few times, it won’t even feel kinky anymore.” “No.” “But you’d look so—” “No.” “Can’t you at least think—?” “No.” She growled and gave him the sulkiest pout ever. “Trey does it for Taryn.” Nick felt his face scrunch up. “Jeez, Shay, I so did not need to know that.” The image came unbidden to his mind, and Nick feared it might just pop into his head whenever he was around the Alpha male in the future. Her voice turned sultry. “If you do it, I may reconsider the pole dancing scenario you had in mind.” A short pause. “I’ll think about it.” “That’s all I’m asking.

In an unpublished 1945 dispatch sent shortly before he was killed by machine-gun fire on Okinawa, Ernie Pyle evoked the precarious seaworthiness of the tiny vessels: “They are rough and tumble little ships. They roll and they plunge. They buck and they twist. They shudder and they fall through space. They are in the air half the time, under water half the time. Their sailors say they should have flight pay and submarine pay both.

The battle of Leyte Gulf was short, lasting only from October 23–26, 1944. But don’t let the duration fool you. The Philippine Sea, around the chain of islands where the battle was fought, was a roiling cauldron for those four days. On the morning of the 23rd, that sea held the largest assemblage of ships, in terms of tonnage, the world had ever seen. By the evening of the 26th, Leyte Gulf had taken more tonnage to its murky depths than in any other naval battle in history. The Japanese lost four aircraft carriers, three battleships, six heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, 12 destroyers, one destroyer escort, over 600 planes, and 10,500 sailors and pilots. The Allied forces, on the other hand, lost one light carrier, two escort carriers, two destroyers, one destroyer escort, around 200 planes, and a little more than a thousand men. As a result of this devastating blow, Japan never again launched a major naval offensive.

Joe George, so I heard, had liberty that Friday night as well and was slated to fight in a “smoker.” Smokers were boxing matches held at the recreation center in Honolulu. If you won, you wouldn’t get money, which was against Navy rules, but you could receive a gift of some sort, such as a watch. You would then turn around and sell the watch, often to the very person who gave it to you. George did that a lot. After the smoker, he celebrated his win by getting drunk, which led to a fight with one of his own shipmates. Well, Shore Patrol came and broke up the fight, then took George to the ship’s brig. The next morning he was escorted to the captain’s mast to face Captain Young. The captain was so angry to see George disgrace his ship again and bring dishonor to his shipmates, he lashed out at him. “I wish I could take you to the forecastle and have all hands kick the shit out of you. But since I can’t, I’m going to give you a summary court-martial.” Joe was immediately put on report and sentenced to become a prisoner at large—PAL, for short—which meant he didn’t have to do time in the brig; he only had to be watched and restricted by the ship’s master-of-arms, who happened to be a friend. And so, on the night of December 6, instead of being locked belowdecks in the brig, he spent it sleeping under the stars in the forecastle.

I stood in a stupor and would have continued to stand there were it not for a breeze that parted the smoke, revealing a sailor from the Vestal. It was Joe George. He had been following orders to cut the lines that tethered his ship to the Arizona so they could head to open waters. Since there was no one on the Arizona to help on our end, he was taking a fire ax and cutting the lines on his. We called to Joe through a seam in the smoke, motioning for him to throw us a monkey’s fist, which was a lightweight heaving line knotted around a metal ball and attached to a thicker rope. It was a long shot, but our desperate idea was that if we could secure a rope between the two ships, then perhaps we could make it to the Vestal. As Joe rummaged for the ball, I looked at my arms. A sheath of skin from each had peeled off and was draping them. I tore off one length of skin and threw it on the floor of the platform. Then the other. The remaining tissue was a webwork of pink and white and red, some of it black, all of it throbbing. But that didn’t matter. My focus narrowed to Joe George and the ball in his hand. He threw it, but it fell short. He gathered up the line and lobbed it again. Short once more. Joe was perhaps the strongest man in the harbor, an All-Navy boxer whom I described earlier as an “ox.” He was the only man with a prayer of getting that line to us—if he couldn’t do it, then it was impossible. The reality started to sink in: we were going to burn alive. Joe collected the rope once more. For a third time, he tossed it with all his strength. It sailed from one wounded ship to another, across flames, smoke, and carnage. I tracked it all the way and caught it in the air, pulling the smaller line until I felt the main rope. I tied the rope to the railing, cinching it tight, and Joe secured his end. The rope stretched seventy feet to span the water below us, which was forty-five feet down, slicked with fuel that had caught fire. Our only hope was to make it to the Vestal, hand over hand across the rope. But the flesh had been burned off all of our hands, and using those raw fingers and palms to get us across the chasm that separated us would be at best excruciating, and most likely impossible.

