mailboatn.
/ˈmeɪlbəʊt/, U.S. /ˈmeɪlˌboʊt/ A boat used for the conveyance or transport of mail.Specialized uses: (a) South African a weekly passenger ship linking the South African ports with Southampton, and contracted to the South African government to carry mail (historical); (b) Caribbean a boat owned or commissioned by a government as a mail-carrying ferry, usually one also serving as a general passenger and cargo vessel.
ΘΚΠ
society > communication > correspondence > postal services > person or vehicle that carries letters or mail > [noun] > vehicle or vessel > vessel
post-boat1582
post packet1634
post office packet1780
mailboat1786
mail steamer1843
mailer1857
mail ship1891
society > travel > travel by water > vessel, ship, or boat > vessel for transporting people or goods > [noun] > packet or mailboat
post-boat1582
post-bark1599
post1600
post packet1634
packet-boat1642
packeta1670
post office packet1780
packet-ship1782
packet-bark1806
packet steamer1842
sailing-packet1842
mailboat1895
multipacket1965
1786 R. Hunter Jrnl. 11 June in Quebec to Carolina (1943) (modernized text) 269 We thought it better to run the risk of hiring a cart to drive there than to wait till Tuesday morning for the mail boat.
1855 H. Clarke New Dict. Eng. Lang. Mail-boat.
1895 A. H. Norway P.-O. Packet Service i. 3 The Post-Office selected Falmouth in 1688 as the point of embarkation..for the..mail boats.
1897 F. R. Statham S. Afr. Life as it Is 8 Late on the evening of..the 18th of April, 1877, the steamer Caldera, which had been temporarily chartered by the Castle Packets Company as a mailboat, dropped anchor in Table Bay.
1923 B. Ronan Forty S. Afr. Years 79 I boarded the mail-boat and disembarked again at East London, then little more than a waste of sandhills.
1933 L. A. G. Strong Sea Wall 1 He did not even heed the mailboat, as she glided gracefully in..to the harbour.
1947 J. J. Redgrave Port Elizabeth in Bygone Days 432 On one occasion the incoming mail boat made a record voyage for those early days by covering the distance from England to Table Bay in thirty-one days.
1976 C. A. Frank Hist. Begos 11 The main link between St Vincent and the Grenadine dependencies is by the ‘mail boat’ which transports passengers, food supplies, building materials and the ‘mail’ from the mainland.
1985 R. Huntford Shackleton xiii. 119 On 12 June,..Shackleton landed in England. He came unremarked by mailboat.
1992 Caribbean Week Apr. 16/1 There are more than twenty government-subsidised mailboats, which leave port in Nassau every week, and travel the length and breadth of The Bahamas.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2000; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1786