What is "sternsheets"

Usage examples of "sternsheets".

Clad only in a haltered pair of white, very short shorts, he seemed entirely unaffected by the heat or anything else, bouncing incessantly up and down on the sternsheets and having to be rescued from falling overboard a dozen times a minute.

Even as Farnholme peered through the heavy rain, he could see the flurry of white foam as someone in the sternsheets gave an order and the oars dug into the sea, back-watering strongly until the boat came to a stop and lay silently, without moving, a half-seen blur in the darkness.

He could hear the man in the sternsheets giving an order, could see the rowers starting to pull strongly again.

One man alone seemed indifferent: he was sitting in the sternsheets, facing the tanker, a forearm across his eyes to ward off the glare of the searchlight.

Nicolson looked closely at the man in the sternsheets: he could see now that it was no cap that the man was wearing on his head but a rough bandage, stained and saturated with blood: and then he saw something else, too, the stiff and unnatural position of the right arm.

Nicolson, sitting in the sternsheets with the tiller in his hand, looked slowly round the people in the boat, took in their condition and lifeless inertia and tightened his lips.

But if Nicolson reached out a hand to touch or catch him he would fling himself against Miss Drachmann, who sat on the starboard side of the sternsheets, entwine one chubby hand in the shining black hair, often with a force that brought a wince and an involuntary 'ouch' from the girl, twist his head round and regard him gravely through the spread fingers of his left hand.

Nicolson's mouth was only a white gash in his face and his eyes were gazing at the sternsheets where Peter and Miss Drachmann were playing together, laughing at each other, the girl as if she hadn't a care in the world.

For a second time they stiffened into immobility, brought up short by the savage jerk of some invisible hand, then they began to move again, slowly, this time, very slowly, pivoting forward with an almost ponderous deliberation on rooted, lifeless legs: Nicolson's torch had switched off and the crash of Farnholme's carbine was only an echoing memory as they fell on their faces, one full length into the water, the other jack-knifing heavily over the gunwale of the lifeboat and crashing on to the sternsheets, the sound of his falling lost in a flat explosive crack and sheet of blinding white as the grenade exploded in his hand.

It lasted for ten hours, ten interminable hours of wind and darkness and rain strangely cold, then interminable hours of yawing and pitching while the exhausted boat's company baled for their lives all night long as pooping seas swept over the sternsheets and swirled over the sides and water gushed continuously through the jury patches in the bottom of the lifeboat -- the supply of wooden plugs in the repair outfit hadn't gone very far.

He was still sleeping peacefully in the sternsheets beside him, wrapped in a blanket, his face only a white blur in the darkness, his head lying pillowed in the crook of Gudrun Drach-mann's arm.

It was McKinnon who noticed it first, noticed it and knew what it meant, and he sat bolt upright in the sternsheets, blinking at first in the sea-mirrored glare of the sun, then searching the horizon from north to east.

He heard the murmur of Peter's voice behind him and when he turned round the little boy was standing up in the sternsheets, looking at the Japanese officer through the lattice screen of his crossed fingers, not particularly afraid, just shy and wondering, and again Nicolson felt the bitterness and the angry despair flood over him almost like a physical tide.

Hornblower could see Soames standing up in the sternsheets looking at the death which was cleaving the blue water towards him.

Standing up precariously in the swaying sternsheets, Hornblower could still see nothing of the galley's poop deck save for the tops of two heads, belonging, it was clear, to the men at the tiller.