Definition of "chips"

But the Saturday-night bottles were not all. The carpenter and cooper, in sea parlance, Chips and Bungs, who were the "Cods," or leaders of the forecastle, in some way or other, managed to obtain an extra supply […]

1847 March 30, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; […], London: John Murray, […]

I began a new branch of experience by going to sea as a 'chips.'

1929, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 144, page 462