Definition of "winedark"

And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway.

1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […]

Mr. Fitts, who took his A.B. at Harvard in 1925, is Instructor in English at Phillips Academy, Andover.Palamedes: A Mystical ColloquyPeacock-shooting once on the Essex marsheswith David McCord, hunched in that cold blind,at first my literal mindcould only gape at what treasure the winedark sea,or its winedark inscrutable backwash, had cast upat our frozen feet — an inscription, a kind of kenning,blazed on an oar-blade: haddock hateth hake.'An inscrutable, winedark message ...'

1961, Harvard Alumni Bulletin: volume 64‎, page 20

Sailing on a winedark open sea.

1993, Paul McCartney, Winedark Open Sea, on the album Off The Ground