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Cordage   Listen
noun
Cordage  n.  Ropes or cords, collectively; hence, anything made of rope or cord, as those parts of the rigging of a ship which consist of ropes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cordage" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the cable. Mr. Wade conceived the idea of combining weight and protection in the cable itself. He constructed it with eighteen pieces of wire, placed lengthwise around the cable, and bound together with soft iron wire at intervals. While the spiral cordage of hemp, such as was used at that time on the cable from Dover to Calais, would stretch, and allow the strain to come on the cable itself. This invention caused the strain to come on the armor. It was a complete success, and lasted until the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... itself into practice as quickly as the emergency required,—all the less so in that it had to work through a crew encumbered with a longish skirt and a close jacket. The sloop keeled over; Cope was instantly entangled with the mainsail and some miscellaneous cordage; and Amy, with the water soaking her closely-fitting garments, found herself clutching the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... of glass on a man's forehead. There was neither cover from the sun nor hiding-place from the prying concourse of the stars; the wind came searchingly, the waters stirred beneath it, or, being driven, heaped themselves up into towers of ruin. The cordage flacked, the strong ribs creaked; like a beast over-burdened the whole ship groaned, wallowing in a sea-trough without breath to climb. So we endured for many days, a straggling host of men, ordinarily capable, powerless now beneath ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... or more from the sea. Whatever the significance of that symbol has been to the people of France, it has a peculiar appropriateness (probably never realized before) in the fact that the iron, cordage, and anchors for the first vessel which sailed upon the inland waters of the new world were carried out from France to the first shipyard, beyond the mountains, in the midst of the forest, above the ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... him, he caught with both hands at some near support, and, aided by the seaman, set her once again upon her feet. A few moments more of struggle brought them safely through. In turn, each of the passengers was helped thus laboriously across the deck, though, as the broken rail and cordage had at one place fallen in the way, the passage was dangerous and difficult in the extreme. Angelino was borne in a canvas bag, slung round the neck of a sailor. Within the forecastle, which was comparatively dry and sheltered, they now seated themselves, and, wrapped ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... not been used for trading, they would have saved us half the expense we have been forced to incur in transporting munitions and supplies. The pretended necessity of having vessels at this fort, and the consequent employing of carpenters, and sending up of iron, cordage, sails, and many other things, at his Majesty's charge, was simply in the view of carrying on trade." He says, farther, that in May last, the vessels, canoes, and men being nearly all absent on this errand, the fort was left in so ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... a supply of taffeta and cordage, and you shall see one of the most astonishing things ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... and to do his soul much good. All souls were dear to her. What was the consequence? He went about with his mint, and relieved poor people, and gratified his mania at the same time. His face began to beam with benevolence and innocent self-satisfaction. On Richard Hardie's all was cordage: and deep gloom sat on ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... thick masses of the rice, bend it forward over the side with their paddles, and then beat the ripe husks off the stalks into a cloth spread in the canoe. After this, it is rubbed to separate the grain from the husk, and fanned in the open air. It is then put in their cordage bags and packed away for winter use. The grain is longer and more slender than the Carolina rice—it is of a greenish-olive color, and, although it forms a pleasant article of food, it is far from being particularly nutritive. The Indians are fond of it in the form of soup, with the addition ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... enlisted men those familiar with 68 other trades. Among the latter were dock builders, structural steel workers, bricklayers, teamsters, hostlers, wagoners, axemen, cooks, bakers, musicians, saddlers, crane operators, welders, rigging and cordage workers, stevedores and longshoremen. Add to these the specialists required in the technical units of engineers, ordnance, air service, signal corps, tanks, motor corps and all the services of supply, and the impossibility ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... eyeballs rounded and dried into smaller discs. But at once he would remember his darling cotton that must go to the waves, and the beady eyes swam again in moisture, like greenish peas in a sickly broth. Avarice and terror in discord played on the creature as the gale through the whimpering cordage. