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Bilge   Listen
verb
Bilge  v. t.  
1.
(Naut.) To fracture the bilge of, or stave in the bottom of (a ship or other vessel).
2.
To cause to bulge.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bilge" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 groaning ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... the light 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 boat of ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... the 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 an ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... a retreat into the lower regions a precautionary measure which even the boldest were content to adopt. Below, in addition to the close overpowering odour of cabins without any ventilation, the smell of the bilge-water was sufficient in itself to produce nausea. The dark den called the ladies' cabin, which was by no means clean, was the sleeping abode of twelve people in various stages of discomfort, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... companion were sufficiently 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 ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... — N. lowness &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 the ground; lying low &c v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... 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

... 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 ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the new block that was to be. In the hold of this forgotten bark was discovered a forgotten case of champagne. It had been sunk in mud and ooze for years. When the bottles were opened the corks refused to pop, and nobody dared to touch the "bilge" that was within. All this was on the happy hem of Happy Valley—and still I ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... interest, but in spite of every effort the water still gained. Lashly and Williams, up to their necks in rushing water, stuck gamely to the work of clearing suctions, and for a time, with donkey engine and bilge pump sucking, it looked as if the water might be got under. But the hope was short-lived; five minutes of pumping invariably led to the same result—a general ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... 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 hope float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the dock-mud ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... who 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 ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... bulwarks of the little but brave adventurers, their seams gazing to the heat, their carvel timbers striped by the ooze and brine of many oceans and the scum of ports. Upon their poops their den-fire chimneys breathe a faint blue reek; the iron of bilge-pump and pin is rust red; the companions are portals to smelling depths where the bunks are in a perpetual gloom and the seamen lie at night or in the heat of the day discontent with this period of no roaming and remembering the tumbling waters and ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... 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, ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... of the boards under his feet in the cockpit. A man with half an eye could have seen the scum of gasoline on the bilge in the cockpit. ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... Campbell went to Thee, Lord, 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! ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... faultless curves; the conical bow or fore body of the ship being somewhat longer, and therefore sharper, than the after body, which partook more of the form of an ellipse than of a cone; the curvilinear hull was supported steadily in position by two deep broad bilge-keels, one on either side and about one-third the extreme length of the ship; and, attached to the stern of the vessel by an ingeniously devised ball-and-socket joint in such a manner as to render a rudder unnecessary, was to be seen a huge propeller having four tremendously broad sickle-shaped ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... 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

... being attached 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

... stores aboard and packed them pretty tight. The Crown Preserve Co. sent us a quantity of patent fuel which stowed beautifully as a flooring to the lower hold, and all our provision cases were thus kept well up out of the bilge water which was bound to scend to and fro if we made any quantity of water, as old wooden ships usually do. The day before sailing the Royal Geographical Society entertained Scott and his party at luncheon in the King's ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... noticed Mabel stooping over an object which lay among the heather where a rough cartroad approached a wooden bridge. On joining her he saw that she was examining a finely-built canoe with a hole in one bilge. She looked up ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... small one they use to get the bilge water out of their motor boats," said the dock master, for the pier was a station for a yacht club, and the dock-keeper lived in a small house on the pier. "It doesn't throw much of a ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... in by, around they would go, and across the flats and down on the fleet they would come shooting. They breasted into the hollows like any sea-bird and lifted with every heave to shake the water from bilge to quarter. They came across with never a let-up, shaving everything along the way until a good berth was picked out. Then they let go sails, dropped anchor and ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... 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 another there,—and ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... 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 the windfalls that are already rotting on the grass. There you may ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... muslin, using table knives for caulking irons. The cable to 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

... off the Nore in very 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

... morning 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 ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... "Bilge," he interrupted sharply. "I didn't fetch boundaries back in the Two Capes, did I?" He thrust the offending volume into a crevice of his chair. "Laurel," he added, "what is the outport ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... adopted 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 ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... full speed 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 challenged ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... best; to ascertain whether new or stale—hold to the light, if the white is clear, the yolk regularly in the centre, they are good—but if otherwise, they are stale. The best possible method of ascertaining, is to put them into water, if they lye on their bilge, they are good and fresh—if they bob up an end they are stale, and if they rise they are addled, proved, and ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons

... 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, ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass

... are gallons of gasoline in the bilge right now!" averred Harry. "Better open the windows a bit and let it air out in here. Suppose you get the bilge pump to work, Tom, and I'll try to find ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... 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 ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... 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 miserable dog that ever lived. I had almost ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

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

... 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 hopeless; the engines had ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... and pumping up the water. Indeed, so much was he taken 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 - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... combatted by the use of aromatic electuaries, "which comfort the heart, the brain and the stomach." The patient should be removed to some quiet portion of the ship, as distant as possible from the channels for the discharge of the bilge-water, and short walks upon the upper deck will contribute to convalescence. Frequent changes of clothing will palliate the annoyance of fleas and pediculi. Drinking water may be purified by aeration, or by straining, ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... dark, dismal, smelly interior, amply large enough, but ill ventilated, and inexpressibly dirty. Every stench under heaven seemed to assail my nostrils, so compounded together, as to be separately indistinguishable, although that of stale bilge water strongly predominated. The only semblance of fresh air found entrance through the small, square scuttle hole, attainable by means of a short ladder, and staring up at this, I was able to perceive the light of day, although so little penetrated below, the swaying slush ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... like sulphur, either in or about the well, neither do I find that any brimstone has ever been extracted from the water. As for the smell, if I may be allowed to judge from my own organs, it is exactly that of bilge-water; and the saline taste of it seems to declare that it is nothing else than salt water putrified in the bowels of the earth. I was obliged to hold my nose with one hand, while I advanced the glass to my mouth with the other; and after I ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... her 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 sail could be half ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... companies to aid our men in pumping. Some were set to rummage the hold in search of the leak, and others to stick our sprit-sail full of oakum, with which we made several trials under the ship's bilge, but could not find the leak. We at length found, by divers trials within board, that the leak was before the main-mast; and we, next morning, fitted the sprit-sail again, letting it down at the stern, and brought it forwards by degrees, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... unlocked his desk 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

... 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 he do in all this ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... were, 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 ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... o' water bu'st the mains'l, so that the vessel partly righted, an' let the 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

... 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, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... sensibly constant speed, and without change in its running; the production of waves capable of injuring the banks of canals will be avoided; the propeller will be capable of being utilized as a bilge pump; all vibration will be suppressed; the boat will be able to run at any speed under good conditions, while the helix works well only when the speed of the vessel corresponds to its pitch; it will be possible to put the propelling apparatus under water; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... for when 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 from one compartment to another. They ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... cask, cade, butt, puncheon, tierce, hogshead, keg, rundlet; (of wine) 31-1/2 gallons; (of flour) 196 pounds. Associated words: gauntree, cooper, bilge, stave, hoop, chine. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... 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 even the inspiriting strains of the Faust march, which the captain ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... 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 do; and I'll tell you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rattling of the cables weighing anchor. Soon the soft slap of the water around the bow and the regular heaving motion told that the Bozra was under way. The sea-mouse creaked and groaned through all her timbers and her lading. The foul bilge-water made the hold stifling as a charnel-house. Lampaxo, Hib being absent, began to ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... can be varied as required. All the shafting is forged of Siemens-Martin mild steel of the best quality, each of the three separate cranks being built up. The condensers are placed at the outsides of the engine room, and the air, feed, and bilge pumps are between the engines and the condensers and worked by levers from the low-pressure engine crosshead. There are two centrifugal pumps, each worked by a separate engine for circulating water through the condenser, and these are so arranged that they can be connected to the bilges in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... 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 a portion of the land or rock (as it may be called) into the likeness of a ship, but, ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... 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 crooked ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... bark called The Sieve, and when I'm aboard I'll close all the shutters, and lock up the parrot that sneezes and stutters, and wake all the skippers, and put on my slippers, and get into bed while the mates overhead are swabbing the decks and heaving the lead and baling the bilge-water up with their dippers; and when they have gotten the vessel to going, and settled all down to their knitting and sewing, and the twenty-third mate, who is always so late, has learned what is meant by a third and last warning, I'll turn up the gas, take a look at ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... 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 ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... 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 further 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 pushed the stones at the bottom up before her, and that ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... 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 to Fleury's Ray. If a speck ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... 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

