David Grann

had helped to secure his son a position in the squadron, noting that there would be “both action and good fortune to those who survived.”

in short they are so very bad, that I don’t know how to describe it

At least of those whose eyes are in their hearts.

To “turn a blind eye” became a popular expression after Vice-Admiral Nelson deliberately placed his telescope against his blind eye to ignore his superior’s signal flag to retreat.

a walk up Ladder Lane, and down Hemp Street

Byron confronted an inescapable truth of the wooden world: each man’s life depended on the performance of the others.

The first medical textbook for sea surgeons, published in 1617, warned that plagues were God’s way of cutting “sinners from off the Earth.”

a sail was a sail, a rudder a rudder

A report summarizing the results of the study noted that the volunteers were shocked at “how thin their moral and social veneers seemed to be.”

to defect from the defectors.