English

Alternative forms

• cock-boat
• cockleboat

Noun

cockboat ‎(plural cockboats)

1. (nautical) A small rowing boat, especially one pulled behind a larger ship, or used to ferry goods between a ship and the shore.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.viii:

     Haue care, I pray, to guide the cock-bote well, / Least worse on sea then vs on land befell.

   • 1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life Chapter V

     The Malabar, that huge sea monster, in whose capacious belly so many human creatures lived and suffered, had dwindled to a walnut-shell, and yet beside her bulk how infinitely small had their own frail cockboat appeared as they shot out from under her towering stern!