[f. WHALE sb. or v.1 + -ER1.]
1. A person engaged in whaling; a whale-catcher.
1684. Roxb. Ball. (1885), V. 457. Without you do now imploy the Wheelers to do ’t, Ye ne’r will be able to bring all about.
1775. Romans, Florida, App. 79. The North, or Grand Bahama bank, is little frequented but by whalers and turtlers.
1843. Penny Cycl., XXVII. 752/1. The whalers kill the calves in order to capture the mother.
1895. Gore-Booth, Sea Fishing (Badm. Libr.), xvi. 476. Two bollard heads (pronounced ‘bullet heads’ by the Scotch whalers).
2. a. A vessel used in whale-fishing. b. = WHALE-BOAT b.
1806. Sydney Gaz., in O’Hara’s Hist. N. S. Wales (1817), 270. Arrived … same day, the Aurora south whaler.
1817. Byron, Beppo, lxi. Stopp’d by the elements, like a whaler.
1893. T. Hawkins-Smith, in Times, 3 July, 6/2. I found some loose oars close by with which I supported myself until picked up by the Dreadnought’s whaler.
1898. Kipling, Fleet in Being, v. 62. The First Lieutenant … had the whaler’s crew sleeping all handy by.
1909. Athenæum, 13 March, 320/1. The original plan was to descend the Mackenzie to the Beaufort Sea, leaving the stores to come round by whaler.
3. Anything unusually large of its kind; a ‘whacker,’ ‘whopper.’ U.S. slang.
a. 1860. Georgia Scenes, 184 (Bartlett). ‘He’s a whaler!’ said Rory; ‘but his face is mighty little for his body and legs.’
1873. Leland, Egypt. Sketch-Bk., 25. I shared … a cabin with a captain who had been a whaler for forty years; and he was a whaler! and great at ‘whalers.’
