1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bumboat

BUMBOAT, a small boat which carries vegetables, provisions, &c., to ships lying in port or off the shore. The word is probably connected with the Dutch bumboat or boomboot, a broad Dutch fishing-boat, the derivation of which is either from boom, cf. Ger. baum, a tree, or from bon, a place in which fish is kept alive, and boot, a boat. It appears first in English in the Trinity House By-laws of 1685 regulating the scavenging boats attending ships lying in the Thames.