crowd sail

verb

crowd sail

verb

1

Nautical, Transport Dated, Idiomatic To carry an unusual amount of sail in an attempt to accelerate the speed of a vessel.

the Spaniards busied themselves in making the most of a sudden favourable change of wind, and, without much regard to order, were crowding sail to get near the land.1827, William James, The Naval History of Great Britain […] :

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.