roadstead

Early 1700s road +‎ stead.

roadstead (plural roadsteads)

1. (nautical) A partly-sheltered anchorage; a stretch of water near the shore where vessels may ride at anchor, but with less protection than a harbour.
   • 1798, George Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World, London: G.G. and J. Robinson, Vol. I, Chapter V, p. 248,

     The shores of Protection island form on its south side, which is about two miles long, a most excellent roadstead, and a channel into port Discovery, near 2 miles wide on either side […]

   • 1913, D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, New York: Viking, Chapter IX, p. 248,

     Clusters of strong flowers rose everywhere above the coarse tussocks of bent. It was like a roadstead crowded with tall fairy-shipping.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 3,

     […] that was the time when at the mast-heads of the three-deckers and seventy-fours moored in her own roadstead […] the blue-jackets, to be numbered by thousands, ran up with huzzas the British colors with the union and cross wiped out […]

   • 1992, Leonard Y. Andaya, "Interactions with the Outside World and Adaptation in Southeast Asian Society, 1500-1800" in Nicholas Tarling (ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 1, p. 349,

     In 1620 junks began to arrive from China depositing hundreds of migrants, and with the resumption of China's official trade to Southeast Asia in 1683, the numbers of junks arriving annually in Batavia's roadstead grew from an average of three or four to about twenty.

• road (sense 3)

• roadstead on Wikipedia.Wikipedia