Betty B.
speaker
3,598 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 2 Jul
Betty B.’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
and if these please the reader, I shall be amply repaid.
A MODERN COLUMBUS I feel that I am the modern Columbus, at the end of the fifteenth century,
the great genoese started west across the atlantic and discovered america in the youth of the twentieth century i am starting across the atlantic to discover the new world of europe columbus had a fleet of three little vessels his flagship the santa maria was only ninety feet long and twenty feet wide and its displacement was about thirty-five tons my ship is the majestic the biggest boat that has plowed the sea since god divided the waters
It is more than double the length of the Ark of Old Noah and thrice its depth from the hurricane deck to the keel.
It is just about 1,700 times the size of the flagship of Columbus.
To be exact, it has 56,000 gross tonnage, is 956 feet long, 100 feet wide, and a little more than 100 feet deep.
But figures mean nothing except to an Einstein, an Isaac Newton, or a Humphrey Davy.
let me give you some concrete comparisons take the woolworth building in lower new york let the genie who moved aladdin's palace in the wink of an eye lift it up and lay it lengthwise beside us out here in mid-ocean the majestic is almost two hundred feet longer and its cubic contents are i should say greater when the central park obelisk was brought from egypt to new york it filled the steamer on which it was carried you could put the washington monument
the greatest of all obelisks on the deck of the majestic and there would still be two hundred feet between its aluminum tip and the prow and a like distance from its base to the stern noah's ark estimating the cubit at eighteen inches was four hundred and fifty feet long seventy-five feet wide and the bible says it had only three stories this flagship of mine has nine decks and if a ten-story apartment house could be built on its keel
the roof would not reach the base of the smokestacks.
Two such arcs could be laid lengthwise inside the majestic, and there would still be three decks above and three decks below.
The captain tells me it takes a nine-mile walk to see all of the ship.
I am sure he is right, for I make a Sabbath day's journey every time I go from my room to my meals.
Just an item or so to emphasize these dimensions.
Take a look at the great anchors which are dropped to steady the ship in the harbors.
Beside them the anchors of Columbus's ships were fish-hooks.
Indeed, the majestic anchors might serve as fish-hooks for the gods, the lines being cables of wrought steel, each link of which could encircle a Georgia melon.
The majestic has one anchor at each side of her prow, and a third, the largest of all, sticks right out of the nose of the ship.
Their total weight is thirty-five tons, and their stems are twice the thickness of a telegraph pole.
in order to show you their size i have had myself photographed standing on the biggest one it is so heavy that it would take thirty horses to haul it over the road i am out in the open on the prow of the ship hanging as it were in the air higher above the keel than the roof of a six-story building forty feet below the hurricane deck and sixty feet above the level of the blue sea below i am not a human fly and i will leave it to your imagination as to how the picture was taken
Showing 21–40 of 3,598 · page 2 of 180
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