Nantucket Sleigh Ride Meaning

(idiomatic, by extension) A similar scenario involving a large fish.

Example: 1905 Dec. 31, A. B. Hawser, "My Nantucket sleigh ride," Boston Globe, p. SM10 (retrieved 22 August 2013):
  If we can fasten a good fish tomorrow when you are with us," said the captain of the New Bedford whaling bark Morning Star to me, "I will try to give you a Nantucket sleigh ride."
2007 July 29, Bruce Barcott, "In the Shadow of Moby-Dick," New York Times (retrieved 22 August 2013):
  [The] crew pushed out in a small boat and pierced the whale with a harpoon attached to a rope secured to the boat. Then it was hang on for your life. “A whale barreling along at the surface would take the men on the proverbial Nantucket sleigh ride, a bone-jarring, terrifying and, at times, no doubt exhilarating trip over the waves,” Dolin writes.
1974, Peter Benchley, Jaws (2012 Random House edition), ISBN 9780307828668, p. 89 (Google preview):
  They said they planned to hook the shark with a gaff and go for a "Nantucket sleigh ride."
2002 August 26, Stephen C. Sautner, "Outdoors: Just in the Nick of Time, A Largemouth Bass Bites," New York Times (retrieved 22 August 2013):
  Still fresh in my mind was the 15-pound striped bass that took me on a miniature Nantucket sleigh ride around Sandy Hook Bay last fall.

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