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Piratical

adjective
1.
Characteristic of pirates.
2.
Characteristic of piracy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Piratical" Quotes from Famous Books



... purposes, were discovered in the town; a ship's long-boat; two ship's bells, one ornamented with grapes and vine leaves, and marked "Wilhelm Ludwig, Bremen," and every other description of ship's furniture. Some piratical boats were burned, twenty-four brass guns captured; the other guns spiked or otherwise destroyed. Malladu ceased to exist; the power of Seriff Housman ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... the luxuriance of the overgrowth, hidden to casual passers-by like the life of insects. Only by the seaside, where the houses were clustered together above a seawall of cyclopean stones, and on the beach, where the long narrow boats, sharp-prowed and piratical, were drawn up to the shore, the same gnome-like little men, with a generous display of naked brown limbs, were sawing and hammering and ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... he carried off Cyrene again, like some black piratical cruiser, and she reluctantly accompanied him, looking back regretfully over ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... abroad can be assured that the German working class disapproves to-day of every piratical policy of State just as it has always disapproved and that it is determined to resist the predatory subjugation of foreign peoples as strongly as the circumstances permit. The comrades in foreign lands can be assured that, though the German workmen are ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... of an "embargo act" was generally expected; but many persons, who had full faith in the more than Christian patience and forbearance of our government, believed there would be no war, notwithstanding the insults heaped upon American citizens, the piratical aggressions on our commerce, and the contumely and contempt in which our government and our flag, during a series of years, had been everywhere held by British authorities, as shown in the capture of the Chesapeake, and a multitude of kindred acts, each of which, as a knowledge of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... was, before he assumed the emperorship of Britain, appointed by the Roman authorities admiral of the fleet which they had collected for the purpose of repressing the incursions of the Franks, Saxons, and other piratical tribes, who at that date (A.D. 287) ravaged the shores of ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... remember, was a little brig from the Coast of Guinea. In appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black, clipper-built about the bows, and her decks in a state of most piratical disorder. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for Struck ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... given to certain piratical rovers, of various European nations, who formerly infested the coasts of Spanish America. They were originally inoffensive settlers in Hispaniola, but were inhumanly driven from their habitations by the jealous policy of the Spaniards; whence originated their implacable hatred to that nation. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... paper and then the medium was called in, and, merely feeling of the exterior of the paper, wrote what the spirit of Veal revealed through him. Captain Harris, named in the communication, is supposed to have been the leader of the piratical band. ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... Bess." Spain not only resented this, but began to realize another need. Her galleons from the Philippines found it a long, weary, tedious and disease-provoking voyage around the coast of South America to Spain, and besides, too many hostile and piratical vessels roamed over the Pacific Sea to allow Spanish captains to sleep easy o' nights. Hence it was decided that if ports of call were established on the California coast, fresh meats and vegetables ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... Mightinesses, the Lords States General of Holland, by Charles the Second, and while it was as yet in an unquiet state, the province was a favorite resort of adventurers of all kinds, and particularly of buccaneers. These were piratical rovers of the deep, who made sad work in times of peace among the Spanish settlements and Spanish merchant ships. They took advantage of the easy access to the harbor of the Manhattoes, and of the laxity of its scarcely-organized government, to make ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... "Life of Hazlitt," and at Bournemouth a biography of Arthur, Duke of Wellington. But time and strength were lacking; nor have we R. L. S.'s mature opinion of the strategy and tactics of the victor of Assaye. The Muse of piratical enterprise returned, and "Treasure Island" reached its haven, with no applause, in the paper ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... regiment, standing at rest in the roadway, whooped at once, and entered whole-souled upon the side of the maiden. The men became so engrossed in this affair that they entirely ceased to remember their own large war. They jeered the piratical private, and called attention to various defects in his personal appearance; and they were wildly enthusiastic in support ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... of one. The boat from which he landed has deposited on the shore his effects—his arms, his nautical instruments, his charts, a Bible, and provisions of various kinds. Notwithstanding his piratical sentiments, the captain of the Swordfish has not designed to precede exile by confiscation. Selkirk takes his gun, his gourd; but, unable to carry all his riches, he conceals them behind a stony thicket, well defended by the darts of the cactus, and the ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine

... a very dark night, in the year 1883, a large brig lay becalmed on the Indian Ocean, not far from that region of the Eastern world which is associated in some minds with spices, volcanoes, coffee, and piratical junks, namely, the ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... the air on the Golden Bough from that very first day or the voyage. I was soon to learn that there was plenty of rebellious spirit forward, and shrewd, daring fellows eager to lead, because of piratical greed. Also, she was a hell-ship. It was part of a hell-ship's routine to thump the crew to the raw edge of mutiny, and ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... afraid," said Mr. Osgood, slowly, "that I am not very expert in the manufacture of noxious piratical chemicals. You will have to seek ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... Columbus found America when he was searching for the wealth of Ormus and of Ind. Cortez and Pizarro toiled and slew in the hope of finding the Madre d'Oro. The great discoveries of the world have been made by men in search of gold. The great voyages of exploration were in part piratical voyages made in search of gold already found ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... Red Tapeism which is so rampant at Burlington House, and which I am always endeavouring to expose, could not be adduced than the inability of the officials to discriminate between the accredited representative of a paper and the piratical sketcher who is taking notes for an illegitimate purpose. I need hardly say that this regulation is peculiar to the Royal Academy. At the Grosvenor Gallery, which, alas! is no more, the officials about the place understood ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... slaves who were driven through the country, and the cruelty of the slave-hunters. Were we to begin quoting from those letters, we should outrun the limits of this sketch. He had broken the neck of the piratical army of man-stealers, and their forces were scattered and comparatively powerless. So many slaves were set free that they became a serious inconvenience, as they had to