IN ALL, THERE were nine investigations into Pearl Harbor. The government didn’t waste any time starting theirs. On December 22, 1941, Supreme Court justice Owen Roberts began hearings in Hawaii. A month later, Justice Roberts submitted his findings to President Roosevelt. Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, and General Walter Short, commanding general of the Hawaiian Department, were both found to be in “dereliction of duty” and were promptly demoted to lesser ranks and retired.

Honduras, as you of course know, is a republic of Central America, and it gets its name from something that happened on the fourth voyage of Columbus. He and his men had had days of weary sailing and had sought in vain for shallow water in which they might come to an anchorage. Finally they reached the point now known as Cape Gracias-a-Dios, and when they let the anchor go, and found that in a short time it came to rest on the floor of the ocean, some one of the sailors—perhaps Columbus himself—is said to have remarked: "'Thank the Lord, we have left the deep waters (honduras)' that being the Spanish word for unfathomable depths. So Honduras it was called, and has been to this day. "It is a queer land with many traces of an ancient civilization, a civilization which I believe dates back

She thought of Leftrin and tried to see him dispassionately. He was uncouth and unschooled. He told jokes at the table, and she’d seen him laugh so hard that tea spewed from his mouth, at a coarse jest from one of his sailors. He didn’t shave every day, nor wash as often as a gentleman should. The elbows of his shirts and the knees of his trousers were scuffed with work. The short nails of his wide hands were broken and rough. Where Hest was tall and lean and elegant, Leftrin was perhaps an inch taller than she was, wide shouldered and thick bodied. Her female friends in Bingtown would turn aside if a man like that spoke to them on the street. Then she thought of his gray eyes, gray as the river he loved, and her heart melted. She thought of the ruddy tops of his unshaven cheeks, and how his lips seemed redder and fuller than Hest’s sophisticated smile. She longed to kiss that mouth, to feel those calloused hands clasp her close. She missed sleeping in his bunk, missed the smell of him in the room and on the bedding. She wanted him as she’d never wanted anything or anyone before. At the thought of him, her body warmed even as tears filled her eyes. She sat up straight and dashed the useless water from her eyes. “Take what you can have, for the short time you can have it,” she counseled herself sternly.

Time to Aubry was the rhythm tapped out by her footsteps and the changing climate. To the people in the village below, time was measured by the daily routine, the crowing roosters, the udders of their goats, the ripening of their barley. Time was long for the young lovers who waited for night, short for the old men who’d lived past their use. It was slow in the mountain villages, fast in the bustling cities. She’d once floated down the Colorado River and time lengthened like a beard, until the rapids cut it short again. It fascinated her, this malleability. She wondered if time slowed down for deserters facing the firing squad, for sailors in a storm, then sped up again while playing croquet or reading a favorite book. Did time ever stop? Would it wait for you to catch up? Would it hurry on ahead?

Take a bowsy short leave of your nymphs on the shore, And silence their mourning with vows of returning, Though never intending to visit them more.

There was a big difference between liberty and leave. “Liberty” was short-term, an authorized absence from duty for less than forty-eight hours. Generally, when ships were in port, no sailor could be deprived of liberty on shore for more than twelve days unless—in the words of the venerable Bluejackets’ Manual—“the exigencies of the service or the unhealthfulness of the port prevent.” Liberty could also be denied to those whose prior conduct on shore had proven “discreditable to the service.” “Leave” was the authorized absence from duty for more than forty-eight hours. At the discretion of their commanding officer, enlisted men whose services could be spared were granted up to thirty days leave in any one calendar year, exclusive of travel time. A month’s paid vacation per year was a major perk. Because leaves had to be distributed throughout the year to maintain the efficiency of the ship, it behooved one to make requests early.

