roadstead

From road +‎ stead.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɹəʊdstɛd/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɹoʊdˌstɛd/
• Hyphenation: road‧stead

roadstead (plural roadsteads)

1. (nautical) A partly sheltered anchorage; a stretch of water near the shore where vessels may ride at anchor, but with less protection than a harbour. [from early 18th c.]

   Synonyms: road, roads

   • 1798, George Vancouver, chapter V, in A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World‎^[1], volume I, London: G.G. and J. Robinson, page 248:

     The shores of Protection island form on its south side, which is about two miles long, a most excellent roadstead, and a channel into port Discovery, near 2 miles wide on either side […]

   • 1885, Robert Louis Stevenson, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, “Story of the Fair Cuban”, in More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 171:

     […] I found we were lying in a roadstead among many low and rocky islets, hovered about by an innumerable cloud of sea-fowl.

   • 1888–1891, Herman Melville, “[Billy Budd, Foretopman.] Chapter III.”, in Billy Budd and Other Stories, London: John Lehmann, published 1951, →OCLC:

     […] that was the time when at the mast-heads of the three-deckers and seventy-fours moored in her own roadstead […] the blue-jackets, to be numbered by thousands, ran up with huzzas the British colors with the union and cross wiped out […]

   • 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

     Clusters of strong flowers rose everywhere above the coarse tussocks of bent. It was like a roadstead crowded with tall fairy-shipping.

   • 1992, Leonard Y. Andaya, “Interactions with the Outside World and Adaptation in Southeast Asian Society, 1500-1800”, in Nicholas Tarling, editor, The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, volume 1, Cambridge University Press, page 349:

     In 1620 junks began to arrive from China depositing hundreds of migrants, and with the resumption of China's official trade to Southeast Asia in 1683, the numbers of junks arriving annually in Batavia's roadstead grew from an average of three or four to about twenty.

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