be fed ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... (it might be said) how little should we gain if those frankly fatuous sheets were indeed subscribed by the man who had inspired them. Suppose that after every article stating that the Premier is a piratical Socialist there were printed the simple word "Northcliffe." What does that simple word suggest to the simple soul? To my simple soul (uninstructed otherwise) it suggests a lofty and lonely crag somewhere in ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... and 'The Escapes of Lord Pitsligo,' the editor is himself responsible, as far as they do not consist of extracts from the original sources. Miss May Kendall translated or adapted Casanova's escape and the piratical and Algerine tales. Mrs. Lang reduced the narrative of the Chevalier Johnstone, and did the escapes of Caesar Borgia, of Trenck, and Cervantes, while Miss Blackley renders that of Benvenuto Cellini. Mrs. McCunn, as already said, compiled from the sources ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... this newly stranded sloop, then—sitting high and dry, out of the reach of the summer surf,—Tod and Archie spent every hour of the day they could call their own; sallying forth on various piratical excursions, coming back laden with driftwood for a bonfire, or hugging some bottle, which was always opened with trembling, eager fingers in the inmost recesses of the Home, in the hope that some tidings of a lost ship ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... buffalo, or marching on the war-path. When they are at peace with the Indians of the Plains, which is rarely the case, they join them, and, together, with their united strength and skill, they make piratical excursions into the Settlements of the Mexicans. While out on this business, they leave their families in some secluded spot for abundant caution, placing them under the guardianship of the old men, assisted by some of the younger members of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... kinder feelings of human nature lingering in their breasts. Notwithstanding what the mate might have said Jack was allowed to keep possession of me, and our captors making signs to us to accompany them, we proceeded to their village, situated on the shores of a creek, on the bank of which several piratical proas ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... confidence in Captain Pinder. He is a good man of business, thoroughly conscientious, and accustomed to the ways of the treacherous natives of those islands. The Tiger is more heavily armed than usual, and has more than once beaten off the attacks of their piratical craft, and there is no fear of Pinder's ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... apprised of the situation. It was the intention of the mate and crew to murder him and the Captain and put the vessel about for a piratical cruise in the Indian Ocean. They were a motley gang of foreigners, low bred and capable of any crime when led by a man like the mate, fresh from a career of lawlessness on ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... traditions of laissez faire and spineless diplomacy had hitherto cost the country so dear. A definite and far-reaching Foreign Policy had at last been inaugurated. By responding rapidly and firmly to the invitation of the United States to associate herself with the stand taken against Germany's piratical submarine warfare, China has undoubtedly won for herself a new place in the world's esteem. Both in Europe and America the news of this development awakened well-understandable enthusiasm, and convinced men that the Republic at last stood ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... as it seems to me, we set foot as it were on the bridge between the middle and the final period of Shakespeare. That priceless waif of piratical salvage which we owe to the happy rapacity of a hungry publisher is of course more accurately definable as the first play of Hamlet than as the first edition of the play. And this first Hamlet, on the whole, belongs altogether ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... slaves had been sent from the Portuguese settlements in Africa into the Spanish colonies in America. In 1511, Ferdinand the Fifth, king of Spain, permitted them to be carried in great numbers. Ferdinand, however, must have been ignorant in these early times of the piratical manner in which the Portuguese had procured them. He could have known nothing of their treatment when in bondage, nor could he have viewed the few uncertain adventurous transportations of them into his dominions in the western ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... gang of out-and-out pirates at work as well. I was in hopes that the capture of that pirate brigantine by the Europa would put an end to all that kind of work, but it has not; indeed, it has scarcely made any appreciable impression upon the number of outrages of a distinctly piratical character that are being constantly reported to me. I am, of course, not now alluding to vessels that have gone temporarily missing, for they may in most cases be traced to the operations of the enemy; but I refer to those which vanish utterly, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... hills, across limestone plateaux of Northern France, through German forests, to the vales of the Carpathians. These were the first wave of the "barbarian" invasion after Rome had fallen. Behind them, further to the north and east, drifted a piratical band of roaming warriors, who for the next five centuries press and harry the boundaries of the kingdoms, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, Saxons, Danes, and Scandinavians, of whom we ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... failed to join her, as agreed upon. The story relates the manner in which the young captain, actively seconded by his shipmates, extricates his little craft from a very perilous situation, though it involves a disaster to the piratical enemy and his steamer. The conduct of the boy-commander brings up several questions of interest, upon which everybody has a right ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... of leather, wide-flaring, ending at his brawny bare knees, with wide-cut, limp leather boots flapping about his calves in ancient piratical fashion. They had flaring soles, these shoes, for walking upon the Lowland caked ooze. The uppers were useless: I rather think he wore them because they were picturesque. He was a handsome fellow, with rough-hewn features. A wide mouth, and very white, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... infinitely suggestive. Sometimes I could have pitied her, she was so greedy, so spiteful, so friendless. She always made me think of some wicked old pirate putting into a peaceful port to provision and repair his battered old hulk, obliged to live on friendly terms with the natives, but his piratical old nostrils asniff for plunder and his piratical old soul longing to be off marauding once more. When would that be? Not till the arrival in Paris of her distinguished American friends, of whom we heard a great deal. "Charming people, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... without acknowledging him in it. I shall be glad to be able to be of any use to him. Watts fellow-feeling was naturally excited in favour of the plundered inventor, he himself having all his life been exposed to the attacks of like piratical assailants. