Ralph Delahaye Paine

The Old Merchant Marine: A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Excerpt: "The story of American ships and sailors is an epic of blue water which seems singularly remote, almost unreal, to the later generations. A people with a native genius for seafaring won and held a brilliant supremacy through two centuries and then forsook this heritage of theirs. The period of achievement was no more extraordinary than was its swift declension. A maritime race whose topsails flecked every ocean, whose captains courageous from father to son had fought with pike and cannonade to defend the freedom of the seas, turned inland to seek a different destiny and took no more thought for the tall ships and rich cargoes which had earned so much renown for its flag. Vanished fleets and brave memories-a chronicle of America which had written its closing chapters before the Civil War! There will be other Yankee merchantmen in times to come, but never days like those when skippers sailed on seas uncharted in quest of ports mysterious and unknown. The Pilgrim Fathers, driven to the northward of their intended destination in Virginia, landed on the shore of Cape Cod not so much to clear the forest and till the soil as to establish a fishing settlement. Like the other Englishmen who long before 1620 had steered across to harvest the cod on the Grand Bank, they expected to wrest a livelihood mostly from salt water. The convincing argument in favour of Plymouth was that it offered a good harbor for boats and was 'a place of profitable fishing.' Both pious and amphibious were these pioneers whom the wilderness and the red Indian confined to the water's edge, where they were soon building ships to trade corn for beaver skins with the Kennebec colony.'

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
• Seitenzahl: 110
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. Januar 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9783965378322
• Artikelnr.: 58566087

Autorenporträt

Ralph Delahaye Paine (1871-1925) was an American journalist and author, renowned for his vivid chronicling of maritime history and American adventures. His distinguished literary style combined rigorous historical detail with an engaging narrative voice, capturing the imagination of his readers and offering a gateway to bygone eras. Paine's career as an author took flight after graduating from Yale University, where he honed his writing skills and developed an abiding interest in the sea and its lore. Among Paine's extensive body of work, 'The Old Merchant Marine: A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors' stands out as a classic in maritime literature. It offers a comprehensive history of early American seafaring, illuminating the lives of hardy sailors and the evolution of the shipping industry that was pivotal to the nation's development. Paine's contributions to maritime history extend beyond this tome, but it remains a seminal work for its rich description and careful research, continuing to serve as a valuable resource for both historians and enthusiasts of nautical heritage. His commitment to historical accuracy, combined with his storytelling prowess, made Ralph D. Paine a distinguished figure in early 20th-century American letters.