Since the mid eighteenth century, the kitchen of a war ship has been called the galley, while that of a merchant ship has been called the caboose. The origin of the word galley is unknown, but caboose derives from the Dutch kabuis, a shortened form of kaban huis, meaning cabin house. In the mid nineteenth century, caboose was borrowed by North American railroad workers as a name for the last car of a freight train, the car containing limited facilities for cooking a meal.