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Bilge   Listen
noun
Bilge  n.  
1.
The protuberant part of a cask, which is usually in the middle.
2.
(Naut.) That part of a ship's hull or bottom which is broadest and most nearly flat, and on which she would rest if aground.
3.
Bilge water.
Bilge free (Naut.), stowed in such a way that the bilge is clear of everything; said of a cask.
Bilge pump, a pump to draw the bilge water from the gold of a ship.
Bilge water (Naut.), water which collects in the bilge or bottom of a ship or other vessel. It is often allowed to remain till it becomes very offensive.
Bilge ways, the timbers which support the cradle of a ship upon the ways, and which slide upon the launching ways in launching the vessel.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bilge" Quotes from Famous Books



... them, however, imagine a small and dirty cabin, into which no one is admitted save by the companion-door and a small sky-light that cannot be opened in rough weather—let them imagine, if they can, the "villanous compound of smells," produced by confined air, the flavour of bilge water, agitated in the hold of the ship, and diffused through every creaking crevice, and pitch, and effluvia of rancid salt meat and broth, and the products of universal sea-sickness, altogether inevitable in such circumstances—let ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... to be stove in, or suffer serious injury in the bilge, which is the bottom part of ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter

... feebly at the corpse—"O'Brien were his name—a rank Irelander—this man and me got the canvas on her, meaning for to sail her back. Well, he's dead now, he is—as dead as bilge; and who's to sail this ship I don't see. Without I gives you a hint, you ain't that man, as far's I can tell. Now, look here, you gives me food and drink, and a old scarf or ankercher to tie my wound up, you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Its red bilge flung the spray aloft as it towed rapidly toward him. Ten yards away it came to a sudden stop. The swordfish was either dead ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... was safe enough, where all was weed and weft, And the conger-eels were a-making meals, and the pick of the tackle left Was a binnacle-lid and a leak in the bilge and the chip of a cracked sheerstrake And the corporal's belt and the moke's cool pelt and a portrait ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... single noticeable incident. The weather has been cold, damp, and foggy, with light head winds and a heavy swell; we have been confined closely to our seven-by-nine after-cabin; and its close, stifling atmosphere, redolent of bilge-water, lamp oil, and tobacco smoke, has had a most depressing influence upon our spirits. I am glad to see, however, that all our party are up today, and that there is a faint interest manifested in the prospect of dinner; but ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... subtle leaks in the topsides that none could stop. The hold accumulated filth, for in many ships the ship's refuse was swept on to the ballast, where it bred pestilence, typhus fever and the like. The bilge-water reeked and rotted in the bilges, filling the whole ship with its indescribable stench. Beetles, rats and cockroaches bred and multiplied in the crannies, until (as in Captain Cook's case two centuries later), they made ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... drink? Well, suit yourself." As the lights of the den dimmed and one wall swooshed smoothly into the ceiling. "My theatre ... The usual tri-di stereo, of course, but I've had a couple of the new tight beams installed to channel Moon and Mars on the cube. Much better than the usual staged bilge. Say, that reminds me, a couple hours ago Mars projector had a scanner on one of the exploration parties caught out in a psychosonic storm. Jove, did they wriggle! Even in atomsuits they were better than Messalina Magdalen working on her last G-string. Here, I'll switch ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro

... the ship in her course by night sends a ripple back alongside of the whale, the creature seeing the foam fancies there is something to eat afloat, and makes a rush forward, whereby it often shall stave in some part of the ship). In such case the water that enters the leak flows to the bilge, which is always kept clear; and the mariners having ascertained where the damage is, empty the cargo from that compartment into those adjoining, for the planking is so well fitted that the water cannot pass ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... was reached by removing the cabin steps. The tempted man entered this contracted and low apartment with the lamp in his hand. He found a narrow aperture, which led to the space under the cabin floor, where the ballast was deposited, and over which a board had been nailed to prevent the odor of bilge water from penetrating the apartment of the passengers. He removed this board, and reaching down into the hold, placed the bags in a position where they were not likely to be discovered, even by a person searching for them. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... about it. Some of these here land-sharks had trimmed me from top-gallant mast to bilge keel. They cleaned me out and left me high and dry. So when I see that 'ad' I says to myself, says, I, there's ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... sleepers. The beams shewed like the curved fingers, and the heel of the bowsprit like the point of the in-turned thumb, a faint soul-killing rock of kerosene filled it, intensifying, after the fashion of ambergris, all the other perfumes, without losing in power. Bilge, tobacco and humanity, you cannot know what these things are till they are married with the reek of kerosene, with the grunts and snores of weary men, with lamplight dimmed with smoke haze; with the heave and fall of the sea; the ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... rest. You can hang any word you please to its tail, and make it mean anything you want to. You can begin with SCHLAG-ADER, which means artery, and you can hang on the whole dictionary, word by word, clear through the alphabet to SCHLAG-WASSER, which means bilge-water—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... were within a foot of the water; and the large floe-piece which was still alongside of her, seemed alone to support her below water, and to prevent her falling over still more considerably. The ship had been forced much farther up the beach than before, and she had now in her bilge above nine feet of water, which reached higher than the lower-deck beams. On looking down the stern-post, which, seen against the light-coloured ground, and in shoal water, was now very distinctly visible, we found that she had ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... brute in a seaway, but she keeps dry at both ends," assented the fellow, utterly ignoring my meaning. "It's always so with every hooker if she's deep. Some takes it forrad and aft, and some takes it amidships. It's all one s'long as she keeps a dry bilge. Come aboard." ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... Brasses Fill Up Main Engine Feed Pump and Bilge Rams Open and Scale After Port Boiler Main Circulator Impeller to Examine Hydrokineter Valve on Centre Boiler to ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... I nearly paid dearly for my rashness in boating. My boat was once capsized in a moment in a squall, and Hannibal and myself were soused in the water before we knew what had happened. I caught hold of the bilge of the boat, and nearly drowned myself with laughing at the Son of Amilcar, who was splashing about shrieking with terror, and swallowing quarts of salt-water, as his open mouth popped every moment under a wave. In vain I called to him to come to ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... continuance has worn on the spirit. You beat all day to windward against the tide toward what should be but an hour's sail: the sea is high and the spray cold; there are sunken rocks, and food there is none; chill gray evening draws dangerously near, and there is a foot of water in the bilge. You have swallowed your tongue twenty times on the alkali; and the sun is melting hot, and the dust dry and pervasive, and there is no water, and for all your effort the relative distances seem to remain the same for days. You have ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... Blackwall, which singularly corroborated his views as to the strength of wrought-iron beams of large dimensions. When this vessel was being launched, the cleet on the bow gave way, in consequence of the bolts breaking, and let the vessel down so that the bilge came in contact with the wharf, and she remained suspended between the water and the wharf for a length of about 110 feet, but without any injury to the plates of the ship; satisfactorily proving the great strength of this form of construction. Thus, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... all around her, it would be impossible to get her afloat again without lightening. So long as the wind did not blow, and the sea did not rise, she was safe enough; but a swell that should force the hull to rise and fall would inevitably cause her to bilge. These facts were learned in five minutes after the yawl was in the water, and much did Raoul rejoice at having so promptly sent Ithuel in quest of the felucca. The rocks were next reconnoitred, in order to ascertain what ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... station is done on wagons or motor trucks equipped with a rack that permits the barrels being carried lying down, but supported at each end of the barrel so that the weight of the barrel does not come upon the bilge. They can be so racked up that one wagon will carry fifty-five barrels. A three-ton truck will carry forty barrels of apples and haul forty more on trailer. Such an outfit in one of my orchards makes five trips in one day a distance of four miles, traversing forty miles and carrying ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... my new associates were absent on duty; the 'tween-decks was crammed with casks and cases, and chests, and bags, and hammocks; the noise of the caulkers was resumed over my head and all around me; the stench of bilge-water, combining with the smoke of tobacco, the effluvia of gin and beer, the frying of beef-steaks and onions, and red herrings—the pressure of a dark atmosphere and a heavy shower of rain, all conspired to oppress my spirits, and render me the most ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... noticed a great quantity of broken ice sinking and rising in the dark green curls of the billows, and big blocks would be hurled on to the schooner's bed and then be swept off, sometimes fetching the bilge such a thump as seemed to swing a bellow through her frame. It was only at intervals, however, that water fell upon the decks, for the ice broke the beat of the moderating surge and forced it to expend its weight in spume, which there ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... and, to avoid the labour which would have attended her being launched in the usual manner, Mr. Raven, the master of the Britannia, offered his own services and the assistance of his ship to lay her down upon her bilge, and put her into the water on rollers. This mode having been adopted, in the forenoon of Wednesday the 24th of this month she was safely let down upon the rollers, and by dusk, with the assistance of the Britannia, was hove down to low-water mark, whence, at a quarter before eight o'clock, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... those who wish to know what the water at Godar-i-Chah is like without having the trouble of going there. "Take the first nasty-looking water you can find. Mix salt with it until it tastes as nasty as it looks, then impregnate it with gas from a London street lamp, and add a little bilge-water, shake vigorously and it is ready for use." Major McMahon also testifies to the accuracy of the above receipt, but, he adds, "it was not nearly so bad as ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... companionway, ropes creaked in complaining pulleys, blocks rattled, hoisting-engines coughed and strangled, while all the air was redolent of oakum, of pitch, of paint, of spices, of ripe fruit, of clean cool lumber, of coffee, of tar, of bilge, and the brisk, nimble ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... more of them a-coming into the world that way, without being sent for!" and she opened a second, and out came a second flock, with a "Chick, chick, chick!" and another, and another, till she pulled them all out. The cabin floor was chockful of them; for the heat and confined bilge air had hatched all the eggs that were in the ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee

... with its coarseness and drudgery, its inadequate pay, its evil-smelling food, its maggoty bread, its beer drawn from casks that once had held oil or fish, its stinking salt-meat barrels, the hideous stench of the bilge-water—all this could in one sense be no worse than his sufferings in jail. In spite of self-control, jail had been to him the degradation of his hopes, the humiliation ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... about a dozen pounds each through sweating about in the sun after Jackson's drives, perhaps they'll stick on less side about things in general in future. Besides, I want an innings against that bilge of old Downing's, if I ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... and for travelling parties of his own over the ice, Captain Kellett was to leave a depot at Assistance Bay, some thirty miles only from Beechey Island. In nearing for that purpose the "Resolute" grounded, was left with but seven feet of water, the ice threw her over on her starboard bilge, and she was almost lost. Not quite lost, however, or we should not be telling her story. At midnight she was got off, leaving sixty feet of her false keel behind. Captain Kellett forged on in her,—left a depot here and ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... subject upon which he was an authority, having served in a ship twenty-five years old with rotten boilers and perishing frames. And all unwittingly he became reminiscent and drifted into the story of a gale in the Bristol Channel with the empty ship rolling till she showed her bilge keels, the propeller with its boss awash thrashing the sea with lunatic rage, and then the three of us swaying and sweating on the boiler-tops, a broken main-steam pipe lying under our feet. And it had to be done, for the tide and the current ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... hotly. Some of its branches should trail over an old, lichened and weather-stained stone wall, dropping their fruit into the highway for thirsty pedestrians. There should be a little path running athwart it, down toward the lake and the old flat-bottomed boat, whose bilge is scattered with the black and shriveled remains of angleworms used for bait. In warm August afternoons the sweet savor of ripening drifts warmly on the air, and there rises the drowsy hum of wasps exploring ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... footing as the ship heaved beneath him, his hands were yanked from the icy rail and he went stumbling to the deck. The bilge water was new coldness on his drenched clothes. He struggled back to his feet, leaning on a rower's bench and wishing miserably that his quaking stomach had more to lose. But he had already chucked his ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson

