The Ship Quotes

“Rommel in Libya clamoring for reinforcement could have everything his heart desired if the British Navy did not interfere.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Tomorrow it might be air power; tomorrow the Captain might be an antiquated old fogey, as useless as a pikeman on a modern battlefield, but the war was being fought today, today, today.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The Captain had the feeling that the advocates of air power talked about today as if it were tomorrow. Tomorrow, command of the air might take the place of command of the sea; but this was today. Today, those half-dozen fat transports wallowing along on the far side of the smoke screen were on their way to Malta, and it was today they had to be stopped if at all.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The most beautiful machines, the most elaborate devices, were useless if the men who handled them were badly trained or shaken by fear, and there was the interesting point that the more complex the machinery, and the more human effort it saved, and the more exactly it performed its functions, the greater need there was for heroes to handle it. Not mere individual heroes, either, but a whole team of heroes.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“No man’s capacity for command can be known until it has been tried in actual battle.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The miracle of men staying in the face of the most frightful death imaginable ceases to be a miracle unless attention is directly called to it.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The Captain fancied that there was a bad quarter-hour awaiting the senior Italian destroyer officer, if ever he made port; he would probably be unjustly treated, but a naval officer who expected justice was expecting too much.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“was doomed to blow up, or whether eventually she was going to sink, had no bearing on the present. She would or she would not. Meanwhile, there went the destroyers.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“As long as the guns would fire, as long as the ship would answer her helm, she must be kept in the fighting line — for that matter she must be kept in the fighting line anyway, if for no other reason than to attract to herself as much of the Italian fire as possible.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Despite that tremendous din, with Artemis rolling in a beam sea, and with a dozen factors demanding his attention and his calculation, and in face of appalling odds, it was necessary that he should remain both clear-headed and cheerful.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The Gunnery Lieutenant had found a kindred spirit in his chief mate; Allonby was one of those inspired fighting men — the Gunnery Lieutenant was another good example — that England produces in such numbers.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“That was all logical; the Captain reminded himself, smiling bleakly, that in war logic can be refuted by new arguments, and courage and dash on the part of the light cruisers could supply those. Time was passing, and the sun was sinking lower”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The Captain had no need to recapitulate all this in his mind; his reasoning processes started at this point, up to which the facts were as much part of his mental equipment as a musician’s knowledge of the number of flats in a scale. For the destroyers to stand any chance of success in the attack which the leader’s flag signals were proposing to him the Italians must be distracted, their attention diverted and their aim divided.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Perhaps the principal element in the Marines’ discipline was pride — pride in themselves, pride in the duty entrusted them, pride in the cause in which they fought, and pride in the Navy in which they served.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“A commander’s duty in a big ship is largely one of routine, and after two years of that duty it can be understood that Rhodes had become too deeply involved in it, was liable to think too much about details and not about the broad outline of the fact that England was fighting for her life.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“They did not have to be broken into unthinking obedience to ensure that they would do what they were told; thanks to their victories and to the age-long victorious tradition of their service they could be sure that their efforts would be directly aimed towards victory.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Endless drills and battle practice had trained both the Gunnery Lieutenant and his men until he and they and the guns worked as a single whole; the berserker now instead of with the double axe was armed with weapons which could strike at nine miles, could pull down an airplane six miles up.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“He was clear-headed and fierce, a dangerous kind of animal, employing his brain only along certain lines of thought. The men who swung the double axes beside Harold at Hastings and the reckless buccaneers who plundered the Spanish Main in defiance of odds must have been of the same type. With a Morgan or a Nelson or a Wellington or a Marlborough to direct their tireless energy and their frantic bravery there was nothing that could stand against them.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Today the Gunnery Lieutenant’s heart was singing. He was big and burly and fair. Perhaps in his veins there coursed some of the blood of a berserker ancestor; always at the prospect of action he felt this elation, this anticipation of pleasure.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“plan was a part of the Captain’s life, something he was going to do, not something he wished to do or did not wish to do; something the advisability of which was not in doubt even though the details of execution had had to be left to this last moment for consideration because of possible freaks of weather or possible unexpected moves on the part of the enemy.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“there was ample pressure available to satisfy this demand; it was because he could foresee such demands and plan economically for them ahead of time that he held the rank of Commander.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“None could appreciate that magic serenity, that endless patience, who had not served under him.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Men of the temper of the crew of Artemis did not need rhetoric; a plain statement of the facts for the benefit of those men below decks who had no idea what was happening was all that was needed.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The Captain has sent me to tell you,” said Jerningham to the mouthpiece, “we’ve got the Eyety Navy in front of us. Battleships, heavy cruisers, and all. They’ve run away from us once, the heavy cruisers have. Now we’re going to see if the battleships’ll run too. Three hours of daylight left, and the convoy’s got to reach Malta. Good luck to us all. There’s none like us.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Go down,” said the Captain, “and tell the ship about the situation.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The business he was to do was something touching the whole efficiency of the ship — the safety of Malta — the life or death of England.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“A crisis in the battle was close at hand and he could spare not one moment from the bridge to tell them himself.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“In the Captain’s opinion distorted news was dangerous. He knew his men, and he believed that his men knew him; if they heard the truth he could rely upon them, whatever the”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“So obvious and logical was all this that the inferences must be clear to the rawest hand anywhere in the ship. It was not necessary to have studied Mahan, or to have graduated from the War College, to understand the situation.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“It was all perfectly logical, positive, and inevitable when the data were considered — the eleven-knot convoy, the twenty-knot battleships, the Italian fourteen-inch guns, the British six-inch; the four hours remaining of daylight and the extraordinary clearness of the air. Fog might save the English, but there was no chance of fog in that sparkling air.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship