Sea Stories Books

I Only the young have such moments. I don't mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection. One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness—and enters an enchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise.... more...

The Star of the North. The sun sank below the horizon that evening in a blaze of ruby and gold. It flooded the whole ocean to the westward, right up to the very zenith, with a wealth of opalescent light that transformed sea and sky alike into a living glory, so grand and glorious was the glowing harmony of kaleidoscopic colouring which lit up the arc of heaven and the wide waste of water beneath,... more...

Lieutenant Jack Rogers at home—His brother Tom resolves to follow in his wake—His old shipmates discussed—Letter from Terence Adair descriptive of his family—Admiral Triton pleads Tom’s cause—The Admiral’s advice to Tom—Leaving home. “Really, Jack, that uniform is excessively becoming. Do oblige us by standing up as if you were on the quarter-deck of your ship and hailing the... more...

A TALL SHIP I CRAB-POTS 1 In moments of crisis the disciplined human mind works as a thing detached, refusing to be hurried or flustered by outward circumstance. Time and its artificial divisions it does not acknowledge. It is concerned with preposterous details and with the ludicrous, and it is acutely solicitous of other people's welfare, whilst working at a speed mere electricity could never... more...

CHAPTER I The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert.  The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls.  As “every one” was out of town perhaps the... more...

The Bay of Biscay. It was in the latter part of the month of June, of the year seventeen hundred and ninety something, that the angry waves of the Bay of Biscay were gradually subsiding, after a gale of wind as violent as it was unusual during that period of the year. Still they rolled heavily; and, at times, the wind blew up in fitful, angry gusts, as if it would fain renew the elemental combat; but... more...

THE PERFECT FOOL ASKS A FAVOUR. "En voiture! en voiture!" If it has not been your privilege to hear a French guard utter these words, you have lost a lesson in the dignity of elocution which nothing can replace. "En voiture, en voiture; five minutes for Paris." At the well-delivered warning, the Englishman in the adjoining buffet raises on high the frothing tankard, and vaunts before... more...

Our first prize. The first faint pallor of the coming dawn was insidiously extending along the horizon ahead as H.M. gun-brig Shark—the latest addition to the slave-squadron—slowly surged ahead over the almost oil-smooth sea, under the influence of a languid air breathing out from the south-east. She was heading in for the mouth of the Congo, which was about forty miles distant, according to the... more...

Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean From authentic accounts of modern voyagers and travellers; designed for the entertainment and instruction of young people.By Marmaduke Park.With Numerous Illustrations. The White Shark.PHILADELPHIA:C.G. HENDERSON & CO.,NO. 164 CHESTNUT STREET.1852.[pg 5] The White Shark. STORIES OF THE OCEAN.VOLNEY BECKNER. The white sharks are the dread of sailors in all hot... more...

CHAPTER I. It was not a very white jacket, but white enough, in all conscience, as the sequel will show. The way I came by it was this. When our frigate lay in Callao, on the coast of Peru—her last harbour in the Pacific—I found myself without a grego, or sailor's surtout; and as, toward the end of a three years' cruise, no pea-jackets could be had from the purser's steward: and... more...