... With staggering feet, but undaunted heart, the girl Sera was led 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 tail ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... very doleful 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 an easier way to see a man's inside, than ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... horses, and unsafe to attempt it. By the logic of money and brandy I persuaded them to attempt it. We embarked; the wind was, indeed, too mighty for us, and we drove on the rocks; but the boat did not bilge or fill, as in all reason it ought to have done. I left Alexis and Harry to work out their way; got my precious carcass transported in a skiff, and went on in a stage to pass a day with "thee and thou." I was received by the father with parental ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... steam-pipes in the petty officers' quarters or over the grating of the engine rooms, where new life was to be had from the upward blasts of heated air that brought with them the smell of bilge water and oil and sulphur from the bowels of ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... coarse sewing with cocoa-nut fibre 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 to the racecourse, an A.1. course, and met several ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... from a larger meat-tin of 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

... 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 ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... the Vessel of which he was Commander was lying in the Pool, that we should have Beds—at his charges—at the same Tavern; and, indeed, your Seafaring Men, although rough enough, and smelling woundily of tar and bilge-water, are the most Hospitable Creatures breathing; and that makes Me so free with my Money when there is a treat afoot; albeit I can, without Vanity, declare myself Amphibious, for I have seen as much service by Sea as by Land, and have always approved myself a Gentleman of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... 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 primarily designed to carry cattle. Quite ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... 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). D Company (Captain Bodington) ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

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

... 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

... 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

... mercenary, heartless lunacy that runs through the sickly plagiarism of the Book of Mormon, pervades all this, and instead of the odor of sanctity you notice the flavor of bilge water, and the emigrant's own hailing sign, the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... what I read the style of Adrian Boldero? This vivid, virile opening? This scene of the two derelicts who hated one another, fortuitously meeting on the old tramp steamer? This cunning, evocation of smells, jute, bilge water, the warm oils of the engine room? This expert knowledge so carelessly displayed of the various parts of a ship? How had Adrian, man of luxury, who had never been on a tramp steamer in his life, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... great wave of the sea cometh sometimes with so great a violence, that it drencheth [causes to sink] the ship: and the same harm do sometimes the small drops, of water that enter through a little crevice in the thurrok [hold, bilge], and in the bottom of the ship, if men be so negligent that they discharge them not betimes. And therefore, although there be difference betwixt these two causes of drenching, algates [in any case] the ship is ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... had, Mr Cringle—should have liked to have been with you myself. Help yourself, before passing that bottle—zounds, man, never take a bottle by the bilge—grasp the neck, man, at least in this fervent climate—thank you. Pity you had not caught the captain though. What you told me of that man very much interested me, coupled with the prevailing reports regarding him in the ship—daring dog he must have been—can't forget how gallantly he ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... 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

... kept her off with the assistance of the ancker & 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

... 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

... the young man sat, holding his patient with strong, kind hands. The vessel flung herself about, sometimes combining the motions of pitching and rolling with the utmost virulence; the bilge water went slosh, slosh, and the hot, choking odours came forth on the night. Coffee, fish, cheese, foul clothing, vermin of miscellaneous sorts, paraffin oil, sulphurous coke, steaming leather, engine oil—all combined their various scents into one ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... 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. Luella Granville Waterman ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... of my hands until the blood came out in many places; and I have made thee lick it; and I have then done the same to thine. Afterward, from thy tenth year, I have mixed gunpowder in thy grog; I have peppered thy peaches; I have poured bilge-water (with a little good wholesome tar in it) upon thy melons; I have brought out girls to mock thee and cocker thee, and talk like mariners, to make thee braver. Nothing would do. Nay, recollect thee! I have myself led thee forth to the window ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... "Bilge, my eye! You sniff the banquet I fetched ye. Here's a prime cheese that was hatched when Trimble Rogers ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... said the voice of doom, 'in the starboard sofa-locker; beer under the floor in the bilge. I'll see her round that buoy, if you wouldn't mind beginning.' I obeyed with a bad grace, but the close air and cramped posture must have benumbed my faculties, for I opened the port-side locker, reached down, and grasped a sticky body, which turned out to be a pot of varnish. Recoiling wretchedly, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... then, the