Wiktionary
n. (context nautical English) The person in charge of a ship's engine room
Usage examples of "donkeyman".
DingDong the Donkeyman was when Matt got her on the phone: Hiram Lindsay, who twenty-two years ago had owned the vet practice that his brother now operated and had gone out to the County Home for Innocents one blazing August to tend a sick donkey.
Lazy early Rosie with the flaxen thatch, whom he shared with Tom-Fred the donkeyman and many another seaman, clearly and near to him speaks from the bedroom of her dust.
Edge and Yount took the job of driving the wagons one by one to the ship's side and there unhitching the horses, while the dockhands attached grapple cables between wagon and boom, and the donkeymen on deck worked a steam capstan to haul each wagon up and swing it inboard.