Literary sailing quotes

[Seajet]

"What iceberg?"
Captain Edward Smith R.D. R.N.R

You could add RIP to the list of credentials !

 

[Seajet]

" There's something wrong with our ships today ! "

Jellicoe at the Battle of Jutland; when lightly armoured ' Battlecruisers' proved susceptible to plunging shells and exploded, a lesson unlearned resulting a war later in HMS Hood being knobbled by the Bismarck...

 

[King Penguin]

The officers who are over-sure, and "know it all like a book," are the ones, I have observed, who wreck the most ships and lose the most lives.

Slocum.

Hardly poetic, but it's been stuck in my mind since I first read it.

Off topic I'm sure, but you have a very interesting website

 

[Tam Lin]

"If I were a yachtsman, which I baint, I wouldn't sail to windward, no not never." Thames Barge skipper. (Something like that anyway!)

 

[dylanwinter]

he did

...and a quote from the mouse breeder himself... (did he by the way???)

"The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage.
The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.”
― Arthur Ransome

I am surprised that it took so long for a Ransomism to appear

Rocyn Williams

http://gwylan.blogspot.co.uk/

sent me this book and two rope shackles

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Englishman-Double-Arthur-Ransome/dp/0571222625

where I learned about the mouse breeding

it is a bit of a hatchet job on Englands greatest sailor/journalist/author/spy/pipe smoker/curmudgeon

Dylan

 

[Salty John]

"For the truth is that I already know as much about my fate as I need to know. The day will come when I will die. So the only matter of consequence before me is what I will do with my allotted time. I can remain on shore, paralyzed with fear, or I can raise my sails and dip and soar in the breeze".
Richard Bode.

 

[Seajet]

I am surprised that it took so long for a Ransomism to appear

Rocyn Williams

http://gwylan.blogspot.co.uk/



sent me this book and two rope shackles

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Englishman-Double-Arthur-Ransome/dp/0571222625

where I learned about the mouse breeding

it is a bit of a hatchet job on Englands greatest sailor/journalist/author/spy/pipe smoker/curmudgeon

Dylan

Dylan,

well as someone whose first interesting book was ' We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea ' ( as a young boy I had trouble reading up to that point, then went on later to win prizes ) and felt something in my eye when going aboard the Nancy Blackett / Goblin at a Portsmouth based International Festival Of The Sea, and his introducing swathes of youngsters to sailing, Arthur Ransome can do no wrong in my book, spy or whatever !

Andy

 

[Fantasie 19]

Dylan, well as someone whose first interesting book was ' We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea '

Mine arrived from Amazon just this morning funnily enough.. decided it was time re-read it again..

.. his introducing swathes of youngsters to sailing, Arthur Ransome can do no wrong in my book, spy or whatever ! Andy

+1! (& including this correspondent....)

 

[interloper]

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
-- Water Rat, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

My favorite.

 

[Giblets]

"I'd rather be in here wishing I was out there than out there wishing I was in here!" Sailor in harbour on a very stormy night. Anon

 

[Cloona]

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
From 'Heart Of Darkness'

thanks so much for this - Heart fo Darkness - a yarn told on the deck of a company yacht

 

[Carduelis]

If I were a bird and lived on high,
I'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,
and I'd say to teh wind as it blew me away,
"That's where I wanted to go today"


AA Milne, who was a gentleman, and therefore didn't sail to windward.

 

[chinita]

By day........fear; by night.........terror.

Anon.

 

[jesterchallenger]

Lots of good uns here, Conrad, Grahame, Masefield and plenty I didn't know - anyway here's a couple:

'There sailing the sea, we find control, direction, effort, fate....there we may know ourselves and know our state' (H. Belloc)

As a singlehander, this is a quote from one of Tilman's books which appeals to me, don't actually know who penned it: 'And what I want from you, Mr Mate, is silence. And not a lot of that'.

'For whatever we lose (like a you and a me), it's always ourselves we find in the sea' e.e cummings

And a French one: 'Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage'

 

[Koeketiene]

Personal favourite:

"Any damn fool can navigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk." - Sir Francis Chichester

Been aspiring to be a really good sailor for many years.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Kipling:

WHAT is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre.
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken—

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

 

[NUTMEG]

Thanks chaps. One of the most enjoyable threads I have read for ages.

 

[dylanwinter]

Thanks chaps. One of the most enjoyable threads I have read for ages.

+1

 

[lotusman]

I must go down to the seas again, where the billows romp and reel,
So all I ask is a large ship that rides on an even keel,
And a mild breeze and a broad deck with a slight list to leeward,
And a clean chair in a snug nook and a nice, kind steward.

I must go down to the seas again, the sport of wind and tide,
As the grey wave and the green wave play leapfrog over the side.
And all I ask is a glassy calm with a bone-dry scupper,
A good book and a warm rug and a light, plain supper.

I must go down to the seas again, though there I’m a total loss,
And can’t say which is worst: the pitch, the plunge, the roll, the toss.
But all I ask is a safe retreat in a bar well tended,
And a soft berth and a smooth course till the long trip’s ended.

Arthur_Guiterman (1871-1943)

 

[charles_reed]

Well done Dylan, a great thread that you started.