Others go work the pumps, and with a will:
The pumps! and sharp, look sharp, before she fill!'"
BUMMELO, s. A small fish, abounding on all the coasts of India and the Archipelago; Harpodon nehereus of Buch. Hamilton; the specific name being taken from the Bengali name nehare. The fish is a great delicacy when fresh caught and fried. When dried it becomes the famous Bombay Duck (see [DUCKS, BOMBAY]), which is now imported into England.
The origin of either name is obscure. Molesworth gives the word as Mahratti with the spelling bombīl, or bombīla (p. 595 a). Bummelo occurs in the Supp. (1727) to Bluteau's Dict. in the Portuguese form bambulim, as "the name of a very savoury fish in India." The same word bambulim is also explained to mean 'humas pregas na saya a moda,' 'certain plaits in the fashionable ruff,' but we know not if there is any connection between the two. The form Bombay Duck has an analogy to Digby Chicks which are sold in the London shops, also a kind of dried fish, pilchards we believe, and the name may have originated in imitation of this or some similar English name. [The Digby Chick is said to be a small herring cured in a peculiar manner at Digby, in Lincolnshire: but the Americans derive them from Digby in Nova Scotia; see 8 ser. N. & Q. vii. 247.]
In an old chart of Chittagong River (by B. Plaisted, 1764, published by A. Dalrymple, 1785) we find a point called Bumbello Point.
1673.—"Up the Bay a Mile lies Massigoung, a great Fishing-Town, peculiarly notable for a Fish called Bumbelow, the Sustenance of the Poorer sort."—Fryer, 67.
1785.—"My friend General Campbell, Governor of Madras, tells me that they make Speldings in the East Indies, particularly at Bombay, where they call them Bumbaloes."—Note by Boswell in his Tour to the Hebrides, under August 18th, 1773.
1810.—"The bumbelo is like a large sand-eel; it is dried in the sun, and is usually eaten at breakfast with kedgeree."—Maria Graham, 25.
1813.—Forbes has bumbalo; Or. Mem., i. 53; [2nd ed., i. 36].
1877.—"Bummalow or Bobil, the dried fish still called 'Bombay Duck.'"—Burton, Sind Revisited, i. 68.