sack2 n also sac. Phr in sack: laden with supplies or cargo. Attrib, comb ~ boat, ~ boat system.
1689 English Pilot 14 [St John's is] the chiefest in the New-found-land for the Number of Ships used and employed in Fishing, and for Sacks, as also for the number of Inhabitants here dwelling and remaining all the Year. [(1703) 1963-4 Nfld Qtly lxiii (4), 10 [Lahontan memoir] If...there should not come so great a number to Placentia in Saque (Sack), that is to say with Goods, they would find as much Profit in it as in Trading with Commodities which are prejudicial to the Health of the Inhabitants.] 1732 Calendar State Papers Amer. & W. Indies 225 Which fish they sell to the British sack ships, for bills of exchange. [O Sup2] 1986 A People of the Sea (ed Jamieson) 94 By the 1680s and 1690s the [Channel] Islands were also engaged in sending a small number of 'sac' ships to Newfoundland whose purpose was to purchase fish that had already been caught. The 'sac-boat system,' as has been pointed out, 'involved a more highly complex capitalist system than the operations of the fishing captains who caught their own fish yearly and bartered it cheaply for continental goods.'
