take shipping

take shipping (third-person singular simple present takes shipping, present participle taking shipping, simple past took shipping, past participle taken shipping)

1. (archaic) To embark on a ship.
   • 1569, Richard Grafton, A Chronicle at Large, London: Richard Tottle and Humphrey Toye, “Henrie the thirde,” p. 140,

     […] dyuerse noble men of the land, which helde against those statutes, were ridden toward Douer, and there entended to haue taken shipping for feare of the Barons

   • 1639, Thomas Fuller, The History of the Holy War‎, Cambridge: Thomas Buck, Book 2, Chapter 28, p. 80:

     […] at last, finding that those who marched through the continent met with an ocean of miserie, he thought better to trust the wind and sea then the Greeks; and taking shipping safely arrived in Palestine […]

   • 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “A Great Storm Described, the Long-Boat Sent to Fetch Water, the Author Goes with It to Discover the Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part II (A Voyage to Brobdingnag), pages 149-150:

     […] I again left my native Country, and took shipping in the Downs on the 20th Day of June 1702.

   • 1818, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Lackington et al., Volume 3, Chapter 1, pp. 13-14,

     We had agreed to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasburgh to Rotterdam, whence we might take shipping for London.

   • 1869, Mark Twain, chapter 47, in The Innocents Abroad‎, Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, pages 495–496:

     […] the pilgrim enthusiasts of our party […] could scarcely eat, so anxious were they to “take shipping” and sail in very person upon the waters that had borne the vessels of the Apostles.