Bargee

“Have you broken down, the Providence?” called another bargee, whose boat passed so close that his head could be seen gliding past, level with the hatchway. ❋ Simenon, Georges, 1903- (1931)

The bargee was a strongly-built, stupid, healthy-looking young man, of some twenty-three years old, who, from being slow of passion was all the more terrible when aroused. ❋ Unknown (1867)

Tremendous fighting and quarrelling ensued, red and angry faces, and 'bargee' language. ❋ William Henry Burton Wilkins (1897)

Simon Schama's "Landscape and Memory" 1995 includes a superb chapter on water, with delectable excursions on the canals of Venice and the work of John Taylor, the 17th-century Thames bargee and self-styled "Water Poet." ❋ Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (2011)

His top major, Reno, who seemed a dapper, quiet, clever sort of chap, concealed any animosity he may have felt, but the dominant spirit in the mess, a big burly bargee with prematurely white hair and a schoolboy's eyes and grin, called Benteen, seemed ready to lock horns with Custer as soon as look at him. ❋ Estelle Bruno (2010)

"Treaty, nothing!" snaps Sherman; he was the same ugly, blackavised bargee who you remember observed that war is hell, and then proved it; I was interested to see that ten years hadn't mellowed him. ❋ Estelle Bruno (2010)

Grant was the same burly, surly bargee I remembered, more like a city storekeeper than the first-rate soldier he'd been and the disillusioned President he was. ❋ Estelle Bruno (2010)

You'd barely credit it; here was this sober-looking, middle-aged bargee, with the grey streaks in his trim beard and the solid spread to his middle, burly but by no means tall, as proper a citizen as ever spouted Catullus or graced a corporation-and suddenly it was Attila gone berserk. ❋ Estelle Bruno (2010)

Tremendous fighting and quarrelling ensued, red and angry faces, and ‘bargee’ language. ❋ Unknown (2006)

I begin to feel almost like the James North who fought the bargee and took the gold medal. ❋ Unknown (2004)

At any rate, ever since he was the most popular boy at Eton, coolly jesting when they were for throwing a bargee into the river, ❋ Unknown (2004)

A burly bargee in a mail jacket, with a bandolier of ivory-hilted knives round his hips, jumps on the dais, and they fell silent. ❋ Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- (1990)

The shock of the collision had flung the female bargee, in most unladylike mid-sentence, on to the bows of George's cruiser. ❋ MacLean, Alistair, 1922- (1985)