... and frog-coloured appearance; and within an hour the number of those on deck was lessened by one half. I was giddy, but not sick; and the giddiness soon went away, but left a feverishness and want of appetite, which I attributed, in great measure, to the "saeva mephitis" of the bilge-water; and it was certainly not decreased by the exportations from the cabin. However, I was well enough to join the able-bodied passengers, one of whom observed, not inaptly, that Momus might have discovered ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... water fresh from the marsh. We did the same to make the wine go further, and at last we drank. It was the vilest wine the chemists of Hamburg ever made, though German education favours chemistry; and the water tasted like the bilge of Charon's boat. But it was liquid, and when we had drained the tins—I will not say to the dregs, for Hamburg wine has no dregs—M. Jacques lay back with a sigh and said, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... have fared well as to food and drink, and his clothing, if nothing to boast of in respect of cut or cloth, and though wrinkled and stretched with constant wear, was tolerably clean—unstained by bilge, grease, or coal smuts, as it must have been had the man been hiding in the hold or bunkers, those traditional refuges of your ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... by the National Apple Shippers' Association and made law in New York State has a length of stave of twenty-eight and one-half inches and a diameter of head of seventeen and one-eighth inches. The outside circumference of the bilge is sixty-four inches and the distance between the heads is twenty-six inches. It contains one hundred quarts dry measure. The staves are mostly made of elm, pine, and red gum, and the heads principally of pine with some beech and maple. In most apple growing sections barrels ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... of men to the work of unlading; a heaving of ropes, winding of cables, shouts, curses, the rattling of carts on the piers, the tinkle of bells on the cars, the roar of escaping steam, the scream of whistles, and the foul smells of garbage and bilge-water. He watched the men at their work, he saw the passengers come out, with sleepy eyes and sodden faces, and take their departure. He too must go—but where? He wandered off the pier in a maze. Where should he go? what should ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... &c adj.; debasement, depression, prostration &c (horizontal) 213; depression &c (concave) 252. molehill; lowlands; basement floor, ground floor; rez de chaussee [Fr.]; cellar; hold, bilge; feet, heels. low water; low tide, ebb tide, neap tide, spring tide. V. be low &c adj.; lie low, lie flat; underlie; crouch, slouch, wallow, grovel; lower &c (depress) 308. Adj. low, neap, debased; nether, nether most; flat, level with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... toward the warships, four of which had by this time been sent to destruction—one of which had appeared to vanish utterly in the space of a single heartbeat, so quickly that for a second or two the shape of its bilge, the bulge of its keel, was visible in the face of the deep—and openly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... upon me. I flew to him and raised him up. He was drunk—beastly drunk—he could no longer either stand, speak, or see. His eyes were perfectly glazed; and as I let him go in the extremity of my despair, he rolled like a mere log into the bilge-water, from which I had lifted him. It was evident that, during the evening, he had drunk far more than I suspected, and that his conduct in bed had been the result of a highly-concentrated state of intoxication—a state which, like madness, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... hydroplane of the Interstate people, was twenty feet long and had a fuel gauge and a bilge pump. ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood

... said a big centrifugal bilge-pump. "I had an idea that you were employed to clean decks and things with. At least, I've used you for that more than once. I forget the precise number, in thousands, of gallons which I am guaranteed to throw per hour; but I assure you, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... among rocks, but the revenue people got the keg. By that time the cutter was alongside us, and so they wouldn't get the little Christmas keg I had tucked away for John Rose I pulled the plug out of it in no time and let it drain into her bilge. And that was an awful waste of good liquor, and I knew John Rose would grieve when ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... he say the blasphemy man meant? Oh, I don't know; some bilge, just as he used to about the masters. You know the man talked some rubbish about how the State couldn't have it both ways—couldn't blaspheme against God by flatly denying that all men were equal and basing all its legislation on keeping one class up and the other class ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... steward drew a brace, and to it fitted a half- inch bit from his hip-pocket. On his knees, he bored through the head of the first cask until the water rushed out upon the deck and flowed down into the bilge. He worked quickly, boring cask after cask down the alleyway that led to deeper twilight. When he had reached the end of the first row of casks he paused a moment to listen to the gurglings of the many half-inch streams ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... that hole in Dublin where there isn't even a Boat Race, and the least you can do is to come and have a good time here. I can't think why Irish people want to be Irish. It seems so damn silly. Gilbert's writing a play. He has done about a page and a half of it, and it's most awful bilge. He keeps on reading it out to me. He read some of it to me last night when I was brushing my teeth which is a damn dangerous thing to do, and I had to clout his head severely for him. He is a chap. He got poor Mary into a row on Sunday. We took him to church with us, and when the Vicar ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... seemed to pity my miserable condition, gravely assured me that exercise was a capital thing as a preventive or cure for seasickness, and advised me to try the pump. I followed his advice: a few strokes brought up the bilge water, than which nothing at that time could have been more insufferably nauseous! I left the pump in disgust, and retiring to the after part of the quarter-deck, threw myself down on a coil of rope, unable longer to struggle with my fate. There I remained unnoticed and uncared ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... come in here?" he said. "There's only the usual bilge in the sheet, nothing to telephone the fat slob about. Yet ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt

... compass, but the great vessel never gelling afloat with its freight of nations and their rulers;—and now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... continue the range on each side, until the furnace is completely covered in, leaving a small hole for the flue leading to the chimney behind, leaning towards the side, from which the flue is to be started, to proceed round the bilge of the still, which passage must be ten by four ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry

... and his gang—and was littered with tin plates, pannikins, fragments of food, and empty and broken bottles; while its atmosphere was foul with foetid odours, prominent among which were those of bilge-water and cockroaches! Three of the bunks in the lower tier were occupied—two of the occupants lying quiet and still, while the third moved restlessly at intervals, emitting low moans the while—and four men, evidently hurt, reclined upon the deck, with their backs propped ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... awoke, so deep had been his slumber that he could not recall for a moment where he was. The tiller was unmanned, the stars shone in the cabin hatchway, a cold bilge-water draft blew through the old hulk, and, as he dragged himself up the steps, he saw tall woods near by, and heard the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... with a horrible birr. At such times, the vessel has a double motion, pitching and rolling, and thereby occasioning an inexpressibly sickly feeling. Then, when the weather is hot, there is the steam of heated oil wafted up from the engine-room, which, mingled with the smell of bilge, and perhaps cooking, is anything but agreeable or appetizing. I must also acknowledge