The Honourable Company of Master Mariners is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Company was formed in 1926; it was made a Livery Company by the City of London in 1932, making it the first new Livery Company to be formed in over a century. While the other Livery Companies are entitled to the style Worshipful, the Master Mariners are styled Honourable, King George V having granted them that honour in 1928.
The Company aids nautical schools and promotes nautical research. It ranks seventy-eighth in the order of precedence for Livery Companies. Its motto is Loyalty and Service.
The Honourable Company of Master Mariners has a headquarters ship, HQS Wellington, moored on the Thames at Victoria Embankment.
Famous quotes containing the words honourable, company, master and/or mariners:
“We mustn’t complain too much of being comedians—it’s an honourable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed—that’s all. We are bad comedians, we aren’t bad men.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“These temples grew as grows the grass;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o’er him planned.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ye Mariners of England
That guard our native seas!
Whose flag has braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze!”
—Thomas Campbell (1774–1844)