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... city of Panama. To capture this fortress, Morgan sent his vice-admiral Bradley, with four hundred men. The Spaniards were evidently warned of their approach; for hardly had the first ship flying the piratical ensign appeared at the mouth of the river, when the royal standard of Spain was hoisted above the castle, and the dull report of a shotted gun told the pirates that there was a stubborn ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... water-works, for the brook had to be dammed up, that a shallow ocean might be made, where Ben's piratical "Red Rover," with the black flag, might chase and capture Bab's smart frigate, "Queen," while the "Bounding Betsey," laden with lumber, safely sailed from Kennebunkport to Massachusetts Bay. Thorny, from his chair, was chief-engineer, and directed his gang ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... Maria—for that was the vessel's name—they found much to interest them, and the sailors treated them very kindly, in spite of their piratical appearance. What delighted them most was a monkey that belonged to the cook. He was one of the cutest, cleverest little creatures that ever parodied humanity. His owner had taught him a good many tricks, and he had taught himself even more; and both the boys felt that in ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... believe Morgan's statement to Sir T. Modyford, then Governor of Jamaica, he brought with him from Cuba reliable evidence that the Spaniards were planning an attack upon that colony (see State Papers: West Indies and Colonial Series). If the statements of his prisoners were correct, the subsequent piratical raid upon the Main had some justification. Had the Spaniards matured their plans, and pushed the attack home, it is probable that we should have lost our ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... call the Northmen mere corsairs, or even to class them with piratical states such as Cilicia of old, or Barbary in more recent times. Their invasions were rather to be regarded as an after-act of the great migration of the Germanic tribes, one of the last waves of the flood which overwhelmed the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... sense: are served, i.e. worked, mannged. Cf. Virg. Aen. 6, 302: velisque ministrat.—In ordinem. For a row, i.e. so as to form a row, cf. Z. 314: also Rit. and Doed. in loc. The northmen (Danes and Swedes) became afterwards still more famous for navigation and piratical excursions, till at length they settled down in great ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... been bound to do so. Mr. Fechter's Hamlet, a pale, woebegone Norseman with long flaxen hair, wearing a strange garb never associated with the part upon the English stage (if ever seen there at all) and making a piratical swoop upon the whole fleet of little theatrical prescriptions without meaning, or, like Dr. Johnson's celebrated friend, with only one idea in them, and that a wrong one, never could have achieved its extraordinary ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens

... to assure her. "The effects of the blow are passing rapidly. In another hour I shall hardly feel it at all. I'm afraid, Miss Forbes," he ventured to add, "that when this piratical gang is broken up, as certainly will be the case now that the English police are tackling it, you will associate our brief acquaintance with the only dark days ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... himself a brave warrior, animated with the greatest hatred against the Ostmen, who, at that period, were laying every part of Erin waste. His sword never rested in its sheath, and day and night his light gallies cruised about the coast on the watch for any piratical marauder who might turn his prow thither. One day a sail was observed on the horizon; it came nearer and nearer, and the pirate standard was distinguished waving from its mast-head. Immediately surrounded by the Irish ships, it was captured after a desperate resistance. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various

... in both instances are too well known to require to be now recited. I am satisfied had a less decisive course been adopted that the worst consequences would have resulted from it. We have seen that these checks, decisive as they were, were not sufficient to crush that piratical spirit. Many culprits brought within our limits have been condemned to suffer death, the punishment due to that atrocious crime. The decisions of upright and enlightened tribunals fall equally on all whose crimes subject them, by a fair interpretation of the law, to its censure. It ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... Sir Francis Drake, also entertained the idea of making the northwest passage. While engaged in privateering or piratical expeditions against the Spanish, Drake landed on the Isthmus of Panama, saw the Pacific for the first time, and determined to enter it by the Straits of Magellan. In 1577 he made his way through the straits, plundered the Spanish along the coast of Chili and Peru, and sailed as ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... ended my hope of compromise that I replied hotly, "That you are a dirty, piratical cur. I may have doubted your purpose at first, for I am not used to your kind, but this is so no longer. You deliberately ruined and robbed Beaucaire, in order to gain possession of these two girls. ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... islands called the Caicos, or Cayques, is situated about two degrees to the northward of St. Domingo, and is nearly the southernmost of a chain which extends up to the Bahamas. Most of the islands of this chain are uninhabited, but were formerly the resort of piratical vessels,—the reefs and shoals with which they are all surrounded afforded them protection from their larger pursuers, and the passages through this dangerous navigation being known only to the pirates who frequented them, proved an additional security. The largest ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat

... of life went on just the same around them. The hungry bass with his piratical black fin just cutting the surface, scattered the shoals of minnows, and sadly lessened their numbers. The kingfisher scooped occasionally from his perch to return with a shining morsel, and the gray heron stalked among the pools like a duck on stilts, searching ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... southern Italy than to Norway. As we approached Bergen, however, the sky became gradually overcast, and the evening brought us clouds and showers. Not far from Aalesund was the castle of Rollo, the conqueror of Normandy. All this part of the coast is Viking ground: from these fjords went forth their piratical dragons, and hither they returned, laden with booty, to rest and carouse in their strongholds. They were the buccaneers of the north in their time, bold, brave, with the virtues which belong to courage and hardihood, but coarse, cruel, and brutal. The Viking of Scandinavian song is a splendid fellow; ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... it necessary to withdraw altogether into the shade of the pseudo gipsy-tent. Miss Patty Honeywood had made such room for him that she was entirely hidden from the rest of the party by the rude drapery of the tent. By the time that Mr. Poletiss had commenced his piratical song, Miss Patty and Verdant were deep in a whispered conversation. It was she who had started the conversation, and it was about the gipsy ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... if it had taken some hidden road in order to spring out on some one unawares. There was not a single boat in the canal nor a living soul on the dykes, and the silence and solitude strengthened the impression that our course had the hidden air of a piratical incursion. On leaving the canal we entered the eastern ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... other suitable materials for ship-building—enjoying also the most splendid rivers, loughs, and harbours, so admirably adapted to the accommodation of extensive fleets, should, notwithstanding, for so many centuries, allow the piratical ravages of the Danes, and subsequently the more dangerous subversion of their independence by the Anglo-Normans, without an effort to build a navy that could cope with those invaders on that element ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... that even had there been any sunshine to make the attempt, it could never have succeeded in effecting an entrance through them. Here, from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, he dealt with all varieties of scamps and mendicants, fools and desperadoes, and all the tribe of piratical cutthroats which in those days constituted a large part of the merchant marine. Calamity, imbecility, and rascality were his constant companions in that dingy little den; and the gloomy and sooty skies without but faintly pictured ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... meet in those shadowy regions of romance where all costume novels are merged I do not know. It must be rather like the irresistible force and the immovable object. In the second place H.E. (no one could better deserve these formidable initials) was given the job of clearing Lundy Island of its piratical tenants, and I happened to have Lundy Island just opposite me as I read the book. It is not often that a reviewer has the chance of checking local colour with so little pains. And in the third place Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY informs me, on page 101, that his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various

