Plymouth has both a Marine Place and a Marine Road and not surprisingly both of them are near the water, and each stands on opposite sides of the Cattewater. In both cases there either are, or have been other related names – Marine Fields, Cottages and House at Coxside and Marine Villas at Oreston.
Time was when both Coxside, or Cattedown, and Oreston were connected by water ferry and when shipbuilding was undertaken in both places, the clear inference being that the context for the word “marine” here is its original and most obvious – “of or belonging to the sea, existing or found in the sea, produced by the sea” (OED). Undoubtedly in the days before the construction of the Breakwater and the docks, wharves and other types of infill, then both areas would have seen material washed up from and by the sea. Our pronunciation of this word is itself thought to have come from across the sea – from France.
