The AI-powered English dictionary
plural leadsmen
(obsolete) lodesman (a leader or guide)
(nautical) A sailor who takes soundings with a lead, measuring the depth of water. quotations examples
In the same moment the leadsman hove the lead, and, finding it directly take the ground, he, in his fright, called out, ‘There's only three fathom.’
1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 205