In The Heart Of The Sea： Preface _ Part3

Source

For more than a century, the headquarters of this global oil business had been a little island called Nantucket, twenty-four miles off the coast of southern New England. One of the defining paradoxes of Nantucket’s whalemen was that many of them were Quakers, a religious sect stoically dedicated to pacifism, at least when it came to the human race. Combining rigid self-control with an almost holy sense of mission, these were what Herman Melville would call “Quakers with a vengeance.”

headquarters n. 總部
Nantucket n. 南塔克特
miles n. 英里 ( 1mi= 1.609344km )
off prep. (距)離
Quakers n. 貴格會 ( 基督教的一個教派 )
the defining paradoxes n. 決定性的悖論( 矛盾理論 )
sect n. 教派
stoically adv. 堅忍
stoic n. 斯多葛主義
dedicated to ph. 致力於
pacifism n. 和平主義
race n, 種族
the human race ph. 人族
rigid adj. 嚴格的
self-control ph. 自制力
holy adj. 神聖的
sense of mission ph. 使命感
Herman Melville n. 赫爾曼.梅爾維爾 ( 作者 )
vengeance n, 復仇

It was a Nantucket whaleship, the Dauphin, just a few months into what would be a three-year voyage, that was making her way up the Chilean coast. And on that February morning in 1821, the lookout saw something unusual—a boat, impossibly small for the open sea, bobbing on the swells. The ship’s captain, the thirty-seven-year-old Zimri Coffin, trained his spyglass on the mysterious craft with keen curiosity.

Dauphin n. 多分(人名)voyage n. 航程
way up ph. 一路攀升
lookout ph. 抬頭
the open sea n. 大海
bobbing v. 漂泊
swells n. 浪頭
spyglass n. 望遠鏡
craft n. 船隻
keen adj. 敏銳的