Mediterranean three-master

Usage examples of xebec.

I have the honour to acquaint you, that the sloop I have the honour to command, after a mutual chase and a warm action, has captured a Spanish xebec frigate of 32 guns, 22 long twelve-pounders, 8 nines, and 2 heavy carronades, viz, the Cacafuego, commanded by Don Martin de Langara, manned by 319 officers, seamen and marines.

A mysterious further delight was promised for the next day, and the victims were discussing various schemes of escape as they sat on the hotel terrace, eating a splendid English breakfast and gazmg out over the harbour when Jack saw a xebec with an extraordinary press of sail come tearing in, weave through the moored shipping and race up to the landing-place.

To his left lay the merchantmen: scores and, indeed, hundreds of feluccas, tartans, xebecs, pinks, polacres, polacre-settees, houarios and barca-longas - all the Mediterranean rigs and plenty from the northern seas as well - bean-cods, cats, herring-busses.

The green xebec whose figurehead was Astarte, goddess of sexual love, tacked slowly into the Grand Harbour.

He thought of men he knew, junior to him but with better luck or better interest, who were now lieutenants in command of brigs or cutters, or who had even been promoted master and commander: and all of them snapping up trabacaloes in the Adriatic, tartans in the Gulf Of Lions, xebecs and settees along the whole of the Spanish coast.

The East India convoy, under sail, was being attacked by at least a score of xebecs and galleys, while smallcraft crammed with Moors waited to board any disabled merchantman.

The convoy, escorted only by a sixteen-gun brig-sloop, had formed in something of a line and it was protecting itself moderately well against the xebecs, powerfully armed though they were.

Those xebecs that could spread their huge lateens on either side, in hare's ears, and raced away at close on fifteen knots southward home to Sallee, where with their slight draught they could lie safely inside the bar.

There were some stragglers, wounded xebecs and such, but there was no point in chasing them: they were useless as prizes and in any case there were more important things to do, such as succouring the ship on fire.

Now moving northward up the islands, there are at least half a dozen small yards building cutters, xebecs and brigs, obviously intended for privateering: yet recently work has almost stopped for want of funds and material.

They drew in with the land - a fine topgallant breeze on the larboard quarter - and presently the sea grew more and more populated with feluccas, trabaccaloes, merchantmen of various rigs and sizes making for the Bocche di Cattaro or emerging from the splendid great harbour, and with fishermen, some in fast xebecs with twenty-foot-long trolling rods out on either side, like the antennae of some enormous insect.

A letter requiring him to recall his caravan and load the treasure aboard one of the Dey's xebecs at Arzila, just south and west of Tangier: the xebec was already on its way and the captain's orders were to receive the treasure and repass the Strait by night with the strong eastward current and a favourable wind, steering for Durazzo with the utmost press of sail - it is the fastest xebec in all Barbary.

Those xebecs that could spread their huge lateens on either side, in hare’s ears, and raced away at close on fifteen knots southward home to Sallee, where with their slight draught they could lie safely inside the bar.

A letter requiring him to recall his caravan and load the treasure aboard one of the Dey’s xebecs at Arzila, just south and west of Tangier: the xebec was already on its way and the captain’s orders were to receive the treasure and repass the Strait by night with the strong eastward current and a favourable wind, steering for Durazzo with the utmost press of sail - it is the fastest xebec in all Barbary.

A number of swarthy Moors appeared on the decks of the xebecs and gazed down at them, and one or two shouted remarks to them.