Meaning of mizzentopman | Babel Free

Definitions

A sailor assigned to the mizzentop on a sailing ship.

Examples

“Soon after, the foresail was reefed, and we mizen-top men were sent up to take another reef in the mizen topsail.”

“[…] since the mizzentopmen having not to handle such breadths of heavy canvas as the lower sails on the main-mast and fore-mast, a young man if of the right stuff not only seems best adapted to duty there, but in fact is generally selected for the captaincy of that top, and the company under him are light hands and often but striplings.”

“This illustration for Herman Melville's White Jacket (1850) of the flogging of a nineteen-year-old mizzen-top man […] on a U.S. naval ship—based on Melville's own Pacific voyage of 1843-44—helped stoke a humanitarian campaign against such physical punishment.”

CEFR level