The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Tall Ship, by Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa
Ritchie

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Title: A Tall Ship
On Other Naval Occasions

Author: Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

Release Date: June 10, 2008 [eBook #25749]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TALL SHIP***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

Transcriber's note:

"Bartimeus" is the pseudonym of Captain Lewis Ritchie, R.N.

A TALL SHIP

On Other Naval Occasions

by

"BARTIMEUS"

Author of "Naval Occasions"

. . . "All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
* * *
And a laughing yarn from a merry fellow rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over."
JOHN MASEFIELD

Cassell and Company, Ltd
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne

First published September 1915.
Reprinted September and October 1915.

To

H. M. S.

PREFACE

It is almost superfluous to observe that the following sketches contain
no attempt at the portrait of an individual. The majority are etched
in with the ink of pure imagination. A few are "composite" sketches of
a large number of originals with whom the Author has been shipmates in
the past and whose friendship he is grateful to remember.

Of these, some, alas! have finished "the long trick." To them, at no
risk of breaking their quiet sleep--_Ave atque vale_.

"Crab-Pots," "The Day," and "Chummy-Ships" appeared originally in
_Blackwood's Magazine_, and are reproduced here by kind permission of
the Editor.

CONTENTS

1. CRAB-POTS
2. THE DRUM
3. A CAPTAIN'S FORENOON
4. THE SEVEN-BELL BOAT
5. THE KING'S PARDON
6. AN OFF-SHORE WIND
7. THE DAY
8. THE MUMMERS
9. CHUMMY-SHIPS
10. THE HIGHER CLAIM

A TALL SHIP

I

CRAB-POTS

1

In moments of crisis the disciplined human mind works as a thing
detached, refusing to be hurried or flustered by outward circumstance.
Time and its artificial divisions it does not acknowledge. It is
concerned with preposterous details and with the ludicrous, and it is
acutely solicitous of ot