Cape Horner

English

Noun

Cape Horner (plural Cape Horners)

1. (nautical) A ship that sails around Cape Horn
   • 1840, R[ichard] H[enry] D[ana], Jr., “CHAPTER XXXV”, in Two Years before the Mast. […] (Harper’s Family Library; no. CVI), New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers […], →OCLC:

     No merchant vessel looks better than an Indiaman, or a Cape Horn-er, after a long voyage; and many captains and mates will stake their reputation for seamanship upon the appearance of their ship when she hauls into the dock.

   • 1899, Paul Eve Stevenson, By Way of Cape Horn: Four Months in a Yankee Clipper, page 291:

     Yet such fellows are by no means uncommon at sea, for one often happens upon a man in a Cape Horner's forecastle whom Nature did not intend should be there.

   • 1955, William Armstrong Fairburn, Merchant Sail - Volume 4, page 2377:

     The Morning Light (I) was built as a Cape Horner, in which service she made five voyages and performed creditably considering her sailing chances.

2. A sailor who has sailed around Cape Horn.
   • 2003, Bernard Moitessier, Cape Horn: The Logical Route, page 24:

     I had gone and seen the Norwegian Consul, a man in his sixties, tall and square, who had been a Cape Horner in the days of the sailing ships.

   • 2009, Dee Caffari, Against the Flow, page 100:

     I received a message from Sir Chay Blyth congratulating me on becoming a solo Cape Horner and reminding me how few people could claim such a feat in a westabout direction.

   • 2017, Adrian Flanagan, The Cape Horners' Club:

     I bought a gold earring for Barrabas, her badge as a Cape Horner, as a tribute and a thank you.

3. A gale with icy rain occurring south of Cape Horn.
   • 1888, William Clark Russell, A Voyage to the Cape, page 358:

     Hour after hour this went on, the gale sweeping through the masts of the ship with the ring and fury, and with something of the icy edge too, of what used to be called a "Cape Horner;" the steamer plunging and rolling furiously upon the boiling summits, and in the midnight hollows of a genuinely angry and conflicting Channel sea; the engines sometimes slowly moving, sometimes coming to a dead stand;

   • 2016, Edward Allcard, Solo around Cape Horn, page 95:

     It was for a north-west gale, veering to south-west (i.e. a normal Cape Horner, which was bound to last for at least three days).

   • 2018, Nicholas Gray, Astronauts of Cape Horn:

     In the teeth of a full gale, a real Cape Horner, he struggled to lower all sail whilst facing the biggest seas he had ever experienced.

   • 2022, John D. Jones, Life and Adventure in the South Pacific:

     We reduced the sail to a close-reefed main-topsail, sent down top gallant yards, and prepared for a regular “Cape Horner.”