whalefisher

English

Noun

whalefisher (plural whalefishers)

1. Alternative form of whale-fisher
   • 1897, A. V. B., Three Indian Tales, page 55:

     He promised his parents that he would watch over him as if he were his own son, and would make a clever whalefisher and sealhunter of him.

   • 1905, Algot E. Strand, A History of the Norwegians of Illinois, page 282:

     In 1880 he took his first trip on a steamship, the Agn, as a machinist, the boat having been bought from the celebrated whalefisher, Sven Fyen, as an express boat in Varanger fjord.

   • 1960, Arthur Cleveland Bent, Life Histories of North American Birds, page 16:

     The Rev. Mr. Scoresby, in his "Arctic Regions," states that it is the constant companion of the whalefisher, joining his ship immediately on passing the Shetland Islands, and accompanying him to the highest accessible latitudes, keeping an eager watch for anything thrown overboard.

2. A whaling ship.
   • 1767, David Cranz, The History of Greenland, page 293:

     For a Greenlander of Disko-bay, who had been with a whalefisher to Amsterdam, and came back this year, spread a rumour, that next spring many ships would come and kill all the Europeans, and all the Greenlanders too that they met with among them.

   • 1894 July, N.P. WahlStedt, “Work Among Seamen”, in The Sailor's magazine and Seamen's Friend, volume 66, number 7, page 213:

     On board of a Norwegian whalefisher I met with several young sailors who received the word with great desire and I trust it will follow them to the Arctic waters with heavenly light and warmth.

   • 1898, C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne, Through Arctic Lapland, page 2:

     As a sealer and whalefisher she had earned fat dividends for Dundee owners ; as the S. Y. Windward she had made history, and helped to found the British colony of Elmwood in Franz Josef's Land, and had been iced up for an Arctic winter in a bay at the back of Cape Flora; and on this trip she was destined (although no one even guessed at it them) to acquire a far more international fame.