Yachtsman

1840, William Makepeace Thackeray, The Irish Sketch Book published together with The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh and Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, New York: Caxton, Chapter 10, p. 379, […] and so ended, not without a sigh on my part, one of the merriest six-hour rides that five yachtsmen, one cockney, five women and a child, the carman, and a countryman with an alpeen, ever took in their lives.

We knew him already by sight as the owner of a little five-ton cutter, which he sailed alone apparently, a fellow yachtsman in the unpretending band of fanatics who cruise at the mouth of the Thames. But the first time he addressed the waiter sharply as ‘steward’ we knew him at once for a sailor as well as a yachtsman.

[…] needless to say, the thing that all the cautious and experienced yachtsmen had warned him against happened. The black squall out of nowhere, the sudden, senseless frenzy of wind and rain and waves…