For My Country's Freedom

Quotes

1. ...on this September morning in 1812, while the Indomitable held her same course under reduced canvas, the ship's small drummers and fifers marched and countermarched up and down the crowded gundeck, the familiar tune Portsmouth Lass lively enough to set a man's foot tapping, or purse his lips in a silent whistle.

2. 

   Every ball was finding a target; and there were wild cheers as the American's forecastle was blasted to splintered, and one of her bow-chasers was hurled aside on to its crew.

3. 

   Adam grasped the rail as gun by gun the American began to retaliate [...] He winced as he felt the iron smashing into the hull or through the rigging overhead.

4. 

   Even in war it is necessary to love another.

5. 

   ‘A general will say, "Order the 87th to advance." And if they are not enough or are hacked down, he will send in another regiment. He sees no faces, hears no pitiful cries which will never be answered, only flags, pins on maps.’

6. 

   He stared into darkness, seeing the last of the horizon. Then he touched the weathered quarterdeck rail. Aloud he said ‘We'll fight very soon, my girl. You and me. Never ask the bloody reason, only fight and win!’

7. 

   Scum they might be; many would otherwise have been hanged or deported, but firm discipline and fair treatment would soon change that. The hard men who would never break, Adam would take on himself to train. They often proved to be the best sailors, especially those who had never known anything but poverty and oppression.

8. 

   ‘Men, Mr Blythe. Ordinary, everyday men — you'd never notice any of them in a street or working in the fields in England right? [...] But they are your answer. They are the strength of a ship. So let them not die to no good purpose.’

9. 

   Designed originally as a third-rate of sixty-four guns, she had been cut down to her present seize by the removal of most of her upper deck and corresponding armament. But her forty twenty-four pounders remained, with an additional four eighteen-pounders for bow and stern-chasers.

10. 

    Always the same picture, the narrow waters of Carrick Roads in Falmouth, the murky hump of Pendennis Castle lying across the starboard bow of the ship flying an admiral's flag: his flag — the knowledge of that had been quite definite, as it so often was in dreams. The squadron had been all around him, ready to weigh, or still shortening their cables. About to leave Falmouth, as he had done so many times.

11. 

    God and the navy we adore, when danger threatens but not before!

12. 

    Now he could see the difference. One hundred and eighty feet overall, and of some fourteen hundred tons, her broad beam betrayed that she had been built originally for the line of battle. Her sail plan had changed little, he thought. With a wind over the quarter she would run like a deer if properly handled.

13. 

    There she was, Beer's Unity, with almost every sail set and filled so that she appeared to be leaning forward into the surging spray beneath her beakhead. The huge broad-pendant straight out like painted metal, a picture of naval strength at its best.

14. 

    As the wind and quarter-sea had mounted the Indomitable, big though she was, had seemed to bound from trough to trough like the lion she followed, sail and spindrift pouring from the bulging canvas like tropical rain.

15. 

    ...the American's upper yards and punctured sails rose above the fog of gunfire like a cliff.

16. 

    Released from the land Indomitable heeled over to the thrust of canvas and rudder, the sea almost brushing her lee gunports while she came about, sails thundering as fore and mainsails were hauled and beaten into submission.

17. 

    There will always be slaves, no matter what people promise and pretend.

18. 

    ‘Never speak of a last letter to anbody, doi you hear me? for it may well be your last, if you dwell on it too much!’

19. 

    He saw himself reflected in other people's faces, and the horror and the pity he saw there had never ceased to wound him.

20. 

    Seven years. It seemed impossible. So much had happened since that time. Friends killed: fine ships lost or battered into hulks in every corner of the world and across the ocean.

21. 

    ‘He doesn't understand. The navy is my life. My only life, now. The war will not last for ever, but until it ends I shall stand in the line-of-battle as I have been entrusted to!’

That’s all the quotes.

21 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more