E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Greenlandman’s Galley.
The lowest type of profanity and vulgarity.
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“In my seafaring days the Greenland sailors were notorious for daring and their disrespect of speech, prefacing or ending every sentence with an oath, or some indecent expression. Even in those days [the first quarter of the nineteenth century] a ‘Greenlandman’s Galley’ was proverbially the lowest in the scale of vulgarity.”—C. Thomson: Autobiography, p. 118.
Too low for even a Greenlandman’s Galley. One whose ideas of decency were degraded below even that of a Greenland crew.
