deckhand

deck +‎ hand

deckhand (plural deckhands)

1. (nautical) A member of the crew of a merchant ship who performs manual labour.
2. (theater) A stagehand.
   • 2020, John Ramsey Holloway, Zachary Stribling, Illustrated Theatre Production Guide, page 15:

     Sometimes actors set props on the spikes, or sometimes a deckhand will do it, depending on the action of the play.

deckhand (third-person singular simple present deckhands, present participle deckhanding, simple past and past participle deckhanded)

1. (intransitive) To work on a boat as a deckhand; crew.
   • 1999, Dana Stabenow, Hunter's Moon, →ISBN:

     You deckhand for Old Sam in the summer, you guide climbers up the Big Bump in the spring, you can skin a Cat, mine for gold, butcher a moose, fix an engine.

   • 2004, Stephen Hume, A Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Farming, →ISBN, page 210:

     I deckhanded on a fish boat for four years and knew no fisherman likes to be called out of the blue and have his numbers demanded!

   • 2011, Bruce Burrows, The River Killers, →ISBN, page 16:

     Years later, I met a guy who had deckhanded on her after I did, and he was a little more equivocal.

   • 2017, Claire Dederer, Love and Trouble: Memoirs of a Former Wild Girl, →ISBN:

     Larry ran a tugboat company from there, and sometimes my brother and I deckhanded for him.