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon the rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to support him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was on the quarterdeck, leaning against the rail, watching a shoal of flying fish passing at a short distance. In the noise and confusion, caused by the sudden squall, the creaking of cordage, the flapping of sails, and the shouts of the officer to let go the sheets, the fall of the soldier was unnoticed; and Charlie was startled by perceiving, in the water below him, the figure of a ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... withstands well the action of water. Then there were numerous groups belonging to the same family, among others one in particular, the fruit of which produces a very useful oil. Further on, Herbert remarked the lardizabala, a twining shrub which, when bruised in water, furnishes excellent cordage; and two or three ebony trees of a beautiful black, crossed with ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... under the calm of the solemn sunset. Even the deepening twilight can not disguise the evidences of a terrible "sea-change." Not a trace of paint or gilding remains on the wave-worn, shattered timbers. Sails rent and cordage strained tell tales of many storm-gusts, or, perchance, of one tornado; and see! her flag is flying half-mast high: the corpse of the Pilot is on board. Let us stand aside, lest we meet the passengers as they land. It were ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... tapestries. Francis I., emulous of equalling his royal neighbor in magnificence, had ordered to be erected close to Ardres an immense tent, upheld in the middle by a colossal pole firmly fixed in the ground and with pegs and cordage all around it. Outside, the tent, in the shape of a dome, was covered with cloth of gold; and, inside, it represented a sphere with a ground of blue velvet and studded with stars, like the firmament. At each angle of the large tent there was a small one equally richly decorated. But before the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... conceals a god. "O thou! whoe'er thou art, assist us;—aid "Our undertakings;—who have seiz'd thee, spare, "Unknowing what they did. Bold Dictys cries,— "Than whom none swifter gain'd the topmost yards, "Nor on the cordage slid more agile down;— "Prayers offer not for us. Him Lybis joins; "And brown Melanthus, ruler of the helm; "Alcimedon unites; Epopeus too, "Who rul'd the rowers, and their restings mark'd; "(Arduous they urg'd their sinews by his voice)— ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... "tramp" about to leave the harbor, blue from the dry wood burning on a hundred cottage hearths. A smell of fish—where great split pollocks hang drying in the sun—of tar and tan and twine—where nets and cordage lie spread upon low walls and open spaces—gives to Newlyn an odor all its own; but aloft, above the village air, spring is dancing, sweet-scented, light-footed in the hedgerows, through the woods and on the wild moors which stretch inland away. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... articles, smoky shanties where sailors were cooking their own queer messes, dealers in pipes, monkeys, parrots, ropes, sailcloth, fanciful curios, amongst which were mingled higgledy-piggledy old culverins, huge gilded lanterns, worn-out pulley-blocks, rusty flukeless anchors, chafed cordage, battered speaking-trumpets, and marine glasses almost contemporary with the Ark. Sellers of mussels and clams squatted beside their heaps of shellfish and yawped their goods. Seamen rolled by with tar-pots, smoking soup-bowls, and big baskets full of cuttlefish, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... old Mugford used to hoist, on all grand occasions, or on such as he chose to consider grand, a Union Jack or a red ensign, which had been saved from the wreck. The bowsprit was but little injured, and the cordage of that and of the foremast was there, and the shrouds—all of which had been replaced by old Mugford, who, having made the wreck his residence by my father's wishes, restored to it some of the grace and order the good brig ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... was made of two poles spliced together, a yard was made of a third, a blanket borrowed from our coverings made a tolerable sail. There was no want of cordage for the rigging, and everything ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... of an hour later they heard a boat come alongside, and the voices of the sailors. Then they heard the creaking of cordage as the sails were let fall in readiness for a start. Half an hour later another boat came alongside. There was a trampling of feet on the deck above them, and the bey's voice giving orders. A few minutes later the anchor was ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... phrases.) I looked aloft and saw the sails taut with a stiff breeze, and. I heard a faint whistling of the wind in the rigging, but very faint, and rather, it seemed to me, as if it came from the creak of cordage in the ships of Crusaders; or of quaint old craft upon the Spanish main, echoing through remote years—so far ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... also various fibers extracted from native plants, and excellent samples of cordage showed what industry can get out of the rich Argentine ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... operations than prudent; and his judgment as a man of business was well-nigh infallible. Destitute of all false pride, he bought whatever he thought he could sell to advantage, from a lot of damaged cordage to a pipe of old port; and he labored incessantly with his own hands. He was a thriving man during the first year of his residence in Philadelphia; his chief gain, it is said, being derived from his favorite business ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... threatened them by the dogs on deck—second and third class passengers are fighting for prerogatives in misery, amidst the clatter of unclean plates, and the remains of the supper of the fore-cabin. The space for walking, is encumbered with coils of cordage, and the empty water-barrels are all taken possession of for seats. Bad tobacco, even among the elite, and garlic every where, drive us to the fore-deck, or to the neutral ground between it and ours. A passage, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... not the fury and the ire Of these huge storms, of wind, of rain and hail, Now was it dark, now shone the lightning fire, The wind and water every place assail, No bank was safe, no rampire left entire, No tent could stand, when beam and cordage fail, Wind, thunder, rain, all gave a dreadful sound, And with that music deafed ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... tenax (New Zealand flax), which I see is imported to San Francisco in large quantities yearly for making cordage and binder twine, and is said also to be the best of bee pasture. Can I get the plants on the coast, and is California soil and climate adapted to ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... thousand we got harnessed on this great little old river that falls off the highlands. That