Dictionary.net

• A common sailor: a man before the mast. "The Adventure galley took such quantities of cotton and silk, sugar and coffee, cinnamon and pepper, that the very foremast-men received from a hundred to two hundred pounds each."-Macaulay.

1899 - The american dictionary of the english language.
By Daniel Lyons

• See Before the mast.

1895 - Glossary of terms and phrases
By Henry Percy Smith