John Drake > Quotes

“It is my calling to preach the gospel to the ungodly, and none are more ungodly than seamen.”
― John Drake, Fletcher and the Flying Machine

“below!”
― John Drake, Fletcher and the Mutineers

“Note well – that before all else – you should always blame the politicians, because everyone else thinks they are lying, devious rogues,”
― John Drake, Fletcher and the Blue Star

“see,’ I said, and grinned. ​‘She does a very nice sixpenny stand-up behind the lending library after dark,’ he said, ‘There’s always a line a-waiting, and she could easily charge more, but she don’t because she loves her work,”
― John Drake, Fletcher and the Samurai

“So if ever you’re on a ship where they rig the hand-lines, then take my advice: go below, get the largest bucket you can find, and stand by to heave.”
― John Drake, Fletcher's Fortune

“action, Mr Seymour always had our guns laid point blank. Contrary to what I thought, this does not mean “very close” but to level the gun at zero elevation so the shot would skim flatly across the water to its target. That way there was no need to judge distance. Within its point blank range, what a gun pointed at, got hit - in theory, at least. And for our eighteen pounders, that range was 300 yards.”
― John Drake, Fletcher's Fortune

“In addition, to fetch cartridges up from the magazine, we had a shrivelled child of uncertain age, by the name of “Nimmo”. He was one of about twenty ship’s boys that lived in dank corners of the vessel down below the water-line. Phiandra’s boys were all street urchins that had been “saved” by the Marine Society, who caught them, cleaned them, fed them a bit, gave them the scrapings of an education and parcelled them off in batches to serve afloat. Captain Bollington approved of this scheme and took his ship’s boys from no other source.”
― John Drake, Fletcher's Fortune

“Thomas Sheridan playing the pirate Captain O’Blood, in ‘The Irish Buccaneer”
― John Drake, The Traitor of Treasure Island