Seven seas

“ Still we let our business slide—as we dropped the half-dressed hide—
⁠To show a fellow-savage how to work.
Still the world is wondrous large,—seven seas from marge to marge,—
⁠And it holds a vast of various kinds of man ”

“ Ever they hear the floe-pack clear, and the blast of the old bull-whale,
And the deep seal-roar that beats off shore above the loudest gale.
Ever they wait the winter's hate as the thundering boorga calls,
Where northward look they to St. George, and westward to St. Paul's.
Ever they greet the hunted fleet—lone keels off headlands drear—
When the sealing-schooners flit that way at hazard year by year. [70]
Ever in Yokohama Port men tell the tale anew
Of a hidden sea and a hidden fight,
When the Baltic ran from the Northern Light
And the Stralsund fought the two! ”

“ The tide only rises and falls six or seven feet, and the currents are so trifling that they ain’t worth considering. If these boys have got on an island and been left there, it’s a puzzle to me how on earth they managed it. Then, again, there are boats and schooners passing backward and forward almost all the time, and if they had got ashore anywhere, they’d have been got off by this time. So it’s my opinion that they haven’t gone off in a boat, but that they’ve gone fishing. ”

“ When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under Malta by the sea."
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
Plucking at their harps, and they plucked unhandily:
"Our thumbs are rough and tarred,
And the tune is something hard—
May we lift a Deep-sea Chantey such as seamen use at sea?" ”

“ History tends to stress the great explorers who discovered new worlds and the larger islands of the Pacific. However, ships cannot with full safety, ply the seven seas until every island and shoal has been found and charted, and ships cannot safely venture near any shore until the adjoining waters have been systematically charted. ”

“ After wandering over these vast continents, the eye is attracted by still greater seas. Not only their formation, but their situation and aspect remind one of the terrestrial oceans; but again, as on earth, these seas occupy the greater portion of the globe. But in point of fact, these are not liquid spaces, but plains, the nature of which the travellers hoped soon to determine. Astronomers, we must allow, have graced these pretended seas with at least odd names, which science has respected up to the present time. ”

“ No wind, plenty of sun, and the pitch runs cheerfully down the deck-seams. Last week we had some pretty fair weather that would take us along at six knots for as long as half a day, then the eternal flap, flap of the sails again. One day we made a hundred miles, but from seven to forty was the run on other days. Sharks are getting thick around us—so thick that when we try for other fish, these brutes swallow our bait. Then we have to hook a tackle to them, and heave on deck to get our hook and line back again. One day we caught three while fishing for dolphin. ”

“ For to the tavern loafers and to some of the weaker among the straightforward villagers, these men with their wild talk and their brutal deeds, their tales of the Seven Seas and the far countries, these men, I say, were valiant knights, nature's noblemen who dared to be men of blood and brawn. ”

“ I cannot get my sleep to-night; old bones are hard to please;
I'll stand the middle watch up here—alone wi' God an' these
My engines, after ninety days o' race an' rack an' strain
Through all the seas of all Thy world, slam-bangin' home again.
Slam-bang too much—they knock a wee—the crosshead-gibs are loose;
But thirty thousand mile o' sea has gied them fair excuse. . . .
Fine, clear an' dark—a full-draught breeze, wi' Ushant out o' sight,
An' Ferguson relievin' Hay. Old girl, ye'll walk to-night!
His wife's at Plymouth. . . . ”

“ Stop, seize and fish, and easy on the davit-guy.
⁠Up, well up the fluke of her, and inboard haul!
⁠Well, ah, fare you well, for the Channel wind's took hold of us,
⁠Choking down our voices as we snatch the gaskets free.
⁠And it's blowing up for night,
⁠And she's dropping light on light,
⁠And she's snorting under bonnets for a breath of open sea.
Wheel, full and by; but she'll smell her road alone to-night. ”

