Green’s Dictionary of Slang

tarry-breeks n.

also tarry brecks, tarry jacket
[lit. ‘tarry breeches’; tar n.1 (1)]

a sailor.

[UK]W. Forbes Dominie Deposed 14: For tarry-breeks should ay gae free.
[Scot]Burns ‘A Dream’ in Poetical Works (1871) 43: Young, royal Tarry Breeks, I learn, Ye’ve lately come athwart her.
[US]N. Ames Mariner’s Sketches 174: The ‘tarry jackets! kept their skins tolerably well filled with good liquor.
[UK] ‘Who Milked My Cow?’ Bentley’s Misc. Jan. 69: ‘I was never accused of such a thing, please your honour, before, sir,’ said tarrybrecks.
[UK]C. Kingsley Westward Ho III 296: No old tarry-breeks of a sea-dog, like thy dad!
[UK]Cheshire Obs. 15 Mar. 3/2: ‘Young Royal Tarry-breeks,’ William had been jocularly called by Robert Burns fifty years before when there was a popular belief that he would [...] become a stout sailor.
[UK]Pall Mall Gaz. 9 July 4/2: Shakespeare had overheard in the theatre some tarry-breeks narrating his adventures.
[UK]Lichfield Mercury 13 Apr. 8/4: Of the earlier sailor princes [...] there was none so popular as Prince William Henry [...] ‘the jolly young tarry-breeks’.
[UK]Western Dly Press 9 July 12/6: There would be brown-faced, horn-fisted tarry-breeks aloft on the yards.