West-Indiaman

Noun

West Indiaman (uncountable)

1. (historical) A merchant vessel trading between Europe and the West Indies (including the Americas), generally smaller than the similar East Indiamen.
   • 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.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...