We sailed from Plymouth under convoy of H. B. Majesty's ship St. Alban's, and two other ships of war, together with a fleet of merchantmen bound to the Mediterranean, having a fres...
We were steaming to the westward, towards the spot where the sun, glowing like a disc of molten copper, was slowly nearing the horizon. It had been one of those hot, breathless sor...
Within the tropics, on a wondrous evening when the Southern trades were blowing with their balmiest softness, the corporeal portion of his being tired with a healthy muscular fatig...
The Betsey, a small schooner of about 75 tons burden, sailed from Macao in China, for New South Wales, on the 10th of November, 1805. Her complement consisted of William Brooks, co...
Sixteen years ago, when the ships of the Royal Navy still disported themselves in black hulls, with red water-lines, white upper works, and yellow masts and funnels, she was a smar...
As we have been led, in writing about ships of the navy, to refer to steam, we turn aside at this point to treat of that tremendous motive-power. One night, in the year 1807, a ter...
Give a ship an unlucky name, and it will last throughout the whole of her career. A sailor is proverbially superstitious, and he clings jealously to tradition. It is told that when...
There is scarce any one, we apprehend, who is in any considerable degree conversant with the shifting scenes of human existence, who does not know that many of the plain narratives...
This is a story that has oft been told before. But in history, if a man becomes famous by one act, and be that act something worth recording, it will stand being told about again....
"Well, I'm damned!" ejaculated the first lieutenant, looking up from his breakfast as a barefooted signalman held a slate under his nose. "Just as I'm in the middle of painting shi...
"Twenty of those confounded Yankees give me more trouble than three decks full of Frenchmen," remarked Captain Brower of the prison-ship Spartan, one of the fleet of dismantled bat...
The story of the wreck of the Grosvenor is supposed to be told by Mr. Royle, the second mate of that unlucky ship. She was a small vessel bound from England to Valparaiso with a he...
"What was my horror when I saw the quicksilver had sunk so far below the mark, probably fixed there that morning, as to be almost shrunk in the ball! Whatever the merchant service...
The Sidney left Port Jackson, on the coast of New Holland, on the 12th of April, 1806, bound to Bengal. Intending to proceed through Dampier's Straits, her course was directed as n...
Every Russian officer is permitted to choose their servants from among the soldiers, the number varying according to the rank; the under lieutenants having the right to one, the ca...
A misunderstanding having originated between the Court of Great Britain, and the Ottoman Porte, a powerful squadron was ordered to proceed to Constantinople, for the purpose of enf...
The word "Dartmoor" means little to the ear of the American of this generation, for it is the name of a town on the bleak open stretches back from the sea in Devonshire. But during...
Melville's exciting sea-tale relates the adventures of the Pequod, a Nantucket whaler, in pursuit of the great white whale, Moby Dick, the terror of the sea. Ahab, the captain of t...
He said that he had been impressed into the English service from the brig Susan Butler, of New York. But what grounds the boarding officer had taken in supposing him to be a Britis...
When he awakened he was hungry. The sea was growing calmer. But there was still a heavy swell, which made his departure, for the present at least, impossible. The day, too, was far...
"What is it?" I exclaimed; "what can it be?" She pointed with her finger, and as the yacht swung round she said, "Look there, ma'am, look!" As she spoke two strange objects came in...
The Great Eastern steamship deserves to be regarded as the eighth wonder of the world, beyond all question. She is at present by far the largest vessel in the world, and is the mos...
The hero of Cooper's stirring sea-tale is a mysterious Pilot known as Mr. Gray, who, during the American Revolution, came aboard the Yankee frigate Alliance one stormy night to gui...
At midnight Holdsworth came on deck to relieve the second mate. A man out of the port watch came to the wheel, and stood yawning, scarcely awake. The night was dark--a hazy atmosph...
The fourteenth day of August was the day fixed upon for the sailing of the brig Pilgrim on her voyage from Boston round Cape Horn to the western coast of North America. As she was...
It was a famous dinner party that Captain William Bainbridge, Commander of the Charlestown Navy Yard, gave on the night of the 31st of May, 1813. In those days gentlemen sat long a...
On the 22d of October, 1812, at nine A.M., the United States brig Vixen crossed St. Mary's bar outward bound for a cruise to the southward. It was not expected that she would be ab...
"Oh, Bainbridge, you're going ashore with us, aren't you?" At these words a young man who was walking up and down the frigate's quarter-deck turned quickly. He was dressed in the s...
It was February, the year after the war. The month had been cold and stormy. Frequent and sudden squalls had kept everybody on the alert. For over two months the United States frig...
Out of the north they came in their grimy, bluff-bowed ships--the men behind the times! Three years away from home; three years outside the movement of human government, of family...