... inch, and his chips strew the snow all about. He knows what is in there, and the mice know that he knows; hence their apparent consternation. They have rushed wildly about over the snow, and, I doubt not, have given the piratical red squirrel a piece of their minds. A few yards away the mice have a hole down into the snow, which perhaps leads to some snug den under the ground. Hither they may have been slyly removing their stores while the squirrel was at work with his ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... countrymen, to yield a weak compliance to their idolatrous practices, and the Church languished and almost died out until the reign of Olaf Trygovason (A.D. 993-A.D. 1000), who had been baptized in the Scilly Isles during a piratical expedition. The labours of the English missionaries were finally successful in the reign of Olaf the Holy (A.D. 1017-A.D. 1033), who was earnest in his efforts to further the work of the Church. It may be remarked that Norwegian Bishops were usually consecrated either in England or France, {135} ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... successful rival at Canterbury; he escapes, but in crossing the sea for Gaul, is taken by the piratical Picts, carried to Scotland, and condemned to a rigorous and lifelong slavery. Leoline and Guinessa are married, and Hengist becoming paramount in Kent, assigns to them a castle with ample domains in the Isle of Thanet; and in sailing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various

... of the sort," said Ferrers.... "And, depend upon it, the said gentlemen, at this hour of the night, unless they were on some piratical excursion—for they were cursed ruffians, those old Greek colonists—were fast asleep in ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 122. This same curiously inept criticism of the war which cost France her American provinces occurs in Voltaire's Memoirs, wherein he says, "In 1756 England made a piratical war upon France for some acres of snow." See also his Precis du ...
— Candide • Voltaire

... nomads who move with the seasons from pasture to pasture. III. Less systematic outside movements covering the tribal sphere of influence, such as journeys or voyages to remote hunting or fishing grounds, forays or piratical descents upon neighboring lands eventuating usually in conquest, expansion into border regions for occasional occupation or colonization. IV. Participation in streams of barter or commerce. V. And at a higher stage in the great currents of human intercourse, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... seeking for a north-west passage, hit upon the great estuary of the St. Lawrence, and marked out a claim for France to the possession of the area which it drained. Most effective of all were the smuggling and piratical raids into the reserved waters of West Africa and the West Indies, and later into the innermost penetralia of the Pacific Ocean, which were undertaken with rapidly increasing boldness by the navigators of all three ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... literary detectives. The whole story was given for the first time at full length in Mr. Elwin's edition of Pope, and the revelation borders upon the incredible. How Pope became for a time two men; how in one character he worked upon the wretched Curll through mysterious emissaries until the piratical bookseller undertook to publish the letters already privately printed by Pope himself; how Pope in his other character protested vehemently against the publication and disavowed all complicity in the preparations; how he set the House of Lords in motion to suppress the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... expectancy. So, a Liberal army two thousand strong was approaching? The Missourians provisioned themselves from the town and rested on their arms. The Liberal host appeared, variegated of costume, piratical of aspect.... Again a flag of truce.... "If the senores Imperialistas desired to surrender?"... "We are not Imperialists," came the reply from the fort, "and we're blessedly d-n-d if we desire to surrender."... "Then, the saints bless us, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... from the now useless German Mercantile Marine, and hastily put through a course of instruction. Schwalbe was one of these, and after less than two months' hazardous work in the capacity of Unter-leutnant found himself in command of U75, one of the "last words" of von Tirpitz's piratical fleet. ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... ringlets with hot tongs, tearing Miss Emmy's hair out by the roots, or scrubbing Miss Polly's dumpy nose with mottled soap till the little wretch screams herself into fits. The young males of the family are employed, as we have stated, in piratical ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... respect to the motive which led Hengist and Horsa to make their first descent upon the English coast. Whether they came on one of their customary piratical expeditions, or were driven on the coast accidentally by stress of weather, or were invited to come by the British king, can not now be accurately ascertained. Such parties of Anglo-Saxons had undoubtedly often landed before under somewhat similar circumstances, ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... hover over the city all day do not live in the neighbourhood. Their nests are far away upon the blue peaks; but they pass much of their time in catching fish, and in stealing from back- yards. They pay the wood and the garden swift and sudden piratical visits; and their sinister cry—pi-yoroyoro, pi-yoroyoro—sounds at intervals over the town from dawn till sundown. Most insolent of all feathered creatures they certainly are—more insolent than even their fellow-robbers, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... essay OF CANNIBALS; and left absolutely unsupported his assertion as to HAMLET, OTHELLO, and CORIOLANUS. It is necessary to produce proofs, and to look narrowly to dates. Florio's translation, though licensed in 1601, was not published till 1603, the year of the piratical publication of the First Quarto of HAMLET, in which the play lacks much of its present matter, and shows in many parts so little trace of Shakspere's spirit and versification that, even if we hold the text to ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... you don't, make one up for yourself and call it 'The Isle of Piccolo,' or something of that sort. After you've got your chorus going, introduce your villain, who should be a man with a deep bass voice and a piratical past. He's the chap who rules the roost and is going to marry the heroine to-morrow. That will ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... other—the ways; the yard behind the lattice fence became a backwater, the flapping clothes the sails of ships that took refuge there—on Mondays and Tuesdays. Even my father was symbolized with unparalleled audacity as a watchful government which had, up to the present, no inkling of