Word.ws English Dictionary

ship's company

ship's company noun: the entire crew of a ship, including the officers.

Noun

ship's company (plural ships' companies)

  1. The entire crew of a ship, including the officers
    • [T]he whole ship's company consisted of sixty-five men.1719, Daniel Defoe, chapter 10, in The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
    • [T]he regulations enjoin the attendance of the entire ship's company, from the corpulent Captain himself to the smallest boy who strikes the bell.1850, Herman Melville, chapter 33, in White Jacket
  2. (nonstandard, possibly) All of the occupants of a ship, including crew and passengers.
    • The whole ship's company, captain, officers, quarter-masters, passengers, and all, were quite sure that she had succeeded in getting a promise of marriage from him.1879, Anthony Trollope, chapter 8, in John Caldigate

Examples of ship's company in a sentence

  • The Aries had a ship's company of twenty-four men, besides four passengers.1863 April 7, “The Prize Steamer Aries”, in New York Times, retrieved 03 Aug 2012:
  • The 82 other members of the ship's company underwent 11 months of brutal captivity.1988 December 25, “Pueblo's Veterans Look Back on '68 in Anger”, in New York Times, retrieved 03 Aug 2012:

Forms of ship's company

pluralships' companies

Questions about ship's company

What does ship's company mean?
Ship's company means the entire crew of a ship, including the officers.
How do you use ship's company in a sentence?
The Aries had a ship's company of twenty-four men, besides four passengers.
What part of speech is ship's company?
Ship's company is a noun.
What is the plural of ship's company?
The plural of ship's company is ships' companies.

Words near ship's company in the dictionary

  1. ship's boats
  2. ship's boy
  3. ship's boys
  4. ship's carver
  5. ship's carvers
  6. ship's company
  7. ship's corporal
  8. ship's cousin
  9. ship's cousins
  10. ship's days
  11. ship's husband

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ship's company (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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