Definition of "deckhand"

Sometimes actors set props on the spikes, or sometimes a deckhand will do it, depending on the action of the play.

2020, John Ramsey Holloway, Zachary Stribling, Illustrated Theatre Production Guide, page 15

You deckhand for Old Sam in the summer, you guide climbers up the Big Bump in the spring, you can skin a Cat, mine for gold, butcher a moose, fix an engine.

1999, Dana Stabenow, Hunter's Moon

I deckhanded on a fish boat for four years and knew no fisherman likes to be called out of the blue and have his numbers demanded!

2004, Stephen Hume, A Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Farming, page 210

Years later, I met a guy who had deckhanded on her after I did, and he was a little more equivocal.

2011, Bruce Burrows, The River Killers, page 16

Larry ran a tugboat company from there, and sometimes my brother and I deckhanded for him.

2017, Claire Dederer, Love and Trouble: Memoirs of a Former Wild Girl