skipper v OED ~ v1 (1893); EDD 2 Sh I (1898). To act as master of a boat or vessel.
1960 FUDGE 4 In those early days ... [they] owned a boat or schooner built and skippered by the same man. 1971 HORWOOD 39 She was skippered by Captain Douglas Burden of Carbonear. M 71-117 My grandfather's schooner, The Brisk (he skippered her around 1870), had two masts, with a mainsail, a foresail and a full jib-boom carrying two jibs. 1972 BROWN 56 At eight o'clock in the morning, with the sun at his back, Wes Kean sighted the ships skippered by his father and his brother.
