The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman in permanent additions to the English lexicon; within the text of "Tristram Shandy" Sterne describes the novel as "Shandean," coining a term which still carries the meaning that Sterne originally attached to it when he wrote, "I write a careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good humoured "Shandean" book..." Strongly influenced by Cervantes' "Don Quixote", Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" also gave rise to the term "cervantic," (which Sterne at the time spelled "cervantick"). In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, Ignatius Sancho wrote to Laurence Sterne encouraging the writer to use his pen to lobby for the abolition
USS Tristram Shandy (1864) closed the disabled blockade runner to destroy her before she could be salvaged by Southern forces. Commencing fire with her Parrott rifle and her 3-pounders, the Union gunboat soon reduced the grounded runner to a blazing wreck, down by the bow and sinking from numerous hits. Meanwhile, Confederate batteries opened fire on the gunboat, and several Southern shells splashed close alongside. Through skillful maneuvering by her commanding officer, "Tristram Shandy" emerged unscathed, as she kept behind the clouds of smoke from her own guns and thus confused the Confederate lookouts spotting for the fort's heavy rifles. On Christmas Eve, in