power is ours winter an' summer. It don't matter a shuck the 'freeze up.' It's there for us all the darn time. Then we've forest limits to hand us the cordage for that output that could give us three times what we're needing for a thousand years. Labour? We got it plenty. And later, by closing in our system of foresting, I figger to cut out present costs on a sight bigger output. The plans ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... the lashings which had been blown asunder by the explosion; at one end of the coop the ring-bolt had been torn clean out, but at the other it was the cordage that had parted. To the frayed ends I tied my fowls by the legs, with the most foolish pride in my own cunning. Do you not see? It would keep them fresh for my use, and it was a trick I had read of in no book; it ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... have to be let down by ropes over the side of the cliff. These fishing smacks are not only built in a crater, but on an island which has neither beach, harbor, landing stage nor safe anchoring ground, where no timber is produced, where no iron is to be found, and where cordage is not made. The island has no more facilities for the shipbuilding trade than a lighthouse on a rock in ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... shall minister iust occasion to thinke all cost and labour well bestowed. For it is very certaine, that there is one seat fit for fortification, of great safety, wherein those commodities following, especially are to be had, that is to say, Grapes for wine, Whales for oyle, Hempe for cordage, and other necccessary things, and fish of farre greater sise and plenty, then that of Newfound land, and of all these so great store, as may suffice to serue our ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... and intelligent were excessively lazy. Whilst the Thetis was being sheathed, and the extensive repairs necessary to the Esperance were being carried out, the clerks and officers were at Manilla, seeing about the supply of provisions and cordage. The latter, which was made of "abaca," the fibre of a banana, vulgarly called "Manilla hemp," although recommended on account of its great elasticity, was not of much use on board ship. The delay at Manilla was rendered very disagreeable ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... and special misery We met this night, and swore in bitter pride To sing one song together, friend with friend, And then, proceeding to the country side, To bind this cordage to a barren tree, And face to face to give our lives an end, And only thus shall we be satisfied. (They make to continue ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker

... descending from the sky: And ocean with a roar and swell Heaved wildly when the mountains fell. Then the great bridge of wondrous strength Was built, a hundred leagues in length. Rocks huge as autumn clouds bound fast With cordage from the shore were cast, And fragments of each riven hill, And trees whose flowers adorned them still. Wild was the tumult, loud the din As ponderous rocks went thundering in. Ere set of sun, so toiled each crew, Ten leagues and four the structure grew; The labours ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... a large roll of sewing thread, ditto; a thick pea jacket which I had abandoned at the boats, and had, at his request, given to him; and various other old pieces of canvas and duck; also a great part of the cordage of one of the boats, which he had taken ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... who hid their treasure or retained secrets they were desired to betray. Near to this miscellaneous assemblage rose another heap, the base of which appeared to consist of some half score of elephants' teeth, rough hemp, fragments of huge cable, cable-yarn, and all manner of cordage; rolls of lewxerns', martrons', and leopard-skins; wolf-skins, "tawed and untawed;" girdles of silk, velvet, and leather; and on pegs, immediately over, hung half a dozen mantles of miniver, and some wide robings ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... watchers noted the steady downward progress of the Mercury's spars and cordage past the now struggling form of the woman, victims of alternate dismay and hope as they saw the body now fouled by some portion of the complicated net-work of standing and running gear between the main and mizzen masts, and anon drifting clear of it again. A few seconds, which to the quartette in ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... their relative situations, understood it. Whatever had been the original arrangement with the directors, there was nothing they did not now expect and demand from Italy; they wrote requiring, in addition to all that had hitherto been mentioned, plunder of every kind from Leghorn; masts, cordage, and ship supplies from Genoa; horses, provisions, and forage from Milan; and contributions of jewels and precious stones from the reigning princes. As for the papal power, the French radicals would gladly have destroyed it. They had not forgotten that Basseville, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... the air, as he swings his delicate cordage from one tree to another, he does not need to wear a gorgeous plumage; this old dusty coat and uncomely figure, that make a child shrink and cry out, these may well be forgotten by him who looks into life through prismatic glasses. Every drop of rain wears for him its Iris drapery; the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... of the anchor. Tomlinson staggered forwards to find the whole front part of the vessel driven inwards, and a single seaman sitting dazed amid splintered spars, flapping sails, and writhing, lashing cordage. It was still as dark as pitch, and save the white crest of a leaping wave nothing was to be seen beyond the side of the vessel. The mate was peering round him in despair at the ruin which had come so suddenly upon them when he found Captain Ephraim at his ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... make their hives of the best plank, and never less than an inch and a half in thickness. The shape is that of an old-fashioned churn, and the hive is covered on the outside, halfway down, with twisted rope cordage, to give it greater protection against extremes of heat and cold. The hives are placed in a dry situation, directly upon the hard earth, which is first covered with an inch or two of clean, dry sand. ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... with equal zeal. They calked the seams with the long moss which hung in profusion from the neighboring trees; the pines supplied them with pitch; the Indians made for them a kind of cordage; and for sails they sewed together their shirts and bedding. At length a brigantine worthy of Robinson Crusoe floated on the waters of the Chenonceau. They laid in what provision they might, gave all that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... spray, The belching ship with ardour drove; Then like a lordly elk that strove Amid the hounds and, charging, rent The pack asunder as it went, It bore round and in beauty sprang— The sea-wind through the cordage sang With high and wintry merriment That stirred the heart of Conn, intent On vengeance, and for battle keen— So hard, ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... Chatham's left to burn, The Holland squadron leisurely return; And spite of Ruperts and of Albemarles, To Ruyter's triumph led the captive Charles. The pleasing sight he often does prolong, Her mast erect, tough cordage, timber strong, Her moving shape, all these he doth survey, And all admires, but most his easy prey. The seamen search her all within, without; Viewing her strength, they yet their conquest doubt; Then with rude shouts, secure, the air they vex, With gamesome ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... helm; one of those rare craft that may be said to steer herself. I had time to think, and receive impressions, as I half lounged at the wheel. The round moon brightened the world, the west pyramids of canvas above me bellied taut, the cordage wrung a stirring whistle from the wind, the silver spray cascaded on the weather deck. I watched the scene with delight, drank in the living beauty of that ship, and felt the witchery the Golden Bough practiced upon sailors' minds steal over and possess me. Aye, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... to the Indians. In 1802, the Legislature of Upper Canada, as had that of Lower Canada, passed an Act appropriating L750 to encourage the growth of hemp, in order to render England independent of Russia in the supply of hemp for cordage for the navy, as was being rapidly the case in the supply of timber to build ships. As obstructions on the St. Lawrence rendered communication more difficult between Upper and Lower Canada than with Albany and New York, articles of commerce from Europe could be ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... the whole place. Nets, sails, and cordage were piled in great heaps in the store; iron bolts and buckets, iron heads for trawls, and ship's stores ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... (Plate IV, Fig. 1), is of yellow limestone.[1] It has been smoothly carved, and is evidently of great antiquity, as shown by its polish and patina, the latter partly of blood. The anus and eyes are quite marked holes made by drilling. An arrow-point of flint is bound to the back with cordage of cotton, which latter, however, from its newness, seems to have been ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... almost fainted, as the heavy bottle, without a break, pirouetted down between sails and cordage, and seeking an opening in the gunwale of the boat flopped into six ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... other behind the dead body of Archie. Jane's head was close to the boy's chest, her sobs coming from between her hands, held before her face. The shock of Archie's death had robbed her of all her strength. Lucy knelt beside her, her shoulder resting against a pile of cordage. Every now and then she would steal a furtive glance around the room—at the boat, at the rafters overhead, at the stove with its pile of kindling—and a slight shudder would pass through her. She had forgotten nothing of the past, nor of the room in which she crouched. Every ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... therefrom, suggestive of the idea that the owners were wont to drop the enormous hooks and fish for passers-by. These streets naturally became more nautical in some respects as they neared the river. Old bits of timber lay here and there among old cordage in little yards, where the owners appeared to deal in small-coal and miscellaneous filth. Elsewhere, worn-out anchors held tenaciously to the mud, as if afraid of being again pressed into service and carried off to sea. Everything was cold, dismal, dreary, disreputable; and ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne

... The anchors, the cordage, the instruments, the travelling-wraps, the awning, the provisions, and the arms, were put in the place assigned to them in the car. The supply of water was procured at Zanzibar. The two hundred pounds of ballast were distributed in fifty bags placed at the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... of his limbs. We now lost no time in getting loose the rope from Peters. It had cut a deep gash through the waistband of his woollen pantaloons, and through two shirts, and made its way into his groin, from which the blood flowed out copiously as we removed the cordage. No sooner had we removed it, however, than he spoke, and seemed to experience instant relief—being able to move with much greater ease than either Parker or myself—this was no doubt owing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... was thrown in the same instant with such force against a table which stood opposite, that for a long time I felt no inclination to try again. There was not the slightest chance of obtaining any sleep all night. The dreadful howling of the wind among the masts and cordage, the fearful straining of the ship, which seemed as though its timbers were starting, the continual pitching and rolling, the rattling of the heavy cables above us, the cries, orders, and shouting of the captain and his sailors, all combined to form a ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... the same moment the ship struck, the foremast broke off close to the deck and went over the side, carrying the boat and men along with it. Our oar got entangled