blood boatn.

1873 World (N.Y.) 23 Aug. 2/3 On the 21st the blood boat left at seven A.M.

1879 R. C. Adams On Board ‘Rocket’ xi. 303 There were about a thousand people down to see ‘the blood boat’ as they called her, for the boarding-house runners had reported her character.

1899 Notts. Guardian 22 July 6/8 She wuz a reg'lar blood-boat. You've herd o' the kind, I s'pose, no watch' an' watch all day, everythin' polished 'n painted till you c'd see y'r face in it.

1899 F. T. Bullen Log of Sea-waif 230 Half the crew..looked as if all the ways of ‘Western Ocean blood-boats’ were familiar to them.

1907 F. T. Bullen Call of Deep ii. 16 She's a Blue-nose blood-boat, and you ought to know by this time that our Nova Scotian cousins can lay over any Down East Yank in the matter of cold-blooded brutality.

1957 Mariner's Mirror 43 12 The treatment of the man before the mast was often brutal in the extreme: indeed the terms ‘blood boat’ and ‘hell ship’ were often by no means exaggerations.

1999 M. Archibald Sixpence for Wind xix. 129 Although the American vessels were renowned as blood-boats, there were British captains who were quite bully enough to be avoided.

1889 A. Barrère & C. G. Leland Dict. Slang Blood boat (naval),..a boat employed to carry provisions from the shore.

1914 Ld. C. Beresford Mem. I. i. 2 I was only the ‘blood-boat’ (the jolly-boat bringing beef to the ship) midshipman of a man-of-war.

1919 ‘Taffrail’ H.M.S. Anonymous vii. 139 In charge of the ‘blood boat’ we left our ships..to bring off from the shore the fresh meat which would..be served out to the ship's company.

1925 E. Fraser & J. Gibbons Soldier & Sailor Words 27 Blood Boat, The, a Navy term for the morning boat sent to fetch fresh meat from shore for a man-of-war.

1994 P. O'Brian Commodore (1996) viii. 197 The few little blood-boats and the like were fit only for one officer at a time.