“ The Injian Ocean sets an' smiles
⁠So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue;
There aren't a wave for miles an' miles
⁠Excep' the jiggle from the screw.
The ship is swep', the day is done,
⁠The bugle's gone for smoke and play ”

“ That wide field of ocean, called loosely the South Seas, extends from tropic to tropic, and from perhaps 123 degrees W. to 150 degrees E., a parallelogram of one hundred degrees by forty-seven, where degrees are the most spacious. Much of it lies vacant, much is closely sown with isles, and the isles are of two sorts. No distinction is so continually dwelt upon in South Sea talk as that between the ‘low’ and the ‘high’ island, and there is none more broadly marked in nature. The Himalayas are not more different from the Sahara. ”

“ The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds—
The Man-o'-War's 'er 'usband, an' 'e gives 'er all she needs;
But, oh, the little cargo-boats, that sail the wet seas roun',
They're just the same as you an' me a-plyin' up an' down! ”

“ I call it beautiful sea, for those who have merely looked upon the ocean from our own coasts have no conception of the grandeur of the tropic seas amongst the many islands of the Eastern Archipelago, where the water is as bright as lapis lazuli, as clear as crystal, and the powerful sun lights up its depths, and displays beauties of submarine growth at which the eye never tires of gazing. ”

“ Distant islands, ledges of barren reef, leaped forward with an effect of magic, as though our atom of a vessel, the only sail which relieved the emptiness of the sea, had been swept in an instant to within a few yards of the surf. Great combers, green and ominous looking in the sunlight, broke at one rapidly advancing point, toppled and fell in segments, filling the inner shallows with a smother of foam. Beyond it lay the broad fringe of white, deserted beach, the narrow forest of shrub and palm, the empty lagoon, a border of misty islands on the farther side. ”

“ We have no more large oceans or deep seas,—nothing but inland waters; many straits, gulfs, and seas analogous to the Channel, the Red Sea, the Adriatic, the Baltic, and the Caspian; pleasant shores, quiet harbors, large lakes and streams, aerial rather than aquatic fleets, an almost always clear sky, especially in the morning. There are no mornings on Earth so luminous as ours. ”

“ So Chancellor Kent says: 'The 'high seas' mean the waters of the ocean without the boundary of any county, and they are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the admiralty, up to high-water mark when the tide is full. The 'open ocean, which washes the seacoast,' is used in contradistinction to arms of the sea inclosed within the fauces terrae, or narrow headlands and promontories ”

“ In northern seas I weep alone, alone,
In winter seas.
Death’s hounds are on the waves, with many moans
Death’s voice comes with the breeze;
My helpless boat, rocked in the wind, obeys no steadfast hand. ”

“ The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!
Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;
Through the yelling Channel tempest when the siren hoots and roars—
By day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's trail—
As the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail.
We bridge across the dark, and bid the helmsman have a care,
The flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer;
From our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chains
The lover from the sea-rim drawn—his love in English lanes. ”

“ The old naval phrase, that the seas are England's bulwarks, is not a frigid and artificial metaphor; it came into the head of some genuine sea-dog, when he was genuinely looking at the sea. For the edge of the sea is like the edge of a sword; it is sharp, military, and decisive; it really looks like a bolt or bar, and not like a mere expansion. It hangs in heaven, grey, or green, or blue, changing in colour, but changeless in form, behind all the slippery contours of the land and all the savage softness of the forests, like the scales of God held even. ”

“ In two days we entered the Lake of the Woods, and hoisting sail stood out across the waters. Never before had these lonely islands witnessed such a sight as they now beheld. Seventeen large boats close hauled to a splendid breeze swept in a great scattered mass through the high running seas, dashing the foam from their bows as they dipped and rose under their large lug-sails. ”

“ In Northern seas, however, especially in the harbors of towns and cities, the water is so discolored and murky that nothing can be seen at about twenty feet from the surface, a disadvantage which calls for the exercise of the gift of which all divers are most boastful—their delicacy of touch. ”

