lighterman

plural lightermen

1. nauticalOne employed on, owning, or managing a lighter.

   1622, Ben Jonson, The Masque of Augurs, The First Antimasque, in The Works of Ben Jonson, London: D. Midwinter et al., 1756, Volume 6, p. 122, A poor lighterman, sir, one that hath had the honour sometimes to lay in the king’s beer there […]

   4 more examples

   One Dobson, a lighterman, undertook, for a wager of five guineas, to swim on his back from Westminster bridge to Putney bridge in an hour and three quarters, without turning himself in the water; which he performed 19 minutes within the time.

   1766 July, The Annual Register, page 115

   At that the Pool became a scene of mad confusion, fighting, and collision, and for some time a multitude of boats and barges jammed in the northern arch of the Tower Bridge, and the sailors and lightermen had to fight savagely against the people who swarmed upon them from the riverfront.

   1898, H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, Book One, Chapter 17

   [Alex Smith] was a lighterman on the Thames at the time Bligh was signing on the Bounty men, but he hated the business and was only waiting for a suitable opportunity to go to sea again.

   1934, Charles Nordhoff, James Norman Hall, chapter 2, in Pitcairn’s Island

   "[…] We shall want the navigation stopt^([sic])—we shall want the good will of fishermen, lightermen, steamboat men and indeed of everybody, therefore seek any opportunity of getting and keeping on good terms with everyone—and of course you must be particularly courteous to the Dockyard Authority."

   1958 August 28, “Brunel Papers”, in Railway Magazine, page 569, from an 1857 letter by Isambard Kingdom Brunel