that a second-class berth, which I had taken, is not comparable in point of comfort to a first; not only as regards the company, but as regards ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... I had my whole wits) riveted my attention, and held me staring open-mouthed, as though in good truth the apparition of the devil had risen before me, was the body of a ship leaning on its bilge, at not more than a gunshot from where I stood, looking toward the interior. When my eyes first went to the thing I could not believe them. I imagined it some trick of the volcanic explosion that had fashioned ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... cord laces a straw rope against the inside of the seam, and this apparently swells when wet and gives elasticity and play, and keeps out a considerable amount of water. But I see there's a good deal of baling done, and the baggage, with the water in bilge and spray over all, must get wet outside at least—Fixed up about cabins for Rangoon, lunched at our hotel, the Connemara, then hired a gharry or victoria—I'm not sure which the conveyance we hired by the week should be called—and drove ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... old fool, but was tipsy, and in no temper to reason with. The situation of the brig was safe enough as far as ocean and weather went; nothing could hurt her as she lay mud-cradled on her fat bilge. We clewed up and let the canvas hang by its rigging, and then dropped the anchor; after which old Bunk and the others cleaned themselves up and got the boat over, and went away in her, singing songs, leaving me and William to ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

... miserable. Their boat constantly shipped water, and they had to use the hand force pump, which, fortunately, was in the craft. A pump was connected with the cylinder cooling apparatus, designed to free the cockpit of bilge water, but ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... blowing hard from N.N.W. The motion of the vessel increased the leakage, and it was now found that there were holes in all the three boilers. Two men were set to work the pumps, one or two of the passengers also assisting, but as fast as the water was pumped into the boilers it poured out again. The bilge was so full of steam and boiling water that the firemen could not get to the fires. Still the steamer struggled on, laboring heavily, for the sea was running very high. At midnight they were off St. Abbs Head, when the engineers reported that the case was ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... lower part of the well might have been lined with a first quality of common brick and saved some expense and been just as good. The form of the well shown in Fig. 3 is 7 feet in diameter in the bilge, exclusive of the lining of brick and ashes. Experiments in this vicinity have proved this to be the best, this contraction toward the top being absolutely necessary, the expansion of the stone by the heat is so great that the lime cannot be drawn from perpendicular walls, as ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... as I lay in my coffin, idly watching the dim lamp swinging to the rolling of the ship, and snuffing the nauseous odors of bilge water, I felt something gallop over me. I turned out promptly. However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presently something galloped over me once more. I knew it was not a rat this time, and I thought it might be a centipede, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... swirl, Pele-honua-mea o'ermounts them; The god rides the waves, sails about the island; The host of little gods ride the billows; 15 Malau takes his seat; One bales out the bilge of the craft. Who shall sit astern, be steersman, O, princes? Pele of the yellow earth. The splash of the paddles dashes ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... no luxurious, steam-propelled hotels in the Canadian trade at this time, and loaded deep with railway metal as she was, the vessel slopped in the green seas everywhere, and rolled her streaming sides out almost to her bilge. She shivered and rattled horribly when her single screw swung clear and the ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... in a bit too near, my son. The bilge chocks is both pulled off; look you, they're gone away astern." And, sure enough, two long planks drifted away behind the boat. They had been torn off by the force with which she rushed upon the outlying rock. Tommy said, "Let's have another reef in, mates." But before ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... world. Occasionally the jinrikisha dashes up a little bank and across a bridge that spans a canal and one catches a glimpse of long lines of house boats, with dim lights, nestling under overhanging balconies. Overall is that penetrating odor of the Far East, mingled with the smell of bilge water and the reek of thousands of sweating human beings. These smells are of the earth earthy and they led one to dream that night of weird and terrible creatures such as De Quincey paints in his Confessions of ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... was 883 feet long, 92 1/2 feet broad; her height from keel to bridge was 104 feet. She had 8 steel decks, a cellular double bottom, 5 1/4 feet through (the inner and outer "skins" so-called), and with bilge keels projecting 2 feet for 300 feet of her length amidships. These latter were intended to lessen the tendency to roll in a sea; they no doubt did so very well, but, as it happened, they proved to be a ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... suffocating sensation in my breast and throat, as if my ribs were being compressed inwardly, and my lungs had not room enough to expand and let me breathe. My nostrils were filled with a nauseating smell—the smell of "bilge-water"—for being at the bottom of the hold, I was close to the latter, and could hear it "jabbling" about under the timbers, where no doubt it had lain for a long time. In all these symptoms I had no difficulty in telling what ailed me: sea-sickness—nothing more. Knowing this, I ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... is the bilge-water, Sir," replied Ingram. "People who are ill and weak always are annoyed by it; but I think, Sir, if you would take a little gruel, and then go to sleep again, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... Her bilge abaft under the mizzen-chains was just awash; and, the water, deepening from here, as the shore shelved somewhat abruptly, was about the depth of four fathoms or thereabouts by the rudder post, where the bottom could be seen, of soft, shining white sand, without a ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... says he, "but then bilge-water never is, you'll mind. But you'll grow used to it in time, shipmate, unless, instead o' swallowing this unholy reek you'll swallow your pride and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... moment, and seizing the cask, proceeded to attach to it a strong line. He broke a bit from a fishing-rod, secured the line round the middle of it with a notch, put the stick through the bunghole in the bilge, and corked up the hole with a net-float. Happily he had a knife in his pocket. He then joined strong lines together until he thought he had length enough, secured the last end to a bar of the grate, and knocked out both sashes of the window with an axe. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... "Count the number of people who must necessarily be in the secret from the beginning. There are your publishers, Prodder and Way. Then there are the editors of the magazine which publishes your Society dialogue bilge, and of all the newspapers, other than the Orb, in which your serious verse appears. My dear Jimmy, the news that you and George Chandos were the same man would go up and down Fleet Street and into the Barrel like wildfire. And after that ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... treachery. He is seized sometimes at the hospitable board, and assassinated, or perhaps cruelly poisoned. But what skill can ensure safety, where confidence is so shamefully abused? He is a capital sailor, even bilge-water don't make him squeamish, and he is so good a judge of the sea-worthiness of a ship, that he leaves her at the first port if he finds she is leaky or weak. Few architects, on the other hand, have such a knowledge of the stability of a house ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... dungeon to this green—affronting yon Sabbath sun—to see how a rebel looks. But I show ye how a true gentleman and Christian can conduct in adversity. Back, dogs! Respect a gentleman and a Christian, though he be in rags and smell of bilge-water." ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... inlet several huts were noticed, and near them Mr. Bedwell found a canoe; which, being hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, was of very different construction to any we had before seen; its length was twenty-one feet, but its greatest breadth in the bilge did not exceed fifteen inches, whilst at the gunwale the opening was only from six to eight and a half inches wide; an outrigger, projecting about two feet, was neatly attached to one side, which prevented its liability to overset, and at each end was a projection, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... his eyes, caught sight of a smoky lamp that reeled to and fro, in very erratic fashion. Moisture dripped from the beams above him, and there was a sickly smell which seemed familiar. Black, who had been to sea before, decided that he caught the aroma of bilge water. Rows of wooden shelves tenanted by recumbent figures, became discernible, and he started with dismay to the full recognition of the fact that he was ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... And it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the abhorred interior; the key cried among the wards like a thing in pain; the sitting-room was deep in dust, and smelt strong of bilge-water. It could not be called a cheerful spot, even for a composer absorbed in beloved toil; how much less for a young gentleman haunted by alarms and awaiting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... shore to search for them, got himself embayed in the mouth of a small river, swollen by recent rains, and upon the sudden subsidence of the water coincident with the ebb of the tide, his ship took ground, fell over on her bilge and was completely wrecked. The men on board barely escaped with their lives to the shore. They had saved nothing except what they wore, the few arms they ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... hands come on deck agin. Then, after the gale had eased a bit, two or three o' their comrades bore down on 'em and towed 'em round, so as the wind got under 'er an' lifted 'er a bit, but the ballast had bin shot from the bilge into the side, so they couldn't right her altogether, but had to tow 'er into port that way— over two hundred miles—the snow an' hail blowin', too, ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... and took out two very dirty wine glasses, and then displayed, with a solemn flourish, a black bottle partly filled with a dark liquid which he called wine; but I would have sworn, without tasting that it was bilge water. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... barnacles which gather so rapidly in the tropical seas. For this purpose he lightened his vessel, thrust her into some narrow inlet where she would be left high and dry at low water, fastened blocks and tackles to her masts to pull her over on to her bilge, and then scraped her thoroughly from ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... from side to side of the ship. Stringers always consider themselves most important, because they are so long. In the "Dimbula" there were four stringers on each side—one far down by the bottom of the hold, called the bilge stringer; one a little higher up, called the side stringer; one on the floor of the lower deck; and the upper-deck stringers that have ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... day, the winde comming at the Northeast, and the Confidence being troubled with bilge water, and stocked, we thought it good to seeke harbour for her redresse: then we bare roome the 18 day Southsoutheast, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... floe continued its inroads on the inner, breaking up the margins of both, until the channel was so nearly closed as to bring the field from which the danger was most apprehended in absolute contact with the side of the schooner. When the margin of the outer floe first touched the bilge of the schooner, it was at the precise spot where the vessel had just been fortified within. Fenders had also been provided without, and there was just a quarter of a minute, during which the two captains hoped that these united means of defence ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... drove with them, pressing the heat from the boiler and fire box into the forward portion of the boat, where Stella stood at the wheel. There were puffs of smoke when Davis opened the fire box to ply it with fuel. All the sour smells that rose from an unclean bilge eddied about them. The heat and the smell and the surging motion began ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Montenegro and the Netherlands. Under this instrument the practice is broadly as follows, though the procedure varies a good deal in different countries:—Ships arriving from infected ports are inspected, and if healthy are not detained, but bilge-water and drinking-water are evacuated, and persons landing may be placed under medical supervision without detention; infected ships are detained only for purposes of disinfection; persons suffering from cholera are removed to hospital; other persons landing from an infected ship are placed under ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... so many men together, with material, in so small a space as the canoe affords, seems a difficulty almost insurmountable. Still it is effected. I litter down amidships, with my bedding spread on reeds, in so short a compass that my legs keep slipping off and dangling in the bilge-water. The cook and bailsman sit on the first bar, facing me; and behind them, to the stern, one-half the sailors sit in couples; whilst on the first bar behind me are Bombay and one Beluch, and beyond them to the bow, also in couples, the remaining ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Cable, untill the Storm was over, the waves Dashed over her windward Side and She must have filled with water if the Lockers which is covered with Tarpoling & Threw of the water & prevented any quantity Getting into Bilge of the Boat ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... the long stretch of black mud bank left bare by the tide, which was far out, nearly half a mile. Clouds of sea-gulls were forever rising and settling upon this mud bank; a wrecked and abandoned wharf crawled over it on tottering legs; close in an old sailboat lay canted on her bilge. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... glad," said Psmith courteously. "For, speaking as man to man, I must confess that for sheer, concentrated bilge she gets away with the biscuit with almost insolent ease. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... enlightened citizen's perpetually spitting across him, out of the window. He bore it patiently for some time, till at last he ventured to remonstrate, when the other said, 'Why, colonel, I estimate you're a-poking fun at me—that I do. Now, I'm not a-going to chaw my own bilge-water, not for no man. Besides, you need not look so thundering ugly. Why, I've practised all my life, and could squirt through the eye of a needle without touching the steel, let alone such a great saliva-box as that there window.' ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... of no use, except you do it. Besides, as I found out when I went to sea, you never can know a thing till you do do it, though I thought I had a tidy fancy about some things beforehand. It's better not to be quite sure that all your seams are caulked, and so to keep a look-out on the bilge-pump; isn't it, sir?" ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... up with this pump that he could not be prevailed on to return on shore, but sent a canoe to fetch his favourite stool, on which he seated himself, and spent the remainder of the day in pumping the bilge-water out ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... down. Only once she turned her head and looked back. Perhaps Loloku would try again. Then, as they came to the boat, a young girl, at a sign from O'Shea, took off the loose blouse, and they placed her, face downwards, across the bilge of the boat, and two pair of small, eager, brown hands each seized one of hers and dragged the white, rounded arms well over the keel of the boat. O'Shea walked round to that side, drawing through his hands the long, heavy, and serrated ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... if you do, you bilge-wallering pirate!" roared the trussed captain. "Take that gun away from him, d'ye hear!" he yelled at the crew. "I'm captain of this ship, an' I'll hang every last one of you if you don't ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... fruit of Aladdin's garden clustering thick in her hold, With rubies awash in her scuppers and her bilge ablaze with gold, A world in arms behind her to sever her heart from home, The Golden Hynde drove onward ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... of that hold I know not. The place was low, not more than seven feet in height, and the slaves lay ironed in the bilge water on the bottom of the vessel. They were crowded as thick as they could lie, being chained to rings fixed in the sides of the ship. Altogether there may have been two hundred of them, men, women and children, or rather there had been two hundred ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... they say the 'tween-deck and forecastle smells o' bedbugs and bilge-water, and they want their grog. 'An ungodly witness scorneth judgment: and the mouth of the wicked devoureth iniquity.'" Mr. Todd had been educated for the pulpit; but, going out as a missionary, he had fallen into ungodly ways and taken to the sea, where he was more ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... once have the hose led from the bilge-cock, the cock turned, and, if the forcing-pump or engine is worked below the gun-deck, will see it manned and worked by some of the men of ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... were always at the pumps, when they could be worked, for besides the brine from the fish gathering below, Code feared the vessel had spewed some oakum and was taking a little water forward. Now, too, the horrible stench of riled bilge-water floated over all—compared to which an aged egg is a bouquet ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... and I ain't passin' on it,—but one thing is certain, when a ship's made as many voyages as Lucy has and ain't been home for repairs nigh on to seven years—ain't it?" and he looked at Jane for confirmation—"she gits foul and sometimes a little mite worm-eaten—especially her bilge timbers, unless they're copper-fastened or pretty good stuff. I've been thinkin' for some time that you ain't got Lucy straight, and this last kick-up of hers makes me sure of it. Some timber is growed right and some timber is growed crooked; and when it's growed ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... "the ship's bilge is no longer bearing upon the sand. I think, therefore, that if I were you I would send all hands to the windlass, and let them endeavour to get another pawl or two. That canvas is doing good work up there, and it may ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... five huge, square-built seamen, drinking away together in the dismal cabin, which reeked of fish-pickle and bilge-water. The overhead beams came down too low for their tall statures, and rounded off at one end so as to resemble a gull's breast, seen from within. The whole rolled gently with a monotonous wail, inclining one ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... heavy weather on 11th November. It was soon found that the anchors would not hold, and at length one parted and the ship "trailed into shallow water, striking hard." After a while she again struck heavily, and "lay down on her larboard bilge." As there seemed no prospect of the gale moderating, everything was made as snug as time would allow, and, putting his crew into the boats, Cook made for Sheerness. The weather at length improved, so obtaining assistance he returned and found ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... of Jackson Street, where the smell of bilge-water and the wash of the sewers grew stronger, and the masts of vessels could just be seen in the darkness outlined against the sky, Dicky suddenly stopped and drew me into a doorway. Our retainer disappeared ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... be the very first ones," Morris agreed, "but the way it looks to me, Abe, New York business men which has not business to do in London would continue to take twin-screw steamers with bilge keels, no matter how unimportant the business they was going to transact over there might be, because even the stockholders in airyoplane-manufacturing corporations would got to admit that while airyoplane-flying ain't in its infancy, exactly, it ain't in the prime of life, neither. Also, Abe, as ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass

... room, but paused before reaching the desk. It was an invitingly furnished room of cushioned couches, paintings, tapestries, soft chairs, warmly toned rugs. The desk at which Merle toiled was ornate and shining. Ex-Private Cowan felt a sudden revulsion. He was back, knee-deep in trench bilge, tortured in all his being, looking at death from behind a sandbag. Vividly he recalled why he had ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... plates are 4 inches wide, and riveted with 3/4 inch rivets, spaced 2-1/4 inch apart center to center. The keel and stem are both in one piece, as shown, and to this the garboard strake is to be fastened. The bilge pieces are riveted on to the bilge, and made of 9 inches by 4-1/2 inches by 9/16 inch T-iron. A wooden fender, 4 inches by 4 inches wood, is fitted on both sides of hull, running from stern to stern, by 3 inches by 3-1/2 inches ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... rescued the lunch basket with a firm hand. In the struggle Frenchy came near going overboard, but he fell into the bilge in the ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... was now flying, on a final visit, from the stern sheets of a smart boat alongside. It was with a feeling of relief at the end of the interview that he at last lifted his head above an atmosphere of perjury and bilge-water and came on deck. The sun and wind were ruffling and glinting on the broadening river beyond the "measured mile"; a few gulls were wavering and dipping near the lee scuppers, and the sound of Sabbath bells, mellowed by a distance that secured immunity of conscience, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... came to us at 5 a.m. that I must proceed to Bilge Trench to be temporarily attached to D Company in Wood's place. At present C Company (Captain Mordecai) are in the front line, with their headquarters in the Estaminet (the deep tunnel dug-out beneath Wieltje). ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... years ago, while the velocipede frenzy was at its height. He had constructed to order for the prisoner a peculiar velocipede called the "Sun Squirt." It had a Dyer's tub attached to it, which was filled with bilge-water. On this machine, the prisoner, armed with a pewter squirt, used to practise for several hours a day, careering rapidly around the rink, and taking flying shots, as he went, at large posters attached to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... of twenty-eight knots and have a cruising radius exceeding 1200 miles. The design of the hull is the concave bottom, square bilge type, developed for this particular service. It furnishes a steady gun platform, which, with the necessary speed, is the most vital feature ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... Pup, for such was her name, kept up her war-footing as long as we knew her, and the dignity invested in her hulk, which had a strong predisposition toward bilge, was, to say the least, extraordinary. Never was better craft for the purpose; and during a long cruise among the small keys that form the extreme end of the Florida peninsula, she always showed a dogged determination, as indicated by her name, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... it,' I insists, peerin' at the bhoy out of the tail of me eye. 