Sailors never asked for money but, on the contrary, had large sums of money to spend in short spasms of shore leave. They also never turned nasty. Perhaps the act of running away to sea was an abandonment of accepted convention and, after a sojourn in strange ports, they returned with their outlook and possibly their anus broadened.

Mr. Jones had just started her on scraping the bottom when he came around the bow and stopped short. He shook his head in disbelief. “How did you manage to get so filthy so fast?” he said. “Didn’t I tell you to wear a painter’s cap?” Denny shrugged and squinted at him through her safety goggles. “I thought the wind would blow the old paint and junk away as I scraped it off,” she said. Mr. Jones came over and took a closer look. “Look at your hair,” he said. “Your mother’s going to kill me. Try and shake some of that junk out of it.” Denny leaned over and shook her hair in the wind. She was almost sorry she’d let it grow. Long hair was such a pain sometimes. She heard the putter of an outboard motor and looked up to see Spence making his way across the bay. “Him again,” she grumbled, but she pulled the comb out of her back pocket and started furiously tugging at her hair. Mr. Jones grinned. “Thought you couldn’t stand him,” he said. “I can’t,” said Denny, whipping off her safety glasses. “Oh,” said Mr. Jones; then he gave her a maddening smile and went back to rebuilding the cradle. Denny glanced at Spence out of the corner of her eye as he approached. He stood at the wheel, wearing a knit sailor’s cap and an old navy peacoat. A shock of blond hair stuck out under the cap and was swept back by the wind. His dark eyes squinted into the sun, and the cut of his jaw was firm and square. Denny shook her head. “You’ve been away from civilization too long,” she told herself, “when somebody like him starts looking good.

It is a monument and a tribute to the will of man that by sheer hard work, determination, and fortitude, this battleground of two thousand years (and still remaining so) the Israelis have achieved so much in such a short time (Israel declared her Independence in 1948 and my visit was in 1953).

Life is short and you die at the end of it. But everyone wants to have a sense of purpose for their life no matter how long or short that life is. There is no greater purpose than to have the courage to be a member of one's country's military and thus to stand in the gap to defend that country's way of life. Particularly in the USA God is with each soldier, sailor, air[wo]man, and all Americans should be respectful and humbled by the fact that fellow Americans are willing to stand in the gap for us, those they leave behind, in times of war and cold war.

On November 2, 1899, eight members of the United States Navy were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism and service beyond the call of duty. On the night of June 2, 1898, they had volunteered to scuttle the collier USS Merrimac, with the intention of blocking the entry channel to Santiago de Cuba. On orders of Rear Admiral William T. Sampson, who was in command, their intention was to trap Spanish Admiral Cervera’s fleet in the harbor. Getting the USS Merrimac underway, the eight men navigated the ship towards a predetermined location where sinking her would seal the port. Their course knowingly took them within the range of the Spanish ships and the shore batteries. The sailors were well aware of the danger this put them into, however they put their mission first. Once the Spanish gunners saw what was happening, they realized what the Americans were up to and started firing their heavy artillery from an extremely close range. The channel leading into Santiago is narrow, preventing the ship from taking any evasive action. The American sailors were like fish in a barrel and the Spanish gunners were relentless. In short order, the heavy shelling from the Spanish shore batteries disabled the rudder of the Merrimac and caused the ship to sink prematurely. The USS Merrimac went down without achieving its objective of obstructing navigation and sealing the port. ‎Fête du Canada or Canada Day is the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the Canadian Constitution Act. This weekend Americans also celebrate the United States’, July 4, 1776 birthday, making this time perfect to celebrate George Fredrick Phillips heroic action. Phillips was one of the men mentioned in the story above of the USS Merrimac. He was born on March 8, 1862, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada and joined the United States Navy in March 1898 in Galveston, Texas. Phillips became a Machinist First Class and displayed extraordinary heroism throughout the Spanish bombardment during their operation. He was discharged from the Navy in August 1903, and died a year later at the age of 42 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His body was returned to Canada where he was interred with honors at the Fernhill Cemetery in his hometown of Saint John, New Brunswick.

