take ship

idiomatic phrase

: to set out on a voyage by ship

… he spoke freely of his intention to start shortly for Liverpool and take ship for America.

—George Eliot

… where they built a canoe, paddled down the muddy Mississippi between unending reaches of lonely marsh and forest, and from New Orleans took ship to Virginia.

—Theodore Roosevelt

The idea of taking ship and heading off into the blue is, after all, a central part of the mythology of being English.

—Jonathan Raban

Word History

First Known Use

1530, in the meaning defined above