The Ship Quotes

“Ships – ships and the men in them – were still deciding the fate of the world. The Arab fertilizing date palms at Basra, the Negro trading cattle for a new wife in Central Africa, the gaucho riding the Argentine pampas, did so under the protection of the British Navy, of which the Captain and his ship were a minor fraction, one of many parts whose sum was equal to the whole.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“He had stood so often, in peace and in war, ready to read a signal, that it was natural to him to ready himself in this fashion, as natural to him as breathing.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The Captain knew how the Admiral proposed to neutralize the chances against him, to counter overwhelming strength with overwhelming skill. The next few minutes would show whether his calculations would be justified.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“the Rear Admiral had displayed a cold-blooded calculation of risks and an unwavering acceptance of them. Wars could be waged only by taking chances; no Admiral since history began had ever been able to congratulate himself upon a prospective certainty.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“And to escort the convoy through there were only these five light cruisers and a dozen destroyers — the convoy had to get through, and if it were reckless to risk it with such an escort, then recklessness had to be tolerated.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Helpless enough they looked, and yet they bore within them cargoes of most desperate urgency. Malta was threatened with every danger the imagination could conceive — the danger of attack from the air, of attack from the sea, of pestilence and of famine. A civilian population of a quarter of a million, and a garrison of God only knew how many, were on short rations until the food these ships carried should be delivered to them.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The White Ensigns with the gay block of color in the corner, and the red crosses, seemed somehow to accentuate this effect of fragility. Flown by a battleship the White Ensign conveyed a message of menace, of irresistible force; but in a light cruiser it gave an impression of jauntiness, of reckless daring, of proudly flaunting itself in the face of peril.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Wounded left lying were bad for discipline, bad for morale, apart from the guilty conscience which would torment the Surgeon Lieutenant-commander if his job were not properly done.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“His instinct: something developed in him by years of study of his profession, of deep reading and of mental digestion of innumerable lessons, supplemented by his inborn qualities.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“The Captain experienced a feeling of elation which was extraordinarily pleasant. He was a man who was profoundly interested in the art of living. Rembrandt gave him pleasure, and so did the Fifth Symphony; so did bouillabaisse at Marseilles or Southern cooking at New Orleans or a properly served Yorkshire pudding in the North of England; so did a pretty girl or an elegant woman; so did a successful winning hazard from a difficult position at billiards, or a Vienna coup at bridge; and so did success in battle. These were the things that gilded the bitter pill of life which everyone had to swallow. They were as important as life and death; not because they were very important, but because life and death were not very important.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“However perfect the machines, war in the last analysis is fought by men, whose nerves must remain steady to direct the machines, whose courage must remain high when they as well as their machines are in danger, whose discipline and training must be such that they work together.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“Artemis might have the most perfect instruments, the finest guns, the best ammunition ever made, but they were useless without clear heads and steady hands and keen eyes.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship

“He was the supreme lord of this underworld of his, like Lucifer, and he seemed marked out as such by the loneliness of his position, without a soul within yards of him, and by the light-coloured boiler suit which he wore, and by the untroubled loftiness of his expression.”
― C.S. Forester, The Ship