“Perhaps my reader, who has never been at sea, may picture the delight with which the officers, rising from their heated cabins, would behold such a scene as the one I have attempted to describe; the men with their breasts applied to the capstan-bar, heaving up the anchor to the mirth-inspiring sounds of the merry flute and fiddle; their hearts bounding wildly in their bosoms with all the pride and joyousness of a sailor, as they turned their eyes aloft, to behold spar above spar distend its bleached canvass freely to the breeze, with many an indignant flutter, like a young blood-horse champing at the bit.”
[The Port Admiral: A Tale of the War, Vol.1, Neale, 1833]