West Indiaman

English

Alternative forms

• West-Indiaman

Etymology

From West Indies +‎ -man.

Noun

West Indiaman (uncountable)

1. (18th and 19th century, nautical) A merchant vessel trading between Europe and the West Indies (including the Americas). Generally smaller than the similar East Indiamen.
   • 1815, James Rennell, “Some Farther Observations on the Current That Often Prevails to the Westward of the Scilly Islands”, in Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London‎^[1], volume 2, page 18:

     In Joshua Kelly's Treatise on Navigation, of the former date [1757], an instance is related of a West Indiaman drifted, during two days of dead calm, forty-six miles northward, across the mouth of the British Channel.

   • 2023, David Grann, chapter 1, in The Wager, Doubleday:

     [P]iloted down the Thames, drifting with the tides along that central highway of trade, she floated past West Indiamen loaded with sugar and rum from the Caribbean[.])

Related terms

• East Indiaman, Guineaman, Greenlandman.