our semi-piratical intentions! The cook and the housemaid, though remonstrating against the presence of Grits, were friendly confederates; likewise old Cephas, the darkey who, from my earliest memory, carried coal and wood and blacked the shoes, washed the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... conceive that there ever was a time when the United States paid a money tribute to anybody. It is even more difficult to imagine the United States paying blackmail to a set of small piratical tribes on the coast of Africa. Yet this is precisely what we once did with the Barbary powers, as they were called the States of Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, lying along the northern coast of Africa. The only excuse to be made for such action was that we merely ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... golden thing. He felt alive, jubilant, keenly in sympathy with the lure and zest of the expedition. He felt like singing, would no doubt have sung out in some wild border ballad or bit of deep sea melody with a piratical swing to it, had he not been half the time fairly breathless from the pace they ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... colonel presented the treaty and tribute from that country; Admiral ——, on his appointment to the Baltic fleet; Captain O. N., with despatches from the Red Sea, advising the destruction of the piratical armament and settlements in that quarter, as also in the Persian Gulf; Sir T. O'N., the late resident in Nepaul, to present his report of the war in that territory, and in adjacent regions—names as yet unknown in ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... astonished fowl pulled on board before they knew what had happened. The geese sheered off at once, speaking to each other in subdued tones, but in the next quarter of an hour three more ducks were added to the bag. Then a piratical craft appeared in the very thick of the peaceful convoy, opened its broadside, as it were, and engulfed a couple. There was a swirl in the water, a resounding smack made by a long scaley tail, and a third fowl went the way of the others. Beating their wings, the duck rose with loud quacks ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... invoke her aid and protection; while all the rest should arm themselves with the muskets, swords, and pistols on board, and, if possible, hold the enemy at bay till succor arrived. And scarcely had these hasty preparations been made, before the piratical schooner, which had made a wide tack outward to catch the wind, came swiftly sweeping round to their side, like a towering falcon on his prey. But, by some miscalculation of her helmsman, she went twenty yards wide ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... understood, was the occupation of ambitious men who played an occult but important part in all those national risings, religious disturbances, and also in the organized piratical movements on a large scale which, during the first half of the last century, affected the fate of more than one native dynasty and, for a few years at least, seriously endangered the Dutch rule in the East. When, at the cost of much blood and gold, a comparative ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia), the bag is large, and floats conspicuously on the surface of the water. From the top of it rises a purple crest, which acts as a sail, and by its aid the little voyager scuds gaily before the wind. But should danger threaten—should some hungry, piratical monster in quest of a dinner heave in sight, or the blast grow furious—the float is at once compressed, through two minute orifices at the extremities a portion of the air escapes, and down goes the little craft to the tranquil depths, leaving the storm or the pirate behind. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... ancestors from whom it was derived; while Lanc, though he was equally well born, took the view of the common men upon every occasion, claiming that the interests of the many were superior to the privileges of the few. In a word, Crassus, if you could imagine a free-booting Gracchus on one side, and two piratical Patricians upon the other, you would understand the effect which my companions produced ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... likely enough, Craig, who, with reckless inebriate generosity, had in turn presented it to the Oriental. Besides, Mallow was rich. What stepping-stones he had used to acquire his initial capital were not perfectly known; but Warrington had heard rumors of shady transactions and piratical exploits in the pearl zone. Mallow, rich, was Mallow disposed of, at least logically; unless indeed it was a bit of anticipatory reprisal. That might possibly be. A drunken Mallow was capable of much, for all that his knowledge of letters of credit might ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... Schleswig and Holstein; and Saxons, properly so called, who dwelt about the mouth of the Elbe and further to the west. All these peoples afterwards took part in the conquest of southern Britain, and it is not unlikely that they all shared in the original piratical attacks. Whether this was the case or not, the pirates came from creeks and inlets outside the Roman Empire, whose boundary was the Rhine, and they could therefore only be successfully repressed by a power with a good fleet, able to seek out the aggressors in their own homes and to ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... island for the purpose of repairs; and, to lighten her, the chief part of the stores was landed. Discontent still increasing amongst the crew, a new plot was laid amongst the men on shore to seize the ship, throw Phipps overboard, and start on a piratical cruize against the Spaniards in the South Seas. But it was necessary to secure the services of the chief ship carpenter, who was consequently made privy to the pilot. This man proved faithful, and at once told the captain of his danger. Summoning about him those whom he knew to be loyal, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... ports there against all foreigners. Philip personally warned Sir Thomas Chaloner, the English ambassador, that if such visits were repeated, mischief would come of it. And Cecil, who disliked all such semi-piratical enterprises, and Chaloner, who was half a Spaniard and an old companion in arms of Charles V., entreated ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... from my friend, Signor Alfieri. My Government has instructed me to arrest him, and to use every means, not stopping short of armed force, to prevent the Aphrodite from undertaking what is little else than a piratical expedition. You see, therefore, that it is not in my power, if I were so minded, to set Baron von Kerber at liberty. Compromise in any other direction would appeal to me. Where Baron von Kerber is concerned, I ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... After inflicting this punishment, he made his men again face about and march against the enemy. Spartacus, however, avoided Crassus, and made his way through Lucania to the sea, and, falling in with some Cilician piratical vessels, in the Straits, he formed a design to seize Sicily, and by throwing two thousand men into the island, to kindle again the servile war there, the flames of which had not long since been quenched, and required ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... those piratical craft would sheer off if we showed a bold front," said Tom, as the men turned down a lane on one side. "It's a great point to show an enemy that you are wide awake and not afraid of him. Mind you ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston

