sea rover

Compare Danish sørøver, German Seeräuber, Norwegian sjørøver, Swedish sjörövare.

sea rover (plural sea rovers)

1. (British, colloquial, archaic) A herring.
2. (literally) One who travels the ocean; one who spends a great deal of time at sea.
   • 1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 23:

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

3. A pirate, buccaneer or privateer; an ocean-going marauder.
   • 1549, “A Proclamacion, for tale tellers” in All such proclamacions, as haue been sette furthe by the Kynges Maiestie, London, 1551, pp. lvi-lvij,^[1]

     […] 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 [2], 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.

   • 1858, Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years' View: Or, A History of the Working of the American Government, vol. 2‎^[3], page 546:

     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.

• (ocean-going marauder): pirate, corsair, see also Thesaurus:pirate

• Averroes