0 the number of people or the amount of something that can be transported by a boat:
One day, he saves a boatload of gunpowder from sabotage.
According to this legend a boatload of women and children was wrecked on the reef and their cries can still be heard from time to time in the wind.
We receive regular reports of the interception of boatloads of migrants; as a rule, these people are first brought to shore and taken care of.
I was in a fishing port not long ago and saw a couple of boatloads of fish come in.
Boatloads of directors arrive for meetings to satisfy the requirement that a company is deemed to be managed and controlled where the directors meet.
Before that boatloads of young foals were shipped abroad, ostensibly for riding, but most of them were for meat, and that trade was stopped.
They were sent down by boatloads without the slightest attempt at proper care, and no one, or next to it, to attend them in the boat.
Four boatloads of soldiers were despatched at night, though the sailors who rowed there were extremely pessimistic as to their chances.
