(Also as two words.)
1. A broad flat-bottomed boat, used for transport, esp. in shallow waters.
1660. F. Brooke, trans. Le Blanc’s Trav., 209. Almost every inhabitant hath his Almady or flat boat, wherein they recreate upon the Lake.
1711. Lond. Gaz., No. 4919/2. They have a great number of flat Boats with them.
1801. Nelson, in Nicolas, Disp., 21 July, IV. 427. A Flotilla to be kept near Margate and Ramsgate, to consist of Gun-boats and Flat-boats.
1806. Naval Chron., XV. 90. He commanded a division of flat boats.
b. U.S. A large roughly-made boat formerly much used for floating goods, etc. down the Mississippi and other western rivers.
1837. Ht. Martineau, Soc. Amer., II. 199. Notwithstanding the increase of steam-boats in the Mississippi, flat boats are still much in use.
1883. C. F. Woolson, For the Major, iv. Sometimes they [songs] contained minor strains too old for Far Edgerley to remember, the wild, soft, plaintive cadences of the Indian women of tribes long gone towards the setting sun, of the first African slaves poling their flat-boats along the Southern rivers.
2. attrib. and Comb., as flatboat-man, ‘a hand employed on a flat-boat’ (Bartlett).
1837. Ht. Martineau, Soc. Amer., II. 200. I felt a strong inclination for a flat-boat voyage down the vast and beautiful Mississippi; beautiful with islands and bluffs, and the eternal forest; but I have lost the opportunity.
1864. Lowell, McClellan’s Rep., Prose Wks., 1890, V. 116. An amiable class of men, who still believe, in a vague sort of way, that the rebels can be conciliated by offering them a ruler more comme il faut than Mr. Lincoln, a country where a flatboatman may rise to the top, by virtue of mere manhood, being hardly the place for people of truly refined sensibilities.
Hence Flat-boat v. trans., to transport in a flat-boat (U.S. colloq.).
1858. Nat. Intelligencer, 29 July (Bartlett). Fruit, which he flat-boated from Wheeling to that point.