with the wreck, and Jack seized an axe to cut it free, but, owing to the motion of the ship, he missed the cordage and struck the axe deep into the oar. Another wave, however, washed it clear of the wreck. We all seized hold of it, and the next instant we were struggling in the wild sea. The last thing I saw was the boat whirling in the surf, and all the sailors tossed ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... the merest ripple without any need for human agency. Why do you not say that at the same time I commissioned large numbers of fishermen to secure for me at a price striped sea-shells from the shore, smooth pebbles, crabs' claws, sea-urchins' husks, the tentacles of cuttlefish, shingle, straws, cordage, not to mention[13] worm-eaten oyster-shells, moss, and seaweed, and all the flotsam of the sea that the winds drive, or the salt wave casts up, or the storm sweeps back, or the calm leaves high ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... and requires a considerable amount of auxiliary capital. We must fill the bunkers with coal, stock the steward's department with provisions, furnish and light the staterooms and the saloons, and provide cordage and a wide variety of other ship stores. All this labor and all this capital we could take out of the ship and use elsewhere. We could convert them into marginal labor and capital. We could divide them among the owners of other ships where they would be used in a way ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... in the afternoon of an intensely cold day, which caused the spray to congeal as it dashed against the bulwarks and cordage of the vessel, that we descried with great pleasure looming indistinctly in the distance, the shores of Sandy Hook, a desolate-looking island, near the coast of New Jersey, about seven miles south of Long Island Sound. ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... harp, and began his magic song: "How sweet it is to ride upon the surges, and to leap from wave to wave, while the wind sings cheerful in the cordage, and the oars flash fast among the foam! How sweet it is to roam across the ocean, and see new towns and wondrous lands, and to come home laden with treasure, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... which menaced us that had made me pass the preceding night in the most cruel inquietude. In my agitation, I sprang upon deck, and contemplated with horror the frigate winging its way upon the waters. The winds pressed against the sails with great violence, strained and whistled among the cordage; and the great bulk of wood seemed to split every time the surge broke upon its sides. On looking a little out to sea I perceived at no great distance on our right, all the other ships of the expedition, which quieted me very much. Towards ten in ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... without, and by untaught enthusiasm within, might; after all, prove an easier conquest than Holland and Zeeland, every town, in whose territory bristled with fortifications. If the English ships—well-trained and swift sailors as they were—were unprovided with spare and cordage, beef and biscuit, powder and shot, and the militia-men, however enthusiastic, were neither drilled nor armed, was it so very certain, after all, that successful resistance would be made to the great Armada, and to the veteran ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... failings of the settlers, they certainly showed no lack of energy or of skill in concerting means for their departure. They felled the trees to make planks, moss served for calking, and their shirts and bedding for sails, while their Indian friends supplied cordage. When their bark was finished they set sail. Unluckily in their impatience to be gone, they did not reckon what supplies they would need. The wind, at first favorable, soon turned against them, and famine stared them in the face. Driven to the last ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... know, we had all left our landsmen's fears far south of Belle Isle and were filled with the spirit of that wild, tempestuous world where the storm never sleeps and the cordage pipes on calmest day and the beam seas break in the long, low, growling wash that warns ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... coasters, surviving long after the stately merchant marine had vanished from blue water, have enjoyed a slant of favoring fortune in recent years. They, too, have been in demand, and once again there is money to spare for paint and cordage and calking. They have been granted a new lease of life and may be found moored at the wharfs, beached on the marine railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting their turn to refit. It is a matter of vital concern that the freight on spruce boards from Bangor ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... their effects directly to the American market; or how much even the trade of the Baltic might be secured and extended by a free intercourse with America; which has ever had so large a demand, and will have more for hemp, cordage, sail-cloth, and other articles of that commerce: how much the national navigation would be benefited by building and purchasing ships there: how much the number of seamen might be increased, or how much more advantageous it would prove to both countries, ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... bough, and waver down to the water close to the Japanese doll, who in another minute will be overside in pursuit of these miracles. The father-fisher has it by the pink hind leg, and this time it is tucked away, all but the top-knot, out of sight among umber nets and sepia cordage. Being an Oriental it makes no protest, and the boat scuds out to join the little fleet ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... The vessel on which the corpse of Lotys lay, palled in purple, and decked with flowers, flew over the waves, to all seeming with the same hunted rapidity as the moon rushed through the heavens,— and so far, though her masts bent reed-like in the wind, and her sails strained at their cordage, she had come to no harm. Tossed about as she was, rudderless and solitary, there was something almost miraculous in the way she had weathered a storm in which many a well-guided ship must inevitably have gone down. The purple pall with its ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... in the boats. Nothing else was notable on deck, save where the loose topsail had played some havoc with the rigging, and there hung, and swayed, and sang in the declining wind, a raffle of intorted cordage. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... setting at defiance that which had horrified and disgusted them, the two officers, followed by all their men but the boat-keeper, sprang on board the beautifully clean, trim-looking schooner, where the remains of the broken spar, axes that had been hastily thrown down, and a tangle of cordage ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... get our word "barge"), and so the very name carries us to those early times when the Birch was considered one of the most useful of trees, as it still is in most northern countries, where it grows at a higher degree of latitude than any other tree. Its bark was especially useful, being useful for cordage, and matting, and roofing, while the tree itself formed the early British canoes, as it still forms the canoes of the North American Indians, for which it is well suited, from its lightness ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... that evidently no woman had ever been admitted into this sanctity of a place; a fact made all the more evident by the abundance of spiders, who had spun their webs about the walls and ceiling in the wildest apparent confusion, though doubtless each individual spider knew the cordage which he had lengthened out of his own miraculous bowels. But it was really strange. They had festooned their cordage on whatever was stationary in the room, making a sort of gray, dusky tapestry, that waved portentously in the breeze, and flapped, heavy and dismal, each with ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... from the honeysuckle gray The oriole with experienced quest Twitches the fibrous bark away, The cordage of his hammock-nest,— Cheering his labor with a note Rich as the orange ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... seek another, and betook himself to the windows below. Through that of Angus's room, he caught sight of a floating anker cask. It was the very thing!—and there on the walls hung a quantity of nets and cordage! But how to get in? It was a sash-window, and of course swollen with the wet, therefore not to be opened; and there was not a square in it large enough to let him through. He swam to the other side, and crept softly on to the roof, and over the ridge. But a broken slate betrayed him. The woman ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... heard a good deal about Tirlemont and Louvain, but not much of Termonde. Because this was a war of millions, it did not count in the news—for it was only a community of twelve thousand inhabitants, as pretty and quaint as the province of Flanders boasts, the prosperous center of its rope and cordage manufacture, with fifteen hundred houses, barracks, two statues, a town-hall, five churches, an orphan asylum, and ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... which had been doubly desirable on account of him who was languishing in sickness. That they might not be wholly dependent on one lamp, of which some accident might deprive them, they made another. In collecting such wood as had been cast on shore for fuel, they had fortunately found some cordage and a little oakum (the sort of hemp used for calking ships), which they turned to great account as wicks for their lamps. When this store was consumed, they had recourse to their shirts and drawers—a part of dress worn by almost all Russian peasants—to supply the want. Like the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... al-Din bid a thousand which the broker accepted, for the premises belonged to the Treasury; and the seller handed over to him the keys and the buyer opened the shop and found the inner parlour furnished with carpets and cushions. Moreover, he found there a store-room full of sails and masts, cordage and seamen's chests, bags of beads and cowrie[FN106]- shells, stirrups, battle-axes, maces, knives, scissors and such matters, for the last owner of the shop had been a dealer in second-hand goods.[FN107]ook his seat in the shop and Ahmad al-Danaf said to him, "O my son, the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... vice-admiral. This fleet sailed round, while I went back the shortest way to the coast, where I first discovered the boat; I found the tide had driven it still nearer. The seamen were all provided with cordage, which I had beforehand twisted to a sufficient strength. When the ships came up, I stripped myself, and waded till I came within an hundred yards of the boat, after which I was forced to swim till I got up to it. The seamen ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... one another solemnly, under the electric light, which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the principal ornament of the walls, a so-called 'Sea Piece by Turner,' almost entirely composed of cordage and drowning men. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... brief, and very nearly tragical in its finish. About noon the balloon entered the field of a storm of wind and rain of extraordinary violence, and before long the cordage, etc., was so heavily loaded with moisture, that although practically all available ballast was disposed of, the balloon descended in spite of them. The speed of the balloon was so great that Donaldson did not dare hazard a dash ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... doubt that under the healthful and delicious spell of Rhythm a far steadier and greater amount of labor would be cheerfully and happily endured by the working classes. The continuous but rhythmed croon of the negro when at work, the yo-heave-o of the sailor straining at the cordage, the rowing songs of the oarsman, etc., etc., are all suggestive of what might be effected by judicious effort in this direction. But man, ever wiser than his Maker, neglects the intuitions of nature. Rendered ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... Relating to the use of canvas, cables, and cordage made of hemp grown in the United States in the equipment ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson

