- published: 12 Oct 2014
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A ferry (or ferryboat) is a boat or ship (a merchant vessel) used to carry (or ferry) primarily passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo as well, across a body of water. Most ferries operate on regular, frequent, return services. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi.
Ferries form a part of the public transport systems of many waterside cities and islands, allowing direct transit between points at a capital cost much lower than bridges or tunnels. However, ship connections of much larger distances (such as over long distances in water bodies like the Mediterranean Sea) may also be called ferry services, especially if they carry vehicles.
The profession of the ferryman is embodied in Greek mythology in Charon, the boatman who transported souls across the River Styx to the Underworld.
Speculation that a pair of oxen propelled a ship having a water wheel can be found in 4th century Roman literature "Anonymus De Rebus Bellicis". Though impractical, there is no reason why it could not work and such a ferry, modified by using horses, was used in Lake Champlain in 19th-century America. See "When Horses Walked on Water: Horse-Powered Ferries in Nineteenth-Century America" (Smithsonian Institution Press; Kevin Crisman, co-authored with Arthur Cohn, Executive Director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum). See Experiment (horse powered boat).
I've shovelled through dust to find you To the point I heard the sound of your mind Memories displayed a secret gallery Cargo on an unmanned freight-train
You tell me the earth is a womb Forging fake centuries Plugging the entrance to a new world Thriving in the realm of your chest
A chromium sun gleams in your eyes Like a hatched-out horizon it bleaches the skies The glowing behemoth came back from somewhere And its chromium chest it breathes
Your skin is a barrier to another world Centuries gone, just came back Music in a silent universe Ancient echoes from pre-historic birds
The desert monument stuttered "Real and dry, hurt and scrape" The hollow moment, battered Is now wiped clean from the sky