On May 17, 1913, Domingo Rosillo and Agustín Parlá attempted the first international flights to Latin America, by trying to fly their airplanes from Key West to Havana. At 5:10 a.m., Rosillo departed from Key West and flew for 2 hours, 30 minutes and 40 seconds before running out of gas. He had planned to land at the airfield at Camp Columbia in Havana, but instead managed to squeak in at the camp’s shooting range, thereby still satisfactorily completing the flight. Parlá left Key West at 5:57 in the morning. Just four minutes later, at 6:01 a.m., he had to carefully turn back to the airstrip he had just left, since the aircraft didn’t properly respond to his controls. Parlá said, “It would not let me compensate for the wind that blew.” When he returned to Key West, he discovered that two of the tension wires to the aircraft’s elevators were broken. Two days later, Parlá tried again and left Key West, carrying the Cuban Flag his father had received from José Martí. This time he fell short and had to land at sea off the Cuban coast near Mariel. Sailors from the Cuban Navy rescued him from his seaplane. Being adventuresome, while attending the Curtiss School of Aviation in 1916, Parlá flew over Niagara Falls. In his honor, the Cuban flag was hoisted and the Cuban national anthem was played. The famous Cuban composer, pianist, and bandleader, Antonio M. Romeu, composed a song in his honor named “Parlá over the Niagara” and Agustín Parlá became known as the “Father of Cuban Aviation.

Agustín Parlá Orduña was among the early Cuban aviation aces. He was born in Key West, Florida, on October 10, 1887, and received his early education there. After Cuba was liberated from Spain, the family returned to Havana, where he continued his education. On April 20, 1912, he received his pilot’s license at the Curtiss School of Aviation in Miami. On July 5, 1913, when the Cuban Army Air Corps was formed, Agustín Parlá was commissioned as a captain in the Cuban Armed Forces. On May 17, 1913, Domingo Rosillo and Agustín Parlá attempted the first international flights to Latin America, by trying to fly their airplanes from Key West to Havana. At 5:10 a.m., Rosillo departed from Key West and flew for 2 hours, 30 minutes and 40 seconds before running out of gas. He had planned to land at the airfield at Camp Columbia in Havana, but instead managed to squeak in at the shooting range, thereby still satisfactorily completing the flight. Parlá left Key West at 5:57 in the morning. Just four minutes later, at 6:01 a.m., he had to carefully turn back to the airstrip he had just left, since the aircraft didn’t properly respond to his controls. Parlá said, “It would not let me compensate for the wind that blew.” When he returned to Key West, he discovered that two of the tension wires to the elevator were broken. On May 19, 1913, Parlá tried again and left Key West, carrying the Cuban Flag his father had received from José Martí. This time he fell short and had to land at sea off the Cuban coast near Mariel, where sailors rescued him from his seaplane.

I thought of the opera ‘Madama Butterfly’ that I had just been listening to and saw myself as that sailor in that opera who was born into beauty but left it to chase his American dream. I had forgotten my heart, and the home in which it beat, and now as I held a life, tightly in my arms, in my eyes, that had wounded itself and was now about to die. Neglect. The burning furnace. I realized that I was never to see her, Life, again and that throughout the years when she had been there I hath forsaken thee lost in money, in opinion in short, an exchange in which we trade the means for the end (happiness), but never realize until the end how much we have truly lost and I. I was at the end of my road, or at least this road. Regret. But now was not the time. She was still here; breathing with the wind, beating against my face that licked with the cool, cool presence. There was still what was, what is, and for but a short time what was still to be. I had but a few moments to make up for an entire life that I had lost.

