Literary sailing quotes

dylanwinter

dylanwinter

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www.keepturningleft.co.uk
thinking of a bit of a blog

Twain is one that speaks to me:


"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."


and this

- Henry David Thoreau

"The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective."


any more lads?

a couple of good ones from the double agent and mouse breeder Ransome would be good to add to the list
 
Psalm 107:23-32 (New International Version)

23 Some went out on the sea in ships;
they were merchants on the mighty waters.
24 They saw the works of the Lord,
his wonderful deeds in the deep.
25 For he spoke and stirred up a tempest
that lifted high the waves.
26 They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths;
in their peril their courage melted away.
27 They reeled and staggered like drunkards;
they were at their wits’ end.
28 Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
and he brought them out of their distress.
29 He stilled the storm to a whisper;
the waves of the sea were hushed.
30 They were glad when it grew calm,
and he guided them to their desired haven.
31 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for mankind.
32 Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people
and praise him in the council of the elders.
 
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Shakespeare
 
AntarcticPilot said:
Arthur Ransom (Swallows and Amazons)

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WON'T DROWN
Click to expand...

Antartic Pilot,

you beat me to it !


How about this from the Notices to Mariners re the ex HMS Cambridge gunnery range off Plymouth:

" Automatic weapons are regularly discharged in the direction of the Mewstone, so vessels should not loiter in this area " ( I had the b*****ds fire 4.5" guns straight over the boat, shaking her a bit and me a fair bit more ).

or the Pilot to the Channel Islands,

" the tide sets strongly onto the rocks off the Casquets, so there is little benefit in going close inshore "
 
I wish I was a fisherman
Tumblin' on the seas
Far away from dry land
And it's bitter memories
Casting out my sweet line
With abandonment and love
No ceiling bearin' down on me
'Cept the starry sky above
With light in my head
You in my arms
Woohoo!

Mike Scott 1983:)
 
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
 
Dylan,

surely there has to be a space for this one, even Captain Kirk recited it !

" I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

and all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by..."
 
On the other hand:

" here lie the bones of Mike O'Day, who died maintaining his Right Of Way;

He was right, dead right, as he sailed along,

but now he's as dead as if he'd been wrong ! "

I think that was down to Des Sleightholme.
 
"Wherever we want to go, we go. That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails; that's what a ship needs. But what a ship is...what the Black Pearl really is...is freedom." Captain Jack Sparrow
 
"After an hour at the look-out, Captain John felt himself again."

Not the most often quoted line from Swallows and Amazons, but this illustrates the innocence of the time.
 
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness

"One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings, the foreign shores, the foreign faces,the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance, for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny"
 
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