Q: "Nantucket coach"?

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

There is a term "Nantucket sleighride" "Nantucket sleigh-ride"
"Nantucket sleigh ride" that may help to illuminate "Nantucket coach"
or it may be unrelated.

The OED has an entry for it:
Nantucket sleigh ride, n.
U.S. slang
  Esp. among whalers: the towing of a boat by a harpooned whale or
shark; an instance of this.
1835   F. Warriner Cruise Potomac xxv. 311   ‘Now for a Nantucket
sleigh ride!’ and away went the little boat in the direction of the
line of the harpoon.

Wikipedia has an entry for Nantucket sleighride
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nantucket_sleighride

I originally heard of the term Nantucket Sleighride because it was
used as an album title in the 1970s by the rock band Mountain.

Garson

On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 11:15 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Q: "Nantucket coach"?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In his 1824-1827 story "Peter Rugg, the Missing Man," William Austin
> writes "The chair in which Rugg sat was very capacious, evidently
> made for service and calculated to last for ages. The timber would
> supply material for three modern carriages. This chair, like a
> Nantucket coach, would answer for everything that ever went on wheels."
> http://tinyurl.com/c7xhtp3
>
> What is a "Nantucket coach"?  I have not found any explanation, or
> even instances, not counting Austin's tale and various coaches of
> Nantucket sports teams.  Except for one -- Alain Geoffroy claims,
> referring to Austin's use, that it is "a local expression used to
> designate a whaleboat tugged by the whale once the harpoon has been
> stuck into the animal."
> http://laboratoires.univ-reunion.fr/oracle/documents/from_peter_rugg_to_paul_revere.html
>
> Geoffroy's source is -- 'Zimbalatti refers to the phrase as a
> "Nantucketism." "A Nantucket coach is not a type of stagecoach, but a
> reference to a whale. . . . Nantucket whalers referred to the upper
> jaw of a whale as both a 'coach' and a 'sleigh.' . . . Austin merely
> substitutes the synonymous term 'coach' for 'sleigh'
> (127).'  Zimbalatti = Zimbalatti, Joseph A.. Anti-Calvinist Allegory:
> A Critical Edition of William Austin's "Peter Rugg, the Missing Man,"
> Ph.D., (Fordham University, N.Y., 1992).  I don't know what
> Zimbalatti's authority is.
>
> OED2 s.v. "sleigh" has sense 3, with the single quotation
> 1874   C. M. Scammon Marine Mammals N. Amer. viii. 75   Next to and
> above the bone of the upper jaw (which is termed the 'coach' or 'sleigh').
>
> Geoffroy seems to have morphed Scammon's "coach" and Zimbalatti's
> "Nantucket coach" from a part of a (Nantucket) whale into a
> (Nantucket) whaling boat tugged by a whale.
>
> Joel
>
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