'If yer town weren't dhry I'd have given it to the saloon man for the good of the family he hasn't got. So why bilge at ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... surpasses all description. Upwards of two hundred human beings were found stowed away in the hold of the craft, which could not have measured more than a hundred tons. On a bamboo deck, scarcely raised high enough above the keel to be free of the abominably-smelling bilge-water which occupied her lowest depths, lay some eighty or ninety men, doubled up, and packed so closely together that it was utterly impossible for them to stretch their legs; while there was not ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... gas into a chill grayish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury's Ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... the rock was led through a ring at the stern and carried forward to the windlass. By the time the tide had begun to rise again they had got the hull free of water, taking turns at the hand-pump and operating the bilge-pump at the same time. Then they waited to see how well they had succeeded at their caulking. It was noon by that time, and they ate cold rations in the galley, and while they were below a transient gleam of sunlight shone for an instant through the hatch ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... its bilge, in the middle of the boat, where more or less sea-water always collected. And ever and anon, dipping his finger therein, my Viking was troubled with the thought, that this sea-water tasted less brackish than that alongside. Of course the breaker ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... been standing in the bilge. These fellows never clean out their boats from one year's end to another," said Mr. Smellie, positively. Yet he, too, eyed the cask with momentary suspicion. In shape, in colour, it resembled the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... your nose stuck down deep in the grease-pot ever since you struck Annapolis!" cried Farley angrily. "I hope you bilge, Darrin; with all my heart I hope you bilge soon. We don't need a mollycoddle like you here ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... indestructibility. But a low beach, possibly formed by the recent overturning of the berg, received the Titan, and with her keel cutting the ice like the steel runner of an ice-boat, and her great weight resting on the starboard bilge, she rose out of the sea, higher and higher—until the propellers in the stern were half exposed—then, meeting an easy, spiral rise in the ice under her port bow, she heeled, overbalanced, and crashed down ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... to the jackstay immediately in front of the battered sides, and 30 feet from the hulk, and sunk to a distance of 20 feet below the water line, which would bring it about opposite the bend of the bilge. By 3 p.m. everything was ready for the explosion of the charge—everybody had cleared out of the ship while the surrounding small craft drew off to a distance of 300 feet. The charge was electrically fired from a pinnace. The burst was terrific and the reverberation was heard ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... twelve feet long, similar to the one described at Blomfield's Rivulet (volume 1) was also seen; and, like it, was not more than nine inches wide at the bilge. A small kangaroo was seen by Mr. Cunningham feeding upon the grass, but fled the moment that it ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... thirty years ago. (The year the Sarah Sands was burned. Oh roads we used to tread, Fra' Maryhill to Pollokshaws—fra' Govan to Parkhead!) Not but they're ceevil on the Board. Ye'll hear Sir Kenneth say: "Good morrn, McAndrews! Back again? An' how's your bilge to-day?" Miscallin' technicalities but handin' me my chair To drink Madeira wi' three Earls—the auld Fleet Engineer, That started as a boiler-whelp—when steam and he were low. I mind the time we used to serve a broken pipe wi' tow. Ten pound was all the pressure then—Eh! Eh!—a ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... among them. I was a willing listener, for I had already seen enough to be able to certify the truth of what he told me without hesitation. But in the place we were now in, I had to take his word for it, for it was all as black as bilge-water. We had just started to move on again, and I felt so secure, after all he had told me about the orderly way things were kept, that I let go my guide's anorak, which I had been holding. But that was foolish of me. Smack! I went down at full length. I had trodden on something round — something ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... my boy," agreed the veteran. "Overhaul ship from bilge ter royals, and if not found, then take ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... in the wake of the main-hatch, and a passage was opened down into the lower-hold, where we met the water. In the mean time, a South-Sea man we had picked up at Canton, dove down under the lee of the bilge of the ship. He soon came back and reported that a piece of sharp rock had gone quite through the planks. Everything tending to corroborate this, the captain called a council of all hands on the quarter-deck, to ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... the southward and westward, careening gunwale-to, and sending the spray flying in such drenching showers over the weather bow, that presently the water rose above the bottom boards and splashed like a miniature sea in the lee bilge, compelling Dick to abandon the mainsheet to Stukely while he took a bucket and proceeded to bale. But the wind showed a disposition to freshen, careening the boat so steeply that, despite Stukely's utmost care, the water began to slop in over the lee ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... yard, making wild vomits into the black night, to leeward. Soon all was snug aloft, and we were again allowed to go below. This I did not consider much of a favor, for the confusion of everything below, and that inexpressible sickening smell, caused by the shaking up of bilge water in the hold, made the steerage but an indifferent refuge from the cold, wet decks. I had often read of the nautical experiences of others, but I felt as though there could be none worse than mine; for, in addition to every other evil, I could not but remember ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... struck; the officers, at first astonished, gave their orders with a voice that shewed their agitation: the captain was wholly deprived of his; terror was painted on the countenances of all those who were capable of appreciating the danger: I thought it imminent, and expected to see the frigate bilge. I confess that I was not satisfied with myself, at this first moment, I could not help trembling, but afterwards, my courage did not any more forsake ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... hideous vices, and sodden immorality, and utter heathenism, which are found down amongst the foundations of every civic community are as indispensable to progress as the noise of the wheels of a train is to its advancement, or as the bilge-water in a wooden ship is to keep its seams tight. So we prate about 'civilisation,' which means turning men into cities. If agglomerating people into these great communities, which makes so awful a feature of modern life, be necessarily attended by such abominations as we live amongst ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... to admire 'em. I give one look around. Nobody was in sight. Then I ran down the pier and jumped aboard. Almost the first thing I put my hand on was what I was looking for—the bilge-pump. 