British Fleet

Famous quotes containing the words british and/or fleet:

    The British are a self-distrustful, diffident people, agreeing with alacrity that they are neither successful nor clever, and only modestly claiming that they have a keener sense of humour, more robust common sense, and greater staying power as a nation than all the rest of the world put together.
    —Quoted in Fourth Leaders from the Times (1950)

    On the middle of that quiet floor
    sits a fleet of small black ships,
    square-rigged, sails furled, motionless,
    their spars like burned matchsticks.
    Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)