Stimson flew to Potsdam the next day to see me,” Truman remembered, “and brought with him the full details of the test. I received him at once and called in Secretary of State Byrnes, Admiral Leahy, General George Marshall, General Henry Arnold, and Admiral Ernest King.” It was too early to understand the implications and as Truman recalled, “we were not ready to make use of this weapon against the Japanese.” In his memoirs, Truman wrote that the plan was to stay the course “with the existing military plans for the invasion of the Japanese home islands.”102 Truman’s diary reveals a different and more telling narrative. His mind appears to have already been made up shortly after confirmation of the Alamogordo test, which is not surprising given he had a full understanding of what an invasion would entail. “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world,” he confided to his diary in a July 26 entry. “This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.”103 That same entry reveals not just the intent, but also the thinking behind the target. “Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo] . . . The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives.”104 Truman was face-to-face with Stalin, aware that he possessed the deadliest weapon the world had ever seen.

Among the scribes was Pyle, wearing a beret that made him resemble Montgomery; also Hemingway, credentialed to Collier’s magazine but commanding various French cutthroats whom he had ostensibly supplied with tommy guns and pistols and who called him Colonel or “le grand capitaine.” These irregulars, wrote Robert Capa, could be seen “copying his sailor bear walk, spitting short sentences from the corners of their mouths,” while Papa nipped from a canteen of calvados and patted the grenade tucked inside his field jacket, “just in case.

A swan-maiden came and filled the young sailor’s cup. She bowed her head and went to leave, but before she could Batward grabbed her arm. “A cup for me, too, if you don’t mind,” said the warrior. “Please.” “Are you sure?” asked the woman. Batward nodded. “For too long have I rested these feet on firm land. The sea; she calls to me. I am ready.” “As you wish, m’lord.” The maiden filled Batward’s cup, and then the man stood and raised it high. “A toast to me, and a parting glass to you all — for this drink shall, in Seolho’s fine hall, be my last.” The guests did not cheer or hoot at Batward’s words, for it was known that he had arrived at the hall long before the rest of them. Instead, they bowed their heads and raised a solemn toast. Batward gave a nod to Seolho, and the prince nodded back. And the next day, as the gulls called at dawn, Batward was gone. For a sailor cannot be kept from the sea for long.

Gone the glitter and glamour; gone the pompous wealth beside naked starvation; gone the strange excitement of a polyglot and many-sided city; gone the island of Western civilization flourishing in the vast slum that was Shanghai. Good-by to all that: the well-dressed Chinese in their chauffeured cars behind bullet-proof glass; the gangsters, the shakedowns, the kid­napers; the exclusive foreign clubs, the men in white dinner jackets, their women beautifully gowned; the white-coated Chinese “boys” ob­sequiously waiting to be tipped; Jimmy’s Kitchen with its good Amer­ican coffee, hamburgers, chili and sirloin steaks. Good-by to all the night life: the gilded singing girl in her enameled hair-do, her stage make-up, her tight-fitting gown with its slit skirt breaking at the silk­ clad hip, and her polished ebony and silver-trimmed rickshaw with its crown of lights; the hundred dance halls and the thousands of taxi dolls; the opium dens and gambling halls; the flashing lights of the great restaurants, the clatter of mah-jongg pieces, the yells of Chinese feasting and playing the finger game for bottoms-up drinking; the sailors in their smelly bars and friendly brothels on Szechuan Road; the myriad short-time whores and pimps busily darting in and out of the alleyways; the display signs of foreign business, the innumerable shops spilling with silks, jades, embroideries, porcelains and all the wares of the East; the generations of foreign families who called Shanghai home and lived quiet conservative lives in their tiny vacuum untouched by China; the beggars on every downtown block and the scabby infants urinating or defecating on the curb while mendicant mothers absently scratched for lice; the “honey carts” hauling the night soil through the streets; the blocks-long funerals, the white-clad professional mourners weeping false tears, the tiers of paper palaces and paper money burned on the rich man’s tomb; the jungle free-for- all struggle for gold or survival and the day’s toll of unwanted infants and suicides floating in the canals; the knotted rickshaws with their owners fighting each other for customers and arguing fares; the peddlers and their plaintive cries; the armored white ships on the Whangpoo, “protecting foreign lives and property”; the Japanese conquerors and their American and Kuomintang successors; gone the wickedest and most colorful city of the old Orient: good-by to all that.