subs. phr. (nautical).—Mr. Nobody. An imaginary personage on board ship created and popularised by Captain Marryat. The epithet has, likewise, passed into a byword as a sarcastic rejoinder to a foolish or incredible story—‘tell that to CHEEKS THE MARINE.’
1833. MARRYAT, Peter Simple, I. vii. I enquired who, and he said, ‘CHEEKS THE MARINE.’
1878–80. JUSTIN MCCARTHY, A History of Our Own Times, II., ch. xiii., p. 15 (1848). CHEEKS THE MARINE was a personage very familiar at that time to the readers of Captain Marryat’s sea stories, and the name of that mythical hero appeared with bewildering iteration in the petition.
1883. W. C. RUSSELL, Sailors’ Language. CHEEKS THE MARINE: an imaginary being in a man-of-war.
