See quot. 1844.
1844. I have been snagged once and on fire twice, but a two days’ race with bully-boats combines every sort of pleasing excitement. It were well to inform you that a bully-boat, means a boat that beats every thing on those [Mississippi] waters, and performs her trips in an astonishingly short space of time.—Watmough, ‘Scribblings and Sketches,’ p. 181.
1846. Our “bully” boat sped away like a bird.—W. T. Porter, ed., ‘A Quarter Race in Kentucky,’ etc., p. 126.
