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Silver Melville
Diddy Shovel is the Killick-Claw harbormaster. A large, powerful man even in his older years, Diddy started a club in his 20s for men who were strong enough to hang from a beam by one pinky finger. He went to sea when he was still a teenager—on family members’ fishing boats—and later served in the Merchant Navy during World War II.
Diddy Shovel Quotes in The Shipping News
The The Shipping News quotes below are all either spoken by Diddy Shovel or refer to Diddy Shovel. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 9: The Mooring Hitch Quotes
“The way Jack carried on. Shocking. Thought if Dennis was a carpenter he’d be safe ashore. He was afraid, you see, afraid for him. And what we fear we often rage against. And Jack was right. See, he knows the sea has its mark on all Buggits.
“In due course, we had one of our winter storms. As the bad luck would have it the Polar Grinder as caught out. About two hundred miles east of St. John’s. February storm, savage as they come. Cold, forty-foot seas, hurricane-force wind roaring at fifty knots. Have you been at sea in a storm, Mr. Quoyle?”
“No,” said Quoyle. “And don’t want to be.”
“It never leaves you. You never hear the wind after that without you remember that banshee moa, remember the watery mountains, crests torn into foam, the poor ship groaning.”
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"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Diddy Shovel Character Timeline in The Shipping News
The timeline below shows where the character Diddy Shovel appears in The Shipping News. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 9: The Mooring Hitch
Quoyle makes his way down Wharf Road and into the office of harbormaster Diddy Shovel. When Quoyle asks for the shipping news, Shovel hands him a notebook listing arrivals and...
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Over their hot tea, Shovel tells Quoyle about his life at sea—he started on his uncle’s boat at 13 and...
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Shovel tells Quoyle that the Polar Grinder is what came between Jack and Dennis Buggit. Jack...
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The telephone pulls Shovel away from Quoyle, and when Shovel hangs up, he excuses himself to attend to business....
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Chapter 10: The Voyage of Nutbeem
...if Nutbeem knows more about Dennis and the Polar Grinder. Nutbeem quickly realizes that Diddy Shovel left out the best part. Dennis wasn’t among the men picked up in the immediate...
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Chapter 13: The Dutch Cringle
Diddy Shovel calls the Gammy Bird office to tell Quoyle that there’s an interesting ship—one that reportedly...
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Chapter 29: Alvin Yark
...Pretty calls to remind him to order a boat from Alvin Yark. Quoyle calls Diddy Shovel and learns that the smoldering boat is a cargo ship called the Rome.
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