A crane, often working in pairs and usually made of steel, used to lower lifeboats or dinghies over the side of a ship; less commonly, a spar used on board of ships, as a crane to hoist the flukes of the anchor to the top of the bow, without injuring the sides of the ship.
‘Would you like some more? You’ll have it!
Affidavit, David, davit.’
– Gerard Nolst Trenité, The Chaos
“I have seen that girl on the deck, and I like the cut of her jib. I like the way she walks. Her independence suits me.” – Robert Barr, A Woman Intervenes (1896)
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.
– John Masefield
‘Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.
Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward,
Then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers.
And you, vast sea, sleepless mother,
Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream,
Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade,
And then shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.’
– Gibran. K. 1923. De Profeet [The Prophet] Den Haag, The Netherlands: Mirananda (2000) p. 7
“With this idea, being a man with long experience of the sea (and they certainly have a great advantage over other men in any sort of task) […].”
– Garcilaso de la Vega
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