Crossword clues for longboat
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Longboat \Long"boat`\, n. (Naut.) Formerly, the largest boat carried by a merchant vessel, corresponding to the launch of a naval vessel.
Wiktionary
n. (context nautical English) Among the boats carried by a ship the largest, thus the most capable of boats carried on a ship.
WordNet
n. the largest boat carried by a merchant sailing vessel
Gazetteer
Wikipedia
In the days of sailing ships, a vessel would carry several ship's boats for various uses. One would be a longboat, an open boat to be rowed by eight or ten oarsmen, two per thwart. The longboat was double banked; its rowing benches were designed to accommodate two men each pulling an oar on opposite sides. Other boats sometimes embarked on a sailing ship included the cutter, whaleboat, gig, jolly boat, launch, dinghy, and punt.
Unlike the dinghy or the cutter, the longboat would have fairly fine lines aft to permit its use in steep waves such as surf or wind against tide where need be. Like other ships' boats, the longboat could be rigged for sailing but was primarily a pulling boat. It had the double-banked arrangement in common with the cutter. This was possible as it had a beam similar to a cutter's but broader than that of a gig, which was single banked.
The longboat was generally more seaworthy than the cutter, which had a fuller stern for such load-carrying work as laying out an anchor and cable. In a seaway or surf therefore, the cutter was more prone to broaching.
The Oxford English Dictionary notes uses of the word from 1515 to 1867. In later years, particularly in the Royal Navy, the longboat tended to be replaced by the whaler. The cutter was still in use in the 1950s but had been largely replaced by the 32 foot and 25 foot motor cutters.
In some places such as Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn Island, the surfboats are known as longboats, perhaps because the settlers who introduced them were European seamen. The Tristan da Cunha boats are single banked. What is believed to be the only remaining example in existence of a traditionally built Tristan da Cunha longboat, Carlisle, named after the Royal Navy ship of the same name which made visits to the island in 1932 and 1937, is located in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.
The French link is to chaloupe, which in this context is a cutter, but lent its name to the Dutch sloep or sloop.
Longboat racing is a sport in Brazil, Laos and Thailand.
Longboat (24 March 1981 – ca. 1997) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse. A specialist over extreme distances, who produced his best form on fast ground, he completed the "Stayers' Triple Crown" in 1986 when he won the Ascot Gold Cup, Goodwood Cup and Doncaster Cup. In all he won nine of his eighteen races between October 1983 and September 1986, with his other major wins coming in the Alycidon Stakes, Sagaro Stakes and Henry II Stakes. He was exported to Australia where he was retired from racing following an injury. He proved a failure as a breeding stallion.
Usage examples of "longboat".
Johann and Caroline had set out in the opposite direction, planning a ride of three miles or so straight through the heart of London to Billingsgate Stairs, immediately downstream of the Bridge, where a longboat would take them out to a Hanoverian sloop.
Still in their yeti forms, Teldin and Raven struggled with the oars for only a few minutes before Raven decided to shapechange into one of the giant, eellike fish that abounded in the icy waters, so that she could tow the longboat back.
One, Dimitros, had ridden his fireboat right in, while his longboat team, rowing frantically behind, had screamed at him to jump.
They hauled in herrin on their westward migration, wingfish, huge tub-bodied feluna, and sometimes the writhing, entangled sliminess of large octopuses, some of them almost big enough to swamp the smaller of the longboats.
Men with boathooks were stationed in the longboats, to cut a passage clear.
Together, they swooped down to the harbor and circled the round-bellied carracks and longboats moored there.
As the longboat entered the surf and was carried forward by the combers, Sidi looked once more at the relief on the amulet.
Years ago, on a beach like this in Portugal, Sharpe had watched the longboats broach in the combers and spill their men like puppets into the killing sea.
As the two longboats moved slowly against the current into the mouth of the gorge, they startled the flocks of water birds from the shallows into the air.
Along the bank now, emerging gradually out of the thinning mist, were the rows of ramshackle huts on spidery stilts and the houseboats with tattered washcloths for curtains and the hand sawmills and the floating docks, each with its moored semicircle of sleek longboats radiating outward like elliptical wooden petals.
Darting about the river like minnows around an old bass were motorized longboats with neat cannonball piles fore and aft of astonishingly green squash and melons.
Eventually he placed his first mate, Arnold Fowler, in charge of the deck and ordered one of his longboats made ready.
The four longboats from the Golden Bough were crowded with seamen as they rowed ashore in that dark hour before the dawn.
Buzzard bellowed again, and led his crew sprinting down the beach to where the longboats from the Golden Bough were drawn up.
Before Wayne took one of the longboats from the Old Laughing Lady back to the docks, he checked on Rita.