... stern were spare cork buoys, rope ends, sacks of ballast and Tony. Midships were the piled up nets and buoys. For'ard were more ballast bags and rope ends, some cordage, old clothes, sacks, paper bags of supper, four bottles of cold tea, two of paraffin oil and one of water, the riding lamp and a very old fish-box, half full of pebbles, for cooking on. All over the boat were herring scales and smelly blobs of roe. It's sometime now ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows. Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were heard, — Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green. So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between. Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... barley, coal, straw-board, castor oil, linseed oil, lard, school slates, oil cloth, gas, whiskey, rubber, steel, steel rails, steel and iron beams, nails, wrought-iron pipe, iron nuts, stoves, lead, copper, envelopes, paper bags, paving pitch, cordage, coke, reaping and binding and mowing machines, threshing machines, ploughs, and glass—a long and somewhat jumbled list, to which, however, at the present time, there should probably be added: white lead, jute bagging, lumber, shingles, friction matches, beef, felt, lead pencils, ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... of each man's fate, By whom he learns that Nature's steadfast laws Are as decrees immutable; O pause Your even forward march! Not yet too late Teach me the needed lesson, when to wait Inactive as a ship when no wind draws To stretch the loosened cordage. One implores Thy clemency, whose wilfulness innate Has gone uncurbed and roughshod while the years Have lengthened into decades; now distressed He knows no rule by which to move or stay, And teased with restlessness and desperate fears He dares not watch in silence thy wise way Bringing ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... not deeming it necessary to take upon myself such investigation; it is however possible that we might have patched these up, so as to reach Rio de Janeiro, had not the running rigging been as rotten as the masts, and we had no spare cordage on board. The state of the provisions, however, rendered a direct return to Rio de Janeiro out of the question, the good provisions on board being little more than sufficient for a ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... stern I found hanging therefrom a tangle of ropes and cordage whereby I contrived to clamber aboard, and so beheld a man in a red seaman's bonnet who sat upon the wreckage of one of the quarter guns tying up a splinter-gash in his arm with hand and teeth; perceiving me he rolled a pair of blue eyes up at me ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... was wonder to wee Shane, there was so much of it that it flicked through his head like a dream: the hazy September afternoon; the long, lean vessel like a greyhound; the sails white as a swan's wing; the cordage that rattled like wood; the bare-footed, bearded sailors; the town of Carrickfergus in the offing; the lap-lap-lap of water; the silent man at the wheel; the sudden transition of the friendly Raghery man into a firm, authoritative figure, quick as a cat, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... climbing up a tree, and then running along the branches, and descending again, mount up another tree, or sometimes climb from branch to branch. They often encircle a tree, which, in time, is completely destroyed; while they survive, forming an extraordinary intricate mass of natural cordage on the ground. In some places the original trunk had entirely disappeared, leaving only the ratan. They greatly ornament the forest as they hang in graceful festoons from branch to branch, or adorn their summits with feathery crowns of leaves, their highest points being erect leafy spikes ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... masts, with their maze of cordage and their yellowish-brown sails drying in the sun, these tarred sterns with apple-green decks, these lateen-yards threatening the windows of the neighboring houses, these derricks standing under plank roofs shaped like pagodas, these tackles ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... increased in fury, and it soon became evident that neither sails nor cordage could long withstand the strain to which they ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... each man remained motionless at the place where he had been stationed, and the ship, so far as human noise was concerned, was as still as death. Even the soldiers below, finding no attention paid to their cries, had subsided into comparative quiet. The silence was broken only by the creaking of cordage, the dashing of water against the bows, and the groaning of the timbers. Ever and anon Hornigold's deep voice, crying "Larboard" or "Starboard" as the case might be, rolled along the deck to the watchful men gripping the wheel. Suddenly the old ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... communication by the Alleghany River, and its tributary the French River, to within fifteen miles, whence the transportation was by good road. Except timber, which grew upon the spot, the materials—iron, cordage, provisions, and guns—came mainly by this route from Pennsylvania; a number of guns, however, being sent from Washington. By these arrangements the resources of New York, relieved of Lake Erie, were concentrated ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... manufacture—woollen cloths and wool excepted—on board British vessels to the coast of Africa and other foreign settlements, and to import from the same all goods, except indigo and tobacco. He also proposed that they should be allowed to export Irish sailcloth, cotton-yarn, and cordage to England, free of duty. Two bills founded upon these propositions were introduced, and both sides of the house admitting the justice of the measures seemed to agree in the propriety of adopting them. The great commercial body of England, however, took the alarm, and during the Easter ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... finish, for the boys could see that the bag needed final attention. It had risen higher and higher and was now swaying and tugging at the suspension ropes. Both boys alighted and at once began straightening the extension ropes. Here and there where the cordage net was out of place they pulled down the bag and adjusted the rigging. Finally a little after three o'clock, the great case had filled out until its smooth glistening sides resembled the skin of a ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler

