Definition of "sailer"

She is the best sailer in the service, and she carries a hundred guns.

1880, Thomas Hardy, chapter 34, in The Trumpet-Major‎

The Gulnare was a fast sailer, built for a slaver originally[.]

1887, Mrs. Dominic D. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 14

Elsewhere it has been said that in the lack of frigates (of course better sailers than line-of-battle ships) in the English squadron up the Straits at that period, the Indomitable was occasionally employed not only as an available substitute for a scout, but at times on detached service of more important kind.

1924, Herman Melville, chapter 16, in Billy Budd‎, London: Constable & Co.

The records of Stepney parish note the burial of Henry Rainsford "an old sailer sometyme beadle of Ratclife and now a pencioner."

2002, Cheryl A. Fury, Tides in the Affairs of Men