A floating cathedral

Nowadays you have no notion of what a sailing ship was like in the forties; people who travel P.O.S.H in a steam packet can’t imagine, for one thing, the hellish continual din of a wooden vessel – the incessant creaking and groaning of timber and cordage, like a fiend’s orchestra playing the same discordant notes, regular as clockwork, each time she rolled. And, by God, they rolled, far worse than iron boats, bucketing up and down, and stinking, too, with the musty stale smell of a floating cathedral, and the bilges plashing like a giant’s innards.

Flash For Freedom!, p.49, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,sailing ship, wooden vessel.