Doghole

But, cou’d you be content to bid adieu / To the dear Play-houſe, and the Players too, / Sweet Country Seats are purchas’d ev’ry where, / With Lands and Gardens, at leſs price, than here / You hire a darkſom Doghole by the year.

This is the first time I was ever weary of England, and longed to be in Ireland, but it is because go I must; for I do not love Ireland better, nor England, as England, worse; in short, you all live in a wretched, dirty Doghole and Prison, but it is a Place good enough to die in.

I am proud to welcome you to my house, though 'tis but a doghole, may it please your Grace, a mere doghole.

Nice was then no glamorous watering hole but a 'doghole' – 'the most doghole I think that be in world', so Mason wrote to Pate.

Not always this forbidding, some doghole ports like New Haven had safe handling records and managed to load 185 consecutive ships without an incident until the 130 ton Adelaide hit the rocks when a mooring chain broke.

Ft . Ross was a popular doghole, but its anchorage was discovered much earlier.

These "Doghole” coves were "not much bigger than a hole a dog might crawl into, squirm around and crawl out again."

With only the most rudimentary navigational equipment, courageous captains regularly put their small schooners into doghole ports under extremely difficult conditions.