What is "merchantman"

Usage examples of "merchantman".

With his fellow officer Sam Holt, he also has his first appalling encounter with the Free Trade as the Biter ranges coastal waters to prey on returning merchantmen.

Elliot, Captain Smith of the Volage, and two merchantmen captains were gathered around the big table where a map of the Bogue was marked with pins to designate the positions of the two flotillas.

And so six times a day all traffic on the carriageway was forced to halt for twenty minutes while that beneath floated through on the tide: hoys and shallops headed upstream with loads of malt and dried haddock, bumboats and pinnaces going downstream with hogsheads of ale and sugar for the merchantmen at Tower Dock, sometimes even the yacht of the King himself on its way to the races at Greenwich, masts swaying and sails crackling.

The ship was a small three-masted merchantman, square-rigged with a lateen sail on the back.

In November, 1718, when cruising between Cape Meise and Cape Nicholas, on the lookout for ships, he met with and fired on a vessel that appeared to be a merchantman, at the same time running up the Jolly Roger.

Half a dozen Land merchantmen had beached themselves by the harbor forts on either side of the entrance from the Pada estuary.

I wish they would: they do not possess a single ship of the line, and three of their fat merchantmen passed Amboyna last week - such prizes!

Even so, one of the mares had panicked and kicked a hole in the planking not far above the water line and the entire crew, mac Calma included, had been called to put their backs into baling to keep the merchantman afloat for the last leagues of the journey.

Cargo unloaded from merchantmen in Ostia was here finally discharged for Rome.

In the days that followed, Adams spent considerable time with the daring young Scottish-American naval officer, John Paul Jones, who was fitting out an old French merchantman that he had renamed the Bon Homme Richard.

Only a fortnight ago some of those bloody bastards captured a Tyroshi merchantman in the straits.

The deep-laden merchantman, probably a West Indian trader, on sighting the Bucephalas across his path had not waited to discover if he was friend or foe.

Even without the fleet at anchor the harbor was already busy with cutters plying to and from the half a hundred merchantmen, others clustering the mail ship, still others heading for her or coming back.

During the gales here at Yokohama a merchantman had been blown ashore, some buildings damaged, many cutters and fishing boats lost, havoc wrought in the village and Yoshiwara, many tents in the military encampment on the bluff blown away but no casualties there, or in the Settlement.

Clouds scudding fast beyond the crowded steeples outpaced the fast river traffic, the eelboats and wherries and other light craft bobbing with bellied sails and the towering merchantmen.