... Hemming, suppose Mr Thorn has been entrapped by some of those piratical fellows out there; what will become of them, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... manner Alfred repelled several inroads of these piratical Danes, and maintained his kingdom, during some years, in safety and tranquillity. A fleet of a hundred and twenty ships of war was stationed upon the coast; and being provided with warlike engines, as ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... tall rush, above which the green banks sloped back like park lands. It was all very pretty and very interesting, and would have continued so, had not Kasoro disgraced the Union Jack, turning it to piratical purposes in less ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... your mind we will, now. I didn't like the looks of the crowd a little bit. Some of these wild waterdogs along the gulf coast, they told me, wouldn't object to a little piratical business ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... was nothing for the poor beasts to eat, and they waited for us droopingly, with their heads thrust together. While we sat there three camels descended to the stream, and after them a guard with a long gun. He was a well-made man, with a brown face, keen, black eye, and piratical air, and would have made a good hero of modern romance. Higher up we came to a guard house, on a little cleared space, surrounded by beech forests. It was a rough stone hut, with a white flag planted on a pole before it, and a miniature water-wheel, running a miniature ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... gave their name to Sardinia, the Danauna, believed to be identical with the Danaoi of Homer, the Akhaivasha, perhaps the Achaeans, and the Tursha and Shakalsha, who may have been of the same stock as the piratical Lycians. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... injustice has been seldom condensed within so small a compass. From the experience, however, that I, in common with many American scientific gentlemen, have already had of the piratical conjoined with the abusive propensity of a certain class of English savans and writers, I can scarcely expect either liberality or justice from the quarter whence this falsehood has issued. But there is, fortunately, an appeal to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... Archie Armstrong Joins a Piratical Expedition and Sails Crested Seas to Cut Out the ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... all, or nearly all, the Americans taken on board piratical vessels in the West Indies and parts adjoining, are natives of New-England; and it is gravely stated as a reason, that in consequence of the immense trade between that section of the Union and those islands, and the neighboring parts of the main land, that are the chief scenes of piratical ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... face of all this, we Americans are keeping our feet on the ground. Our type of democratic civilization has outgrown the thought of feeling compelled to fight some other nation by reason of any single piratical attack on one of our ships. We are not becoming hysterical or losing our sense of proportion. Therefore, what I am thinking and saying tonight does not relate ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... those Christian powers will not run the risque of trading in their own bottoms, but rather employ as carriers the maritime nations, who are at peace with the infidels. It is for our share of this advantage, that we cultivate the piratical States of Barbary, and meanly purchase passports of them, thus acknowledging ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... old piratical sea-kings of Norway used to use!" Raed exclaimed. "It's about a thousand ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... of the atheist, he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the man at a slightly different angle of the evening light, could see his face and figure quite plain. Two facts about him stood out in the picked colours of some piratical schoolboy's story. The first was that his lean brown body was bare to the belt of his loose white trousers; the other that through hygiene, affectation, or whatever other cause, he had a scarlet handkerchief tied tightly but somewhat aslant across his brow. After these two ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... enough to have small bags filled with cartridges, and also papers with a dozen caps in each. Buck-shot and slugs are better than bullets, for the purposes of which we are speaking. Bows and arrows might render good service. The Chinese, in their junks, when they expect a piratical attack, bring up baskets filled with stones from the ballast of the ship, and put them on deck ready at hand. They throw them with great force and precision: the idea is not a bad one. Boiling water and hot sand, if ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... even a brief account of Drake's life would fill a small encyclopaedia. The story of his first ruin off Vera Cruz, of his campaign of vengeance, of his piratical voyage to the Pacific, of his doings with the California Indians, of his fight in the Armada—any one of these would fill an ordinary volume. Only that part of his life bearing on American exploration has been given here, and that ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... people looked very much alike. They were all a bit fantastic, and the scene reminded him of a fancy-dress ball where all the men represented brigands. Many of them were, or seemed to be, of truculent countenance; some wore piratical ear-rings, others had shawls wrapped about their heads as if for concealment. Any one of them might have been a brigand, for all he knew, and he saw how easy it would be for a handful of evil-intentioned persons to mingle unobserved ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... know more about that than I will, Misther North," he replied, in a voice that accorded perfectly with the burly figure and piratical beard. "Ford's ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... scale—with a view to obtaining satisfying terms of peace. The one real piece of military work taken in hand was the siege and capture of Sluys in Flanders (in conjunction with Albert of Saxony, on behalf of Maximilian); from which port much injury of a piratical order had been wrought upon English merchants. Meantime negotiations had been carried on, but with no appearance of success. At last in October the King actually crossed the Channel to take command of the army of invasion; ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... countersigned by a longer series of writers, many of them eminent for wit or learning, than were ever before congregated upon any inquest relating to any author, be he who he might, ancient [Endnote: 21] or modern, Pagan or Christian. It was a most witty saying with respect to a piratical and knavish publisher, who made a trade of insulting the memories of deceased authors by forged writings, that he was "among the new terrors of death." But in the gravest sense it may be affirmed of Shakspeare, that he is among ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... prevailed when commerce was new, when the English sailor was by turns smuggler or pirate, equally ready to sail or scuttle a ship, and to silence any tongue that might tell tales by making its wretched owner "walk the plank." Chaucer's description of the latter process is a masterpiece of piratical humor: ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... certain dog's-eared copy of the "Conquest of Granada" which once upon a time set all the boys of a certain school agog with a martial furor. How we shook our javelins at some bewildered cow blundering into the play-ground! What piratical forays we made upon the neighbors' orchards, after the manner of the brave old Muley Aben Hassan! And as for the Alhambra, the tinkle of the water in the marble basins of its court is lingering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... instead of to a pilot. I soon found out, beyond all doubt, the scope of this disaster, But I hadn't the face to return to my place, and break it to my master. A nurs'rymaid is not afraid of what you people call work, So I made up my mind to go as a kind of piratical maid- of-all-work. And that is how you find me now, a member of your shy lot, Which you wouldn't have found, had he been bound apprentice to a pilot. RUTH: Oh, pardon! Frederic, pardon! (Kneels) ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... these proceedings gradually dawned upon the tardy intellects of Communipaw. These were the times of the notorious Captain Kidd, when the American harbors were the resorts of piratical adventurers of all kinds, who, under pretext of mercantile voyages, scoured the West Indies, made plundering descents upon the Spanish Main, visited even the remote Indian Seas, and then came to dispose of their booty, have ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... of mildness, and some dim perception of a sanctity in human life. The very vice of avarice ministered to the purification of barbarism; and the very evil of slavery in its earliest form was applied to the mitigation of another evil—war conducted in the spirit of piratical outrage. The commercial instincts of men having worked one set of changes in war, a second set of changes was prompted by instincts derived from the arts of ornament and pomp. Splendor of arms, of banners, of equipages, of ceremonies, and the elaborate ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... kind, which I rather doubt, may well tremble for his sake. His chicane, his left-handed wisdom, which stood so firmly by him, to such good purpose, here, like other accomplices in robbery and plunder, will, now the piratical business is blown, in all probability turn king's evidences, and then the devil's bagpiper will touch him off ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... furious; and that the Berlin newspapers burst out in denunciations of Italy's wicked and piratical land-grabbing—a morsel of rhetoric following so hard upon the heels of the Morocco episode that it gave joy to all who delight in hearing the pot rail at the kettle. "The great game" is not without its humors. But the sardonic joke of the business lies deeper ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... fairly homogeneous in birth, speech, and institutions, was neither a nation nor a family of kindred nations, but a congeries of heterogeneous states. Some of these, like Venice and Genoa, boasted the proud title of republics; they were in reality narrow, commercial, even piratical oligarchies, destitute of any vigorous political life. The Pope, like other petty rulers, was but a temporal prince, despotic, and not even enlightened, as was the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Naples and the Milanese both groaned under the yoke of foreign ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... begins to roll she does it in earnest, but she is a fine sea boat, and I have no fear of gales. I wish I could say as much of pirates. However, she has always been fortunate, and as we carry a stout crew she could give a good account of herself against any of the small piratical vessels that swarm among the islands, although, of course, if she fell in with two or three of them ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... Gondremark had arranged his limbs into a cat-like attitude, high-shouldered, stooping, and submiss. The formidable blue jowl of the man, and the dull bilious eye, set perhaps a higher value on his evident desire to please. His face was marked by capacity, temper, and a kind of bold, piratical dishonesty which it would be calumnious to call deceit. His manners, as he smiled upon the Princess, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... kept up some little semblance of order and self-government, and seem to have shown some slight capacity for self-defence. In 1412, Waterford distinguished itself by the spirited defence of its walls against the O'Driscolls, a piratical clan of West Cork, and the following year sent a ship into the enemy's stronghold of Baltimore, whose crew seized upon the chief himself, his three brothers, his son, his uncle, and his wife, and carried them off in triumph to Waterford, a feat which the ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... Count he felt the nervous work No more than any polygamous Turk, Or bold piratical skipper, Who, during his buccaneering search, Would as soon engage a hand in church As a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... for the pleasure of knowing what he did not know before; his mind was unusually receptive because, he said, he respected the laws which governed his body. Facts were his prey. He threw himself into them with a kind of piratical ardour; took them by the throat, wallowed in them, worried them like a terrier, and finally assimilated them. They gave him food for what he liked best on earth: "disinterested thought." They "formed a rich ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... checked and blighted by the anti-Christian policy of trading Venice, the bad faith of Austria towards the Uzcoque race, and the extortions of her counsellors. Cursing in the bitterness of his heart, not only Turks, Austrians, and Venetians, but all mankind, he no longer opposed the piratical tendencies of his neglected people, and eventually headed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... is not very long since a piratical party of Chinese, shipping as steerage passengers on board one of these Hong Kong river steamers, massacred the officers and captured the boat. On board this great, white, deck-above-deck American steamer there is but one European passenger beside myself, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... this little piratical state Angria's Marathas constructed a number of forts, choosing admirable positions and displaying no small measure of engineering skill. From these strongholds they made depredations by sea and land, not only upon their native neighbors, but also upon the European traders, English, Dutch, and Portuguese; ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... to change his mind again. For bringing himself to tuck away his Indians and fetch forth Treasure Island, he was rewarded by the sight of a piratical crew who easily surpassed even the redmen. The fiercest of these pirates, a gentleman by the name of Long John Silver, was without question the pick of the lot. To begin with, Mr. Silver undoubtedly belonged to the New York ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... this Elizabeth on her side did not feel inclined or prepared. Many acts of hostility took place at sea in a piratical war, in politics they stood sharply opposed to each other: but they were not inclined on either side for an open ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... commission appointed by the Ten to prepare resolutions upon the situation. And the list of grievances now reviewed, which had occupied the Senate during the closing years of Clement's reign, was, in truth, long. Vast differences of opinion concerning the Turks and the piratical tribes who infested the shores of Italy and the uses their villainy might be made to serve; troubles at Ferrara, teasing and undignified, temporarily brought to a close by the sending of the galleys of the Republic to prevent the seizure of their fishing-boats by agents ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... continued rejection of his suit, put out to sea on one of his piratical excursions. The prize he captured on this occasion was Miss Eden's lover, his hated rival. The story goes that Blackbeard cut off one of the hands of the unfortunate captive, threw his body into the sea, and enclosing ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson

... and important subject for legislation was brought up at this time. Very soon after the close of the Revolution, the piratical practices of corsairs belonging to the Barbary powers on the southern shores of the Mediterranean sea, and particularly of Algiers, had suggested the importance of a naval establishment for the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... the cook, and Pango, the Dagoes, and the surviving Sou'wegian were for tossing him overboard; but the rest of us wouldn't have it. There was no evidence of poison, and as we'd done no killing so far in our piratical venture, we'd better keep clear of it now, with so much at stake. A court that would acquit us as soldiers of fortune that had merely borrowed a schooner might hang us as pirates and murderers; ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... you on advice received this day from Virginia, an agreeable supplement to the paper I sent yesterday. On the 9th instant, Lord Dunmore with his slavish mercenaries and stolen negroes were driven from their post on Gwin Island in Virginia, and the piratical fleet from their station near it, with the loss of one ship, two tenders or armed vessels burnt by themselves, three armed vessels taken by our people, and Lord Dunmore wounded; on our side not a man lost. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... months before. The ambassador seems to have expressed becoming indignation in the interviews he sought with the Duke of Alva, repudiating with dignity the suggestion that the blame should be laid upon Coligny, for having abused his authority as admiral to set on foot a piratical expedition into the territories of a friendly prince; and holding forth no encouragement to believe that Charles would disavow Coligny's acts. He told Alva distinctly that Menendez was a butcher rather than a good soldier ("plus digne bourreau que bon soldat," Forquevaulx ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... "London Magazine." It was his first essay in the study of German literature, which he did so much to popularise in Britain. It appeared in book form in 1825, and a second edition was published in 1845 in order to prevent piratical reprints. In his introduction to the second edition, Carlyle pleads for the indulgence of the reader, asking him to remember constantly that "it was written twenty years ago." It has indeed been superseded by more temperate studies of Schiller, but its tone ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... and Pamphylia, and had numerous fleets. Not confining their depredations to the sea, they plundered the coasts of Italy, and stopped the grain-ships on which Rome depended for food. Pompeius undertook to exterminate this piratical community. By the Gabinian Law, he was clothed with more power than had ever been committed to an individual. He was to have absolute command over the Mediterranean and its coasts for fifty miles ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... despatched two hundred ships and eight thousand men to plunder the sea-coast of Calabria and Apulia: they assaulted the ancient city of Tarentum, interrupted the trade and agriculture of a happy country, and sailed back to the Hellespont, proud of their piratical victory over a people whom they still presumed to consider as their Roman brethren. [46] Their retreat was possibly hastened by the activity of Theodoric; Italy was covered by a fleet of a thousand light vessels, [47] which he constructed with incredible despatch; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... this port to the English to be punished. After we had written the aforesaid letter to the king he answered us that since English vessels had come to China, they should be commanded to go away immediately to Luzon, for fear that they had come for piratical purposes; and that they should carry word to the inhabitants of Luzon not to give credit to a deceitful and lying set of Chinese, He also commanded the two Sangleys who had piloted the English to be immediately executed. As for the other things that we had written to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... succeeded both in liberating many of his countrymen who were held as prisoners, and in perfecting treaties with the rulers of the Barbary States, which gave United States vessels entrance to their ports and secured them from piratical attacks. On his return to Paris he translated Volney's 'Ruins' into English, made preparations for writing histories of the American and French revolutions, and expanded his 'Vision of Columbus' into a volume which as 'The Columbiad'—a beautiful specimen of typography—was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... unworthy association of ideas? The puzzle is rendered more perplexing still by the fact that Shakespeare took no pains to enlighten posterity as to the identity of the youth he praises, or even to supervise the publication of the sonnets. Thorpe's piratical edition was full of misprints, but Shakespeare, so far as we know, took no notice of it, and made no attempt, by giving the world a correct and authentic version, to secure what his verses declare him to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... a vote of thanks from Congress for the skill and gallantry exhibited by him in the brilliant action whilst in command of the United States steamer Keaysarge, which led to the total destruction of the piratical craft Alabama, on the 19th of June, 1864., a vessel superior in tonnage, superior in number of guns, and superior in number ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... North America. Traces of them have been found on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and some claim that they founded settlements farther south. They figure largely in the early history of England and Scotland, and even carried their piratical arms into Russia, Flanders, France, ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... as they nicknamed him, did indeed have a piratical look, as John had said. He stood more than six and a half feet in his moccasins, and was straight as an arrow, with the waist of a boy. His face was dark, his eyebrows very heavy and black, and his dark, full beard, his scant trousers held up with a brilliant ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough

... Crescent City, should utilize their knowledge to take ships and cargoes in and out without the formality of a custom-house examination? Such were the times that led to the formation and growth of the "piratical" colony of Barataria. Its leaders and rulers were John and Pierre Lafitte; one of whom lived in New Orleans in the character of a prosperous merchant, while the other led the expeditions which brought ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... the combat, and if the Pride of Devon had not given chase it was probably because she was by then in no case to do so. The other had been sunk, but not before the English ship had transferred to her own hold a good deal of the treasure aboard the Spaniard. It was, in fact, one of those piratical affrays which were a perpetual source of trouble between the courts of St. James's and the Escurial, complaints emanating now from one and now from ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... captain now took a boat, and four men, and pulled ashore, to get prows, to lighten the vessel. We had but eight men before the mast, and six aft. This, of course, left only nine souls on board. That night nothing occurred; but, in the morning early, two piratical prows approached, and showed a disposition to board us. Mr. Croes was the person who saved the ship. He stuck up handspikes, and other objects, about deck; putting hats and caps on them, so as to make us appear very strong-handed. At the same time, we ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... hurried breath and hurried feet, Mr Pancks rushed into Arthur Clennam's Counting-house. The Inquest was over, the letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical ship had blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates, and boats of all sizes; and on the deep was nothing but ruin; nothing but burning hulls, bursting magazines, great guns self-exploded tearing friends ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... of her!" She was almost frightened at this new spirit that had come to her, and, feeling rather that in another moment she would be punished for her piratical audacity, she turned up the ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole



Words linked to "Piratical" :   pirate, piracy



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