Leave (sailing ship) without wind

Usage examples of becalm.

The Rift was quiet now, the wind strangely becalmed, the stench of underworld metals rising in its place.

At last we were able to escape those waters and found ourselves becalmed and alone.

We landed here for water, as we have just lain becalmed off a damned island full of ghost snakes and walking statues.

The remaining 117 men were probably becalmed, in their barques and canoas, some miles from the vanguard.

Jasper looked up at Hannah and gave her a small smile, his tiny obsidian eyes expressing a much becalmed disposition.

Now that the Hebrian trade had started up again, ships that had lain becalmed beyond the curve of the horizon were working in under all the canvas they could bear.

He has murdered our weather-worker and left us becalmed, thinking perhaps that will be enough.

The assistant to the surgeon-superintendent, whether at the behest of his master or by his own decision, came to conclude that the becalming of the vessel and the invasion of the pestilence from the cracks and the bilges, which had in itself a biblical connotation as if one of the plagues upon Egypt, had come about because of the blasphemy of the whores on board.

It was like being in the Doldrums, that area of no wind near the Equator, where sailing ships are becalmed for days and weeks, waiting for the tiniest breeze to pipe up, fill their canvas and drive them onward.

That very night we lost a man overboard, but it was not until some weeks later, after we had been becalmed for ten days or more, that we fell in with the gale which reduced us to the wrecked state in which you found us.

He surrendered his grasp of both rudder and mainsheet, becalming the sloop as he freed his hands for his twin, who backed away as Jesse reached for him.

The dense forest of West Country Marre pine cut the wind into innocuous puffs that soughed through the needle-laden branches, causing them to dip and sway like the wavelets of a becalmed sea.

Leopard was almost becalmed, while on the crest the full force of the wind struck her, threatening to tear her sails from their boltropes or to carry away her masts: even worse, she lost some of her way at the bottom, whereas she needed all her speed to outrun the following seas, for if they were to overtake her she would be pooped, smothered in a mass of breaking water.

Jack altered course to bring the wind from right aft to near enough her quarter for the crossjack not to becalm the maincourse: she gathered way at once.

Out on the river, in a sea of blackness, the running lights of powerboats shone red and green, motionless on the becalmed waters.