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Examples
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"Will you come?" said he, coolly, as if I were merely necessary as a thwart or thole-pin might have been, turning and letting his eyes fall on me an instant, then snatching them off with a sparkle and flush, and such a lordly carelessness of manner otherwise.
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Strong quickly pitching over the side, after it, the bunchy folds of the net; when the guy-rope fastened to the bridle of the beam was secured to the bowsprit-bitts and then again to a thole-pin aft, so as to prevent its getting under the keel.
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A man who supplies his own want, who builds a raft or a boat to go a-fishing, finds it easy to calk it, or put in a thole-pin, or mend the rudder.
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Uncle Nicky, bending to replace a worn thole-pin with a new one, dropped the pair with a clatter.
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Leaning over the side, he slipped the painter from the thole-pin round which it hung, and then shoving with all his might, he sent the skiffs a good way apart at once.
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We went after them again, and one of the men wanted to kill one with a thole-pin, and the other man wanted to kill one with his rowing stick.
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It was a four-oared curagh, and I was given the last seat so as to leave the stern for the man who was steering with an oar, worked at right angles to the others by an extra thole-pin in the stern gunnel.
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But, with the strength of another world, Barbara unshipped the oar of her sister and slipped it upon the thole-pin opposite to her own.
Bog-Myrtle and Peat Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895
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Then Antonino stopped pulling, unshipped his oars one after the other and muffled them just where the strap works on the thole-pin, by binding bits of sailcloth round them.
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The thole-pin had darted overboard, the winder was snatched from
chained_bear commented on the word thole-pin
"...the boats pulled fast across the water, with never a sound but the creak of thwarts and thole-pins and the gurgle of oars."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Letter of Marque, 104
February 29, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word thole-pin
See another usage note on rowlock.
February 29, 2008
seanahan commented on the word thole-pin
This term is still somewhat in use, at least among Boy Scouts, specifically the rowing merit badge.
February 29, 2008