sea rover

plural sea rovers

1. UKarchaiccolloquialA herring.
2. literallyOne who travels the ocean; one who spends a great deal of time at sea.

   Then down the brave man lay with his bolster under his head and his whole company of sea-rovers at rest beside him.

   1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 23

   Synonyms: corsair

3. A pirate, buccaneer or privateer; an ocean-going marauder.

   3 more examples

   1549, “A Proclamacion, for tale tellers” in All such proclamacions, as haue been sette furthe by the Kynges Maiestie, London, 1551, pp. lvi-lvij, […] there be dispersed and seuered abrode, sundery light, leude, idle, sedicious, busie, and disordered persones, whereof the moste part haue neither place to inhabite in neither seketh any staye to liue by, but hauyng been either condempned of Felonies, & prison breakers, runne from the warres and sea rouers, departed from the kynges guarrisons, and loyterers, whereby thei become desperate persons […]

   1843 April 18, New York Insurance Co. et al., "To Commander A.S. Mackenzie", Niles National Register vol. 64 http://books.google.com/books?id=ZSqY7wD2xYgC, page 179, originally published in the New York American, The turning of your ship into a sea-rover would have made the entire ocean a scene of outrage, rapine, and murder.

   It was a ridiculous scheme, both as to the force which was to take the ship, and her employment as a buccaneer -- the state of the ocean and of navigation being such at that time as to leave a sea-rover, pursued as he would be by the fleets of all nations, without a sea to sail in, without a coast to land on, without a rock or corner to hide in.

   1858, Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years' View: Or, A History of the Working of the American Government, vol. 2, page 546

   Synonyms: pirate