Bowling.

Tom Bowling. The type of a model sailor in Smollett’s Roderick Random. (To rhyme with rolling.)

⁂ The Tom Bowling referred to in Dibdin’s famous sea-song was Captain Thomas Dibdin, brother of Charles Dibdin, who wrote the song, and father of Dr. Dibdin, the bibliomaniac.

“Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling,

The darling of the crew.”

Dibdin.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.