“ If he extends his Prospect over the Seas, he views a moving Scene of Ships passing and repassing before him; some sailing from the Hellespont, or the Black Sea, others again coming into his Port from all the Coasts of the Propontis, while other Vessels at the same time are sailing up and down the Bay of Ceras, where there are also abundance of Wherries and small Boats always oaring from Side to Side. And if he looks below him, he has the agreeable Pleasure of beholding the three Sides of the first Hill, dressed with Trees, Flowers and Plants of all Kinds. ”

“ Save for this, there is nothing to show that white men ever visit these seas, and, sailing up the coast in a native craft, you may almost fancy yourself one of the early explorers skirting the lovely shores of some undiscovered country. As you sprawl on the bamboo decking under the shadow of the immense palm leaf sail—which is so ingeniously rigged that, if taken aback, the boat must turn turtle, unless, by the blessing of the gods, the mast parts asunder—you look out through half-closed eyelids at a very beautiful coast. ”

“ When the Northern Ocean and the Atlantic billows set bounds to their travel, those must have been amongst the bravest of heart, the most skilled of hand, and the most aspiring of mind, who shaped, stored, equipped, and manned the boats that were launched upon these strange seas to confront all terrors. ”

“ Violently the seas are tossed and troubled divers ways with the winds, increased and diminished by the course of the moon, hoisted up and down through the sundry operations of the sun and the stars: finally, some be of opinion that the seas be carried in part violently about the world, after the daily motion of the highest movable heaven, in like manner as the elements of air and fire, with the rest of the heavenly spheres, are from the east unto the west. And this they do call their eastern current, or Levant stream. ”

“ The seas were so high that it was no use trying to beat against them, so we just lay and pitched and rolled, with the seas breaking on the deck all the while, until every stitch of our clothing was wet through. Oilcloth and rubbers are useless against such weather. ”

“ A person who has never been in the South Seas cannot appreciate the pleasure of gliding along a tropical bay, just close enough to see the small grass villages and the dense jungles behind; the seas breaking over the coral reefs ahead, and the pure blue waters underneath; the tropical birds flying overhead, and canoes paddling along the shores. ”

“ And it is not less wonderful that the bottom of the ocean is of the same nature as the surface of the earth. There are found in the sea, rocks, caverns, plains, springs, plants, and animals; and the islands are only the summits of a long chain of mountains. When we consider that the seas form a part of the globe the least investigated, we are disposed to believe that they contain many more wonders, which neither the senses nor the understanding of man can penetrate, while all acknowledge the adorable wisdom and power of the Most High. ”

“ It is evening, and yon setting sun, whose course we have tracked from the lonely anchorage in the Typa, down the China Seas, across the Indian Ocean, and over the wide expanse of the Atlantic, sinks slowly to night behind the mountains of our own broad and beautiful land. ”

“ Whenever strong winds and gales fall upon these seas and this strait, ships, when they once reach the entrance of this gulf, run the rest of their voyage unguided, and make the shore at random; for the gulf extends for a distance of more than forty stadia in circumference, and the whole of it is a harbour, so that when a ship is moored there the stern rests on the sea and the bows on the land, as though the two elements contended with one another to see which of them could be of the greatest service to the city. ”

“ They are two seas which eternally attract and oppose each other, two tides which eternally advance to repel each other, which foam upon one another, as the ocean foams on the land, and the land rushes down into the sea. ”

“ As we approached it seemed to grow larger and larger. It was pretty clearly not a ship’s bottom, nor a whale, and finally it resolved itself into a high rock surrounded by a coral reef—so we judged from the line of surf which every now and then we saw rising up out of the blue sea. It was a very dangerous-looking place, on which, during the fierce gales of those latitudes, in thick weather or on a dark night many a fine ship has probably been cast away. ”

“ All have the same equal right to its use, as to the air they breathe, and to the sun that warms them. Seas are the great highways traced by nature between the different parts of the world, to facilitate and expedite communication between the various nations who inhabit it. ”