... certificate to the effect that the Battalion was in possession of every article enumerated in A.F.G. 1098 (Mobilisation Store Table). This document contained such items as "screws, brass, buckle roller 1 in. x 7/8 in.—2" "awls, brad—1;" "cordage, tarred spun yarn,—lbs. 14," and other luxuries which had long been considered superfluous, and mostly lost in the Salient. We had been told to indent for anything we wanted in the way of clothing or equipment, so that there was some consternation on the arrival of a new and fierce Deputy ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman

... flax-seed, oil, tallow, leather, woad, metals, and of which to the aggregate value in 1841, of 59,773,354 silver rubles was exported; an amount nearly stationary as compared with the three previous years. But the export of Russian manufactures, viz. woollens, cottons, linens, candles, cordage, and cloths for China, had improved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... creak of spars or whine of cordage, no spray at the bow, no ripple at the stern—no voice, and no figure to utter one. As she nears the rocks she pauses, then, as if impelled by a contrary current, floats rudder foremost off to sea, and vanishes in twilight. Harpswell ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... knew that his ship would never reach her port, would he therefore neglect his functions, be slovenly and careless, permit insubordination and drunkenness among the crew, let the broad pennon draggle in filthy rents, the cordage become tangled and stiff, the planks be covered with dirt, and the guns be grimed with rust? No: all generous hearts would condemn that. He would keep every inch of the deck scoured, every piece of metal polished like a mirror, the sails set full and clean, and, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... prepared and still more vigorously tested. They were made by the most famous of the world's balloon-makers, Lachambre, and required the spending of money unstintedly. The motors cost according to their lightness rather than their weight, and all the materials, cordage, metal-work, etc., were expensive for the same reason. The cost of the hydrogen gas was very great also, at twenty cents per cubic meter (thirty-five cubic feet); and as at each ascension all the gas was usually lost, the expense of each sail in the air for gas alone amounted to ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... south-east end of Mowee in heavy weather, the leach ropes of the main topsail and two topgallant sails gave way, and the sails were blown to pieces. Cook says, "neither the cordage, canvas, nor indeed hardly any other stores used in the Navy, are equal in quality to those in general use in the merchant service"; and he relates how such failures have constantly resulted in "infinite trouble, vexation, and loss." ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... fishing-smacks; one shrieking infant was being passed, gayly, from the poop of a distant deck, across the closely lying shipping, to the quay's steps, to be hushed by the generous opening of a peasant mother's bodice. One could hear the straining of cordage, the creak of masts, the flap of the sails, all the noises peculiar to shipping riding at anchor. The shriek of steam-whistles broke out, ever and anon, above all the din and uproar. Along the quay steps ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... the Royal captive, who, till then, Had lain by them unseen. But while the shout Swept like a storm along the swelling ranks The soul of Saul went drifting through the dark, Like some fair ship with sails and cordage rent, Out from the stormy trials of his life, To tempt the terrors of an unknown sea. And then the cry of lamentation rose In Israel, and the Hebrew maidens hung Their speechless harps upon the willow branch, And mourned the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... the road dipped at the edge of the hamlet here sounded clink of steel on rock, suggesting that men labored there with trowel and drill. There was complaining creaking of cordage—the arm of a derrick sliced a slow arc across the blue ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... moored for the night off his island, and partook of such entertainment as he could supply. He sent his fish to market when he caught more than he could consume, and he and his children made ropes and cordage, for which also he had a ready sale on the river. Pending this communication, he prepared me a substantial supper, to which I did ample justice, and then shewed me, at my request, to a small, neat chamber, where I sought and found the repose I so ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various

... to him, walking in Barnes Elms. We find him comparing Bible concordances, a captious judge of sermons, deep in Descartes and Aristotle. We find him, in a single year, studying timber and the measurement of timber; tar and oil, hemp, and the process of preparing cordage; mathematics and accounting; the hull and the rigging of ships from a model; and "looking and informing himself of the (naval) stores with"—hark to the fellow!—"great delight." His familiar spirit of delight was not the same with Shelley's; but how true it was to him through life! He ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... their screams and cries on quitting it were truly heartrending. Solomon Eagle was the last to go forth, and he delayed his departure till the flames burst through the windows. Another great storehouse of oil, tar, cordage, hemp, flax, and other highly inflammable articles, adjoining the church, had caught fire, and the flames speedily reached the sacred fabric. The glass within the windows was shivered; the stone bars split asunder; and the seats and other woodwork ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth



Words linked to "Cordage" :   rope, quantity



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