What is "able seamen"

Usage examples of "able seamen".

In fact, there were only three of the able seamen of the Bounty's company, John Smith, Thomas Hall, and Robert Lamb, who had not been of Christian's party.

Now all the broadside guns would be handled only by their captains, who were chosen because they were steady able seamen.

The men sent with him in the brig consisted of two able seamen, and three of the gang which had been collected from the gaols and brought round from the eastward.

He was one of those able seamen who, in a watch, are a perfect blessing to a young officer.

The tight, well knit community of some two hundred men was about to fall apart, and he reflected upon the pity of it, the waste - a hand-picked crew of able seamen, many of whom had sailed with him for years and some, like his coxswain, his steward, and four of his bargemen, ever since his first command - they were used to one another, used to their officers - a ship's company in which punishment was extremely rare and where discipline did not have to be imposed since it came naturally - while for gunnery and seamanship he did not know their equal - and this invaluable body of men was to be dispersed among a score of ships or even, in the case of the officers, thrown on shore .

A crew of able seamen or even of ordinary seamen was not formed in a few months.

He had a hundred and twenty new hands, nearly all of them able seamen —.

And able seamen every one of them, men who can hand, reef, and steer.

This he did, and every day almost he brought off a man, and all he did bring off were good able seamen.

And generally the oldest of the able seamen in a ship's crew does get it.

He could also have thanked them for a strong crew of able seamen and an entirely professional set of officers- Mowett and Rowan might be given to verse in the gunroom, but they were all hard tough driving prose on deck in an emergency.

Not only had Pullings brought back seven cross but able seamen from the Lord Mornington, but Scriven's poster had induced five youths from Salisbury to come aboard 'to ask for details'.

So with a tranquil conscience and that fatalism which sailors must acquire if they are not to perish of frustration, he rejoiced in this opportunity for making the Boadicea into something like his notion of a crack frigate, a fighting-machine manned entirely by able seamen, men-of war's men, every one of them an expert gun-layer and a devil with the boarding-axe and cutlass.

Not only had Pullings brought back seven cross but able seamen from the Lord Mornington, but Scriven’.