great guns

The wind was blowing great guns, and although dories are not notorious for their pace we made good time, and covered some ten miles in a short space of time.

1904, Charles Robert Eustace Radclyffe, Big Game Shooting in Alaska, page 201

People are often struck by the strange fact that in one portion of Cape Town a south-easter may be blowing great guns, and in another not a breath of wind, or perhaps a slight one from the opposite point[…]

1906, English Mechanic and Mirror of Science and Art, page 462

The engine was running great guns, but we weren't progressing. Wright came up and sat down beside me.

1912, George Fitch, My Demon Motor Boat, page 53

Since The Da Vinci Code was selling great guns already by the time my book Lost Christianities appeared, my publicist at Oxford University Press, Tara Kennedy, along with my longtime editor and friend, Robert Miller, suggested that I come up with a list of historical problems with the book, so that they could give these to our marketing people […]

2006 May 18, Bart D. Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine, Oxford University Press, →ISBN

[…]I had to be rescued when found swimming great guns in the direction of Ceylon.

2014 November 1, Christian Lamb, Cruising Along: Around the World in Eighty Years, Bene Factum Publishing, →ISBN