What is "maintopman"

Usage examples of "maintopman".

The score or so of right seamen had been at their stations ten minutes - Pullings and the bosun on the fo'c'sle, the gunner and his mates at the maintack, the carpenter at the foresheet, the Marines at the mainsheet, the maintopmen and the after-guard on the quarterdeck, at the braces - before the last desperate half-clothed bewildered landsman was hunted up, shoved and beaten and cobbed into his place.

The score or so of right seamen had been at their stations ten minutes - Pullings and the bosun on the fo’c’sle, the gunner and his mates at the maintack, the carpenter at the foresheet, the Marines at the mainsheet, the maintopmen and the after-guard on the quarterdeck, at the braces - before the last desperate half-clothed bewildered landsman was hunted up, shoved and beaten and cobbed into his place.

The afterguard doubled up, falling into their place on the fourth side of the square formed by the forecastlemen, the foretopmen and maintopmen.

On deck the foretopmen had set the elm-tree pump a-wheezing, while the fo'c'slemen washed the fo'c'sle with the fresh sea-water they pumped, the maintopmen washed the starboard side of the quarter-deck and the quarter-deck men all the rest, grinding away with holystones until the water ran like thin milk from the admixture of minute raspings of wood and caulking, and the boys and the idlers - the people who merely worked all day - heaved at the chain-pumps to clear the night's water out of the bilges, and the gunner's crew cosseted the fourteen four-pounders.