Word: seamen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Meurs cites another lesson for seamen that will-or should-become obvious as the bigger, newer ships replace smaller, overage clunkers: "The market for bunglers is dwindling...
...Happily, the same does not hold true for the four-masted bark Neptune's Car. The steel-hulled vessel beats around the Horn with a cargo of smoldering coal. Its crew, as was customary, is a forecastle full of alcoholics, shanghaied by waterfront "crimps." Kidnaping of able-bodied seamen was a routine necessity, Hayden reports: wages were $1 a day and the hard-driving officers were licensed bullies who regularly committed mayhem and murder...
...from the prose - and it continually buoys Voyage. Hayden is offended that things as splendid as ships, and the sea they sail on, are polluted by avarice. Yet for a moralist with a case to make, he stays commendably free of melodrama and polemic. It is clear that his seamen need to unite, but the organizers in the book are ineffective, and there is no vacuous optimism; a seafarers' union cannot (and did not) miraculously end greed or brutality...
...about a mile, a periscope shot out of the water just astern of it. Then the submarine surfaced, black and wet, but with no identification marks whatsoever. Skipper Hamnen and his 40 crewmen reckoned that it was a Soviet sub, but tried shouting in Norwegian anyway to the seamen who began appearing on its deck. There was no response. Said Hamnen: "I guess they weren't too eager to talk with us. After all, it's pretty dumb when a modern submarine gets caught up in a fish net. It's supposed to carry instruments that...
...everything aboard the ship is archaic: on windless days, the steel-hulled Eagle, built in 1936, vibrates with the hum of her 728-h.p. diesel engine. Power winches, not able-bodied seamen, crank the windlass to hoist anchor. In the communications shack, the latest electronic gear helps plot the ship's position. On the foremast, a slowly rotating radar scanner keeps an electronic...