Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a sailor.

c.1705		‘The Thing’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) II 124: Jack Tar full of Glee to the Garden will strole, / In search Sirs of something like L--g.
1740		Importance of Jamaica etc. 9: If a Creol should enquire what sort of a Place London is [...] Jack Tar should give him an Account of Wapping.
1770		Midnight Rambler 17: In the purlieus of Wapping, they lord it over their customers like a boatswain over the jack tar.
1781		G. Parker View of Society I 53: Our house in this place was chiefly supported by jack tars.
1785		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘Lyric Odes’ Works I (1794) 114: Sea-captains and the brave jack-tars.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		J. Burrowes Life in St George’s Fields 22: A Jack Tar (as proxy for the chairman,) sung.
1832		Hereford Times 3 Nov. 4/5: Description of a Sailor[...] He is called Jack; but as his taste for rum or tobacco prevails, he is either a Bottle-jack or a Smoke-jack.
1834		Marryat Peter Simple (1911) 254: I never yet knew an officer who prided himself upon his practical knowledge, who was at the same time a good navigator, and too often, by assuming the Jack Tar, they lower the respect due to them.
1841		‘She Sleeps With A Tall Grenadier’ in Gentleman’s Spicey Songster 23: Cried jack tar, who’d just come from sea, / Has any one seen slashing Bet.
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 7 May n.p.: the whip wants to know Why the little Jack tar pays such strict attention to a certain Miss.
1852		G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes II 185: Some of the Jack-tars [...] threatened to go up and thrash the amateur artillerists.
1866		Night Side of N.Y. 30: The masculine element here [i.e. a cheap ‘dance house’] does not consist exclusively of Jack Tars.
1870		Sportsman (London) 16 Feb. 2/1: The hardships they continually endure [...] are ever sufficient, one would fancy, to got poor Jack a modicum of comfort in his put up.
1873		W.H. Thomes Slaver’s Adventures 155: We ain’t going to navigate and run risk for the sake of making the fortens of every Jack tar that thinks he is smart.
1887		W.S. Gilbert ‘The Bumboat Woman’s Story’ Fifty ‘Bab’ Ballads 156: When Jack Tars meet, they meet with a ‘Messmate, ho! What cheer?’.
1890		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 29 Mar. 6/3: [T]he case of Commander McCalla, of the good or otherwise ship Enterprise, opens up a field of thought regarding the treatment of ‘poor Jack Tar’ by his superior officers.
1894		G. du Maurier Trilby 228: Long-shoremen, jack-tars, and what not.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 359: Jack Tar, a sailor.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Feb. 12/3: That Bulletin story of Lady Brassey and the Jack Tars on horseback is perfectly true, except that the heroine was the first Lady Brassey, and the sailors, members of the Sunbeam crew.
1907		Times Dispatch (Richmond, VA) 30 June 35/1: The Jack Tars had been out so long / Upon the bounding Brine.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Sept. 11/1: ’Twould be quite enough to give ’em both the grumps / If the French were in the offing / And their own Jack Tars a-coughing – / Down with measles, influenza or the mumps.
1915		F. Garrett diary 20 Oct. 🌐 Maltese crew. Jack Tars aboard of course.
1922		E. Raymond Tell England (1965) 193: We crept past a great cruiser, whose rails were crowded with Jack Tars.
1933		(con. late 19C) F. Riesenberg Log of Sea 19: A nice new-looking pilot jacket, recently hocked by a jack tar.
1948		J. Archibald ‘Photo Finish for a Dame’ in Popular Detective Mar. 🌐 The blue suit she wore [...] had enough material in it to clothe all the jack-tars on a flat-top.
1979		F. Kelly Annals of Ballykilferret 22: A warship [...] anchored far out in Dublin Bay [...] and a small craft put out from her, rowed by two jack-tars.
1987		P. Muldoon ‘7, Middagh St: Chester’ cited in Meeting the British n.p.: Among the miscellaneous / Jack Tars / I met last week in a Sands Street bar / I came on one whose uncircumcised dong’s / sand-vein was a seam of beryl.
1999		Indep. on Sun. Travel 27 June 4: A team of sea-shanty-driven [...] jolly Jack Tars.
2000		J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 257: You and your pals tortured a jolly-jack-tar boat trader to death.
2012		D. O’Donnell Locked Ward (2013) 327: A spinach-chewing, pipe-smoking, craggy Jack Tar.

2. a hornpipe.

1984

Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 609/1: ca. 1820–90.