Maritime Commerce Quotes

A very goodly Bay … that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places of Europe, Asia, Africa or America for large and pleasant navigable rivers. Heaven and Earth have never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation.

I think experience has shown that privateers have done more toward distressing the trade of our enemies, and furnishing these States with necessaries, than Continental Ships of the same force.

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

As the Government lights our coasts for the protection of mariners and the benefit of commerce, so it should give to the tillers of the soil the best lights of practical science and experience.

Ships are a strange kind of commodity because they're very lumpy, very big individual units, but they're commodities.

Whether by theft or by artistry or by conquest, when it comes to time, Venetians are the world's greatest experts. They bested time like no one else.

We knowing the prosperity of these countries, and the welfare of their inhabitants depends principally on navigation and trade …

A safe and convenient haven wherein a thousand ships may ride in safety.

He enters the port with a full sail.

A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping In sight, then lost amidst the forestry Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; A huge, dun cupola, like a fools-cap crown On a fool's head - and there is London Town.

we find by experience, that without the common help, assistance, and interposition of a General Company, the people designed from hence for those parts cannot be profitably protected and maintained in their great risque from pirates, extortion and otherwise, which will happen in so very long a voyage.

let it be considered that the plantations employ many hundreds of shipping and many thousands of seamen, which must be in diverse respects an advantage to England, being an island, and by nature fitted for navigation above any country in Europe

We should encourage the establishment of American steamship lines.

My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States.

Denmark is a country built on a commercial fleet. That's basically what we have been doing. We're just a small country of islands, and every family has a sailor. So, in many ways, my father was a sailor before I was born.

One of the reasons that New York became great was that it's serviced by many, many different rivers and waterways. You have the Atlantic Ocean connected virtually right to it, and it's serviced by the East River and the Hudson River and lots of tributaries.

The same relation exists between merchant and pirate, who for a long period are one and the same person: where the one function appears to them inadvisable, they exercise the other.

Thou seaman-prince! thy men are paid: The scat on Gotlanders is laid; Young man or old To our seamen bold Must pay, to save his head: The Yngling princes fled, Eysvssel people bled; Who can't defend the wealth they have Must die, or share with the rover brave

My family background was heavily slanted toward business and seafaring matters.

Mr. Pierce in the Salem ship, the Desire, returned from the West Indies after seven months. He had been at Providence, and brought some cotton, and tobacco, and Negroes, etc., from thence, and salt from Tertugos. Dry fish and strong liquors are the only commodities for those parts. He met there two men-of-war, sent forth by the lords, etc., of Providence with letters of mart, who had taken divers prizes from the Spaniard and many Negroes.

My one remaining professional ambition is to read the shipping forecast. I live in hope.

We will assist by money from our royal treasury all those who wish to reestablish old manufactures or to undertake new ones … all the merchants and traders by sea who purchase vessels, or who build new ones, for traffic or commerce shall receive from us subsidies for each ton of merchandise which they export or import on the said voyages

Europe has about eighty steamships hugging the African coast the year round, yet our country cannot find employment for one.

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

The more ships have grown in size and consequence, the more their place in our imagination has shrunk.