guard ship

plural guard ships

1. A warship stationed at a port etc. to act as a guard.

   He was pronounced guilty, and sentenced to confinement on board a guard ship, and in forty days to be sent with his family to England.

   1832, William Allen, An American Biographical and Historical Dictionary, page 209

   5 more examples

   Vessels after having been visited by the guard ship in Monvik and taking route toward Reval, must, for the second time, pass the guard ship near island Wulf for delivery of permission of the previous mentioned guard ship and then continue their route, according to orders of this guard ship.

   1919, George Grafton Wilson, International Law Situations, page 137

   The narrator describes — in what could be exaggeration — what newly pressed sailors discovered when they were hauled aboard a guard ship to wait for orders.

   1999, Hans Turley, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality, and Masculine Identity, page 23

   With the guard ship Shubrick gone, the commanding officer of Alcatraz assumed guard duty to make sure that no hostile foreign warships entered the bay.

   2007, C. Douglas Kroll, "Friends in Peace and War": The Russian Navy's Landmark Visit to Civil War San Francisco, page 67

   In 1858, taking up his commission once more in the Royal Navy, he was appointed an officer of the guard ship at Malta, and subsequently was given command of the gunship Foxhound, which patrolled in the Mediterranean.

   2010, British Ships in the Confederate Navy, page 218

   The guard ship would overhear. He could not trust untried young men to act rationally if they were unaware and the guard ship arrived and matter-of-factly attempted to board one of them.

   2011, Murray Leinster, The World is Taboo, page 122