zebeck

English

zebeck (plural zebecks)

Alternative spelling of xebec.
- 1793 November 13, attributed to Mathew Carey, “[Appendix.] No. IV. Extract of a Letter from John M‘Shane, Captain of the Minerva, to William Bell, dated Algiers, November 13, 1793”, in A Short History of Algiers, with a Concise View of the Origin of the Rupture between Algiers and the United States. To which is Added a Copious Appendix: Containing Letters from Captain Penrose, M‘Shane, and Sundry Other American Captives, with a Description of the Treatment Those Prisoners Experienced, 3rd improved edition, New York, N.Y.: Published by Evert Duyckinck, 110 Pearl-street; W[illiam] W. Vermilye, printer, published 1805, →OCLC, page 82:
  On the 18th October, about five leagues from Gibraltar, we were boarded by a zebeck of 20 guns, belonging to this place, who after coming within musket-shot, kept up a constant firing with small arms, until they manned our yards from theirs, then the firing ceased, and they came down sword in hand, spared our lives, but nothing else, having stripped us of the clothes we had on, and put us on board the zebeck, […]