1909 J. R. Ware Passing Eng. Victorian Era 241/1 Tanky (Navy), foreman or captain of the hold—which looks like a tank.

1921 Blackwood's Mag. July 50/1 I'm hanged if I do Tankie any more.

1944 J. P. W. Mallalieu Very Ordinary Seaman vi. 91 Draw the meat, spuds, bread, butter, and vegetables from Tanky.

1945 Times Lit. Suppl. 9 June 271/3 The nickname ‘Tanky’ belonged to his [sc. a navigator's] Yeoman and derived from this man's incidental duty of looking after the freshwater tanks... When refrigerated storage for meat was introduced..it was the practice..to turn the care of these spaces over to ‘Tanky’... Thus the lower deck came to connect ‘tanky’ with fresh meat... There are now, in consequence, at least two ‘Tankies’ in most ships: the officers' ‘Tanky’ who provides their bathwater and..the matlows' ‘Tanky’ who issues the meat and spuds.

1956 H. Tunstall-Behrens Pamir ix. 114 The sharp-witted Amigo had the job of Mate's Tanky.

1985 Guardian 16 May 17/3 The minority who are grouped around the Morning Star (and are variously referred to as traditionalists, hardliners, fundamentalists, Stalinists, or ‘tankies’—this last a reference to the uncritical support that some of them gave to the Soviet ‘intervention’ in Afghanistan).

1985 Marxism Today May 9/1 Within me are a lot of the old tanky and vangardist attitudes as well as a lot of the new ones.

1986 Daily Tel. 7 June 17/2 Arthur Scargill..seems to have nailed his colours firmly to the “tankies'” mast. He was billed to speak yesterday to the Communists' Sydenham branch which only recently was ‘dissolved’ by the Party's executive committee.

1988 Guardian 28 Apr. 23/8 The New Communist Party of Britain, the Battersea Sovietist splinter off the old bloc, has issued this guidance to the world's press. ‘Please do not describe the NCP as ‘Stalinists’ or ‘Tankies’.’