Ships

Ships are large buoyant marine vessels. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing, entertainment, public safety, and warfare. Historically, a "ship" was a vessel with sails rigged in a specific manner. Ships and boats have developed alongside mankind. In armed conflict and in daily life they have become an integral part of modern commercial and military systems. Fishing boats are used by millions of fishermen throughout the world. Military forces operate vessels for combat and to transport and support forces ashore. Ships were key in history's great explorations and scientific and technological development. Navigators such as Zheng He spread such inventions as the compass and gunpowder. Ships have been used for such purposes as colonization and the slave trade, and have served scientific, cultural, and humanitarian needs. New crops that had come from the Americas via the European seafarers in the 16th century significantly contributed to the world's population growth.

Sourced

• She walks the waters like a thing of life,
  And seems to dare the elements to strife.
  • Lord Byron, The Corsair (1814), Canto I, Stanza 3.

• She bears her down majestically near,
  Speed on her prow, and terror in her tier.
  • Lord Byron, The Corsair (1814), Canto III, Stanza 15.

• For why drives on that ship so fast,
  Without or wave or wind?
  The air is cut away before,
  And closes from behind.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798; 1817).

• A great ship asks deep waters.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651).

• Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
  • Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1759).

• And the wind plays on those great sonorous harps, the shrouds and masts of ships.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion (1839), Book I, Chapter VII.

• Build me straight, O worthy Master!
  Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel
  That shall laugh at all disaster,
  And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Building of the Ship (1849), line 1.

• There's not a ship that sails the ocean,
  But every climate, every soil,
  Must bring its tribute, great or small,
  And help to build the wooden wall!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Building of the Ship (1849), line 66.

• Like ships that have gone down at sea,
  When heaven was all tranquillity.
  • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), The Light of the Harem.

• The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
  Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
  Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
  The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver,
  Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
  The water which they beat to follow faster,
  As amorous of their strokes.
  • William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act II, scene 2, line 196.

• Ships, dim discover'd, dropping from the clouds.
  • James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 946.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 703-04.

• A strong nor'wester's blowing, Bill;
  Hark! don't ye hear it roar now?
  Lord help 'em, how I pities them
  Unhappy folks on shore, now.
  • Charles Dibden, Sailor's Consolation. Attributed to Pitt (song writer) and Hood.

• The true ship is the ship builder.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of History.

• For she is such a smart little craft,
  Such a neat little, sweet little craft—
  Such a bright little,
  Tight little,
  Slight little,
  Light little,
  Trim little, slim little craft!
  • W. S. Gilbert, Ruddigore.

• The wooden wall alone should remain unconquered.
  • Herodotus, VII. 141. Relating the second reply of the Pythian Oracle to the Athenians. B.C. 480. Themistocles interpreted this to mean the ships. See Grote, History of Greece, quoted in Timbs, Curiosities of History. Nepos, Themistocles.

• Ships that sailed for sunny isles,
  But never came to shore.
  • Thomas Kibble Hervey, The Devil's Progress.

• Morn on the waters, and purple and bright
  Bursts on the billows the flushing of light.
  O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,
  See the tall vessel goes gallantly on.
  • Thomas Kibble Hervey, The Convict Ship.

• Lord, Thou hast made this world below the shadow of a dream.
  An', taught by time, I tak' it so—exceptin' always steam.
  From coupler-flange to spindle-guide I see thy Hand, O God—
  Predestination in the stride o' yon connectin'-rod.
  • Rudyard Kipling, McAndrew's Hymn.

• 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.
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Liner She's a Lady.

• Her plates are scarred by the sun, dear lass,
  And her ropes are taut with the dew,
  For we're booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail.
  We're sagging south on the Long Trail, the trail that is always new.
  • Rudyard Kipling, L'Envoi, There's a Whisper down the Field.

• They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters.
  • Psalms. CVII. 23.

• And let our barks across the pathless flood
  Hold different courses.
  • Walter Scott, Kenilworth, Chapter XXIX. Introductory verses.

• She comes majestic with her swelling sails,
  The gallant Ship: along her watery way,
  Homeward she drives before the favouring gales;
  Now flirting at their length the streamers play,
  And now they ripple with the ruffling breeze.
  • Robert Southey, Sonnet XIX.

• It would have been as though he [Pres. Johnson] were in a boat of stone with masts of steel, sails of lead, ropes of iron, the devil at the helm, the wrath of God for a breeze, and hell for his destination.
  • Emory A. Storrs, speech in Chicago (c. 1865–56), when President Johnson threatened to imitate Cromwell and force Congress with troops to adjourn. As reported in the Chicago Tribune.

• And the stately ships go on
  To their haven under the hill.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Break, Break, Break, Stanza 3.

• Whoever you are, motion and reflection are especially for you,
  The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.
  • Walt Whitman, Song of the Rolling Earth, 2.

• Speed on the ship;—But let her bear
  No merchandise of sin,
  No groaning cargo of despair
  Her roomy hold within;
  No Lethean drug for Eastern lands,
  Nor poison-draught for ours;
  But honest fruits of toiling hands
  And Nature's sun and showers.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, The Ship-Builders.

• If all the ships I have at sea
  Should come a-sailing home to me,
  Ah, well! the harbor would not hold
  So many ships as there would be
  If all my ships came home from sea.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, My Ships, from Poems of Passion.

• One ship drives East, and one drives West,
  By the selfsame wind that blows;
  It's the set of the sails, and not the gales,
  Which determines the way it goes.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Winds of Fate.