R.M. Ballantyne
"Man on the Ocean"
Chapter One.
Treats of Ships in General.
There is, perhaps, no contrivance in the wide world more wonderful than a ship—a full-rigged, well-manned, gigantic ship!
Those who regard familiar objects in art and nature as mere matters of course, and do not trouble themselves to wander out of the beaten track of everyday thought, may not at first feel the force or admit the truth of this statement. Let such folk endeavour to shake themselves vigorously out of this beaten track of everyday thought. Let them knit their brows and clench their teeth, and gaze steadfastly into the fire, or up at the sky, and try to realise what is involved in the idea of—a ship.
What would the men of old have said, if you had told them that you intended to take yonder large wooden house, launch it upon the sea, and proceed in it out of sight of land for a few days? “Poor fellow,” they would have replied, “you are mad!” Ah! many a wise philosopher has been deemed mad, not only by men of old, but by men of modern days. This “mad” idea has long since been fulfilled; for what is a ship but a wooden house made to float upon the sea, and sail with its inmates hither and thither, at the will of the guiding spirit, over a trackless unstable ocean for months together? It is a self-sustaining movable hotel upon the sea. It is an oasis in the desert of waters, so skilfully contrived as to be capable of advancing against wind and tide, and of outliving the wildest storms—the bitterest fury of winds and waves. It is the residence of a community, whose country for the time being is the ocean; or, as in the case of the Great Eastern steamship, it is a town with some thousands of inhabitants launched upon the deep.
Ships are, as it were, the electric sparks of the world, by means of which the superabundance of different countries is carried forth to fill, reciprocally, the voids in each. They are not only the media of intercourse between the various families of the human race, whereby our shores are enriched with the produce of other lands, but they are the bearers of inestimable treasures of knowledge from clime to clime, and of gospel light to the uttermost ends of the earth.