'Twas a small affair, that you could lug around in one hand, but mighty handy for keeping a boat of ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... tremendous roller and had been lifted up and hurled far over to starboard. Although almost on her beam ends, her decks inclining landward, the strongly-built ship held steady in spite of the tremendous onslaughts of the seas along her bilge. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... United States, although at the present moment all its ships fly the British flag. Two new ships are, however, being completed for this line in American shipyards, the "Minnetonka" and "Minnewaska," of 13,401 tons each. This line, started by Americans in 1887, was the first to use the so-called bilge keels, or parallel keels along each side of the hull to prevent rolling. It now has a fleet of twenty-three vessels, with a total tonnage of about 90,000, and does a heavy passenger business despite the fact that its ships were ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... broke, with the exception of two vessels, the whole French fleet was lying helplessly aground on the Palles shoal. Some were lying on their bilge with the keel exposed, others were frantically casting their guns overboard and trying to get afloat again. Meanwhile Gambier and the British fleet were lying fourteen miles distant in the Basque Roads, and Cochrane in the Imperieuse was watching, with powder-blackened face, the curious spectacle ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... massy weight of earth stood firm With now concreted body, when (as 'twere) All of the slime of the world, heavy and gross, Had run together and settled at the bottom, Like lees or bilge. Then ocean, then the air, Then ether herself, the fraught-with-fire, were all Left with their liquid bodies pure and free, And each more lighter than the next below; And ether, most light and liquid of the three, Floats on above the long aerial winds, Nor with the brawling of ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... our boat and store the stuff on your boat so it can't be stolen. Overrun our engines and oil her up. Clean out the bilge and ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... I struck my watch at three in the morning. And the air was so unworthy of that name,—it was such a thick paste, seeming to me more like a mixture of tar and oil and fresh fish and decayed fish and bilge-water than air itself,—that I voted three morning, and crawled up into the clear starlight,—how wonderful it was, and the fresh wet breeze that washed my face so cheerily!—and I bade Battista take his turn below, while I would lie there and mind the helm. If—if he had done what I proposed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... shining, quiet and silvery. All without is soft and beautiful, and no doubt the Norma herself looks all in unison with the scene, balancing herself like a lazy swan, white and graciously. So it is without, and within, there is miserable sea-sickness, bilge-water, and all the unavoidable disagreeables ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... thing—one that we could manage by ourselves; no skulking lot of lubbers loafing about, adding to the expense and taking away from the romance. Give him a handy boy, he would sail it himself. We knew that yacht, and we told him so; we had been on it with Harris before. It smells of bilge-water and greens to the exclusion of all other scents; no ordinary sea air can hope to head against it. So far as sense of smell is concerned, one might be spending a week in Limehouse Hole. There is no place to get out of the rain; the saloon is ten feet by four, and half of ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... shelter from the intense light. Some hung motionless in the water; others nibbled daintily the green and lazy slime on the batten at the bilge, their gently waving shadows being barely perceptible, for their delicate, semi-transparent bodies absorbed but the merest particle of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... and looked into the cabin to make certain that no member of the barge-crew slept there. Finding no one, he went into the engine-room and opened the sea-cock. Then he lifted up a floor-board, looked into the bilge, saw that the water ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... was flaring open and, because of the quality of her attire down there where the bilge waters of the city tide flow and ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... hull. The sternpost is bent, and some 20 feet of her keel partially gone; propeller and shaft uninjured. The lower pintle of the rudder is gone, but no other damage is sustained by it. No damage is done to her hull more serious than the loss of several sheets of copper, torn from her starboard bilge and ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... leaning figure of the pretty schooner, which seemed to skate along upon her bilge and make white shavings of all the sea that touched her. She at first imagined that this might be the yacht Neigh had arrived in at the end of the previous week, for she knew that he came as one of a yachting party, and she had noticed no other ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... be observed that the close CL-to-CL frame spacing created a hull having frames touching one another, at least to above the turn of the bilge, so the vessel was almost solid timber, before being planked and ceiled, from keel to about the loadline. The sides are not only heavily planked but, after the frames were ceiled with extraordinarily ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle

... rotten from the gunwale to the keel, Rat riddled, bilge bestank, Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel And drag her oozy flank, And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel As she thumped onward ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... brouillerie would have checked the captain; it did so, but only for a few minutes, when he again commenced. The first lieutenant observed that it would be necessary to let water into the ship every morning, and pump it out, to avoid the smell of the bilge-water. "There are worse smells than bilge-water," replied the captain. "What do you think of a whole ship's company being nearly poisoned with otto of roses? Yet that occurred to me when in the Mediterranean. ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... gave him a tin canister, and was agreeably surprised to find that the stock of English words increased considerably; that very few things we had were new to him, and that he himself had been at the settlement. His name was "Bilge." He called me Commandant, and presented several old men to me under the same title. Several natives joined us, either using the canoe, or swimming across the lagoon, and, after having been duly introduced to me, I took four of ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... master. "She's gainin' on us—she's under the bilge floor now!" He hurled a bucket viciously at his helper. And as they pretended to fight the fire, Crump suddenly began laughing and stood up. The deckman was grinning also. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... not say salt water, lad, I said bilge—a fathom o' bilge water," interrupted the captain, who, although secretly rejoiced at the fact of his son having fallen over head and ears in love with the pretty little Cocos-Keeling islander, deemed it his duty, nevertheless, as a sternly upright parent, to make quite sure that ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne



Words linked to "Bilge" :   bilgy, bilge pump, vessel, bilge water, underside, watercraft, H2O, damage, leak, undersurface, bilges, take in water, water, bilge keel, bilge well



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