shipkeeper

plural shipkeepers

1. A caretaker of a ship when its crew is away.

   The official was responsible for safeguarding the captured vessle by hiring a shipkeeper to oversee its maintenance and security.

   2019 January 16, João José Reis, Flávio dos Santos Gomes, Marcus J. M. Carvalho, The Story of Rufino: Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic, Oxford University Press, page 175

   2 more examples

   … and when the ship is like the one now in question, not being navigated, but laid up in dock, there is the additional possibility that the shipkeeper may be the servant of the dock company, or the ship's broker, or any one else with whom the owners may have made an arrangement to keep his ship for him as a bailee of the ship.

   1866, Max Robertson, editor, English Reports Annotated, volume 2, part 1, London: The Reports and Digest Syndicate, Ltd., pages 1986-1987

   In the sailing ship days practically every ship had a shipkeeper, usually some wheezy old pensioner who had at last been reluctantly driven to the admission that he was too old to go to sea.

   1925, C. Fox Smith, Ship Alley: More Sailor Town Days, Houghton Mifflin, page 188