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Examples

  • "Will you come?" said he, coolly, as if I were merely necessary as a thwart or thole-pin might have been, turning and letting his eyes fall on me an instant, then snatching them off with a sparkle and flush, and such a lordly carelessness of manner otherwise.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 28, February, 1860 Various

  • Strong quickly pitching over the side, after it, the bunchy folds of the net; when the guy-rope fastened to the bridle of the beam was secured to the bowsprit-bitts and then again to a thole-pin aft, so as to prevent its getting under the keel.

    Bob Strong's Holidays Adrift in the Channel John B. [Illustrator] Greene

  • A man who supplies his own want, who builds a raft or a boat to go a-fishing, finds it easy to calk it, or put in a thole-pin, or mend the rudder.

    III. Essays. Man the Reformer. A Lecture Read before the Mechanics Apprentices’ Library Association, Boston, January 25, 1841 1909

  • Uncle Nicky, bending to replace a worn thole-pin with a new one, dropped the pair with a clatter.

    Shining Ferry Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

  • Leaning over the side, he slipped the painter from the thole-pin round which it hung, and then shoving with all his might, he sent the skiffs a good way apart at once.

    Viking Boys Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby 1891

  • We went after them again, and one of the men wanted to kill one with a thole-pin, and the other man wanted to kill one with his rowing stick.

    The Aran Islands 1890

  • It was a four-oared curagh, and I was given the last seat so as to leave the stern for the man who was steering with an oar, worked at right angles to the others by an extra thole-pin in the stern gunnel.

    The Aran Islands 1890

  • But, with the strength of another world, Barbara unshipped the oar of her sister and slipped it upon the thole-pin opposite to her own.

    Bog-Myrtle and Peat Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895 1887

  • Then Antonino stopped pulling, unshipped his oars one after the other and muffled them just where the strap works on the thole-pin, by binding bits of sailcloth round them.

    The Children of the King 1881

  • The thole-pin had darted overboard, the winder was snatched from

    Old Gold The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig George Manville Fenn 1870

Comments

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  • "...the boats pulled fast across the water, with never a sound but the creak of thwarts and thole-pins and the gurgle of oars."

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Letter of Marque, 104

    February 29, 2008

  • See another usage note on rowlock.

    February 29, 2008

  • This term is still somewhat in use, at least among Boy Scouts, specifically the rowing merit badge.

    February 29, 2008