A boat with a flat bottom. (Cf. prec. and BOTTOM sb. 7.)
1579–80. North, Plutarch (1676), 337. The Tarentines … sent him great store of flat-bottoms, galleys, and of all sorts of passengers.
1660. F. Brooke, trans. Le Blanc’s Trav., I. xviii. 58. They use flat-bottoms, which do great services upon the River.
1865. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., XIX. v. 510. As for the Grand Invasion Squadron, Admiral Conflans, commanding it, still holds-up his head in Brest Harbour, and talks big. Makes little of Rodney’s havoc on the Flatbottoms at Havre, ‘Will soon have Flatbottoms again; and you shall see!’—if only Hawke, and wind and weather and Fortune, will permit.
