DCHP-1 Online

admiral

• n. Hist. a title given to the captain of the first fishing vessel to reach a harbor on the Newfoundland coast each year, a title that carried with it authority as magistrate for the fishery in the area of his jurisdiction, a form of justice that endured from the early seventeenth century until the late eighteenth.

  See also: fishing admiral  rear admiral  

  • 1620  And thus they doe, striuing to be there first in a Harbour, to obtaine the name of Admirall that yeere.
  • 1907  The democratic English, however, made the admiral change about each week so that each master in turn became ruler.
  • 1965  Justice might have been won by the presentation if . . . a flowing bowl of calabogus, a favorite drink of the admirals. . . .