Caboose (ship's galley)

A caboose stove from an 1891 advertisement.

A caboose (also camboose, coboose, cubboos derived from the Middle Dutch kombuis) is a small ship's kitchen, or galley, located on an open deck.

At one time a small kitchen was called a caboose if aboard a merchantman (or in Canada, on a timber raft[1]), but a galley aboard a warship.[2] The term was sometimes also applied to the cast-iron stove used for cooking on deck[2][3] or in galleys during the early 19th century, as well as an outdoor oven or fireplace.[4]

William Falconer's 1780 A Universal Dictionary of the Marine describes a caboose thus: "a sort of box or house to cover the chimney of some merchant-ships. It somewhat resembles a sentry-box, and generally stands against the barricade on the fore part of the quarter-deck". Sometimes the caboose was portable. Prior to the introduction of the caboose the furnaces for cooking were, aboard three-deckers, placed on the middle deck, and aboard two-decked ships in the forecastle.

  1. ^ Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, HarperCollins Publishers, 2003
  2. ^ a b A Naval Encyclopaedia: comprising a dictionary of nautical words and phrases; biographical notices, and records of naval officers; special articles on naval art and science, written expressly for this work by officers and others of recognized authority in the branches treated by them. Together with descriptions of the principal naval stations and seaports of the world. Lewis R. Hammersly & Co, Philadelphia, 1881.
  3. ^ Webster's Third Unabridged Dictionary
  4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company.