Quotes / Wooden Ships and Iron Men

If the contractors, for example, were no longer permitted to ply some practices peculiar to their tribe everywhere, such as providing shoddy cloth, rations not sound, or false in the measure, not the less impressment, for one thing, went on... Its abrogation would have crippled the indispensable fleet, one wholly under canvas, no steam-power, its innumerable sails and thousands of cannon, everything in short, worked by muscle alone...

—Billy Budd

A British tar is a soaring soul,
As free as a mountain bird,
His energetic fist should be ready to resist
A dictatorial word.

His nose should pant,
And his lip should curl,
His cheeks should flame,
And his brow should furl,
His bosom should heave,
And his heart should glow,
And his fist be ever ready for a knock-down blow.

His nose should pant,
And his lip should curl,
His cheeks should flame,
And his brow should furl,
His bosom should heave,
And his heart should glow,
And his fist be ever ready for a knock-down blow.

His eyes should flash with an inborn fire,
His brow with scorn be wrung;
He never should bow down
to a domineering frown,
Or the tang of a tyrant tongue.

His foot should stamp,
And his throat should growl,
His hair should twirl,
And his face should scowl;
His eyes should flash,
And his breast protrude,
And this should be his customary attitude.

—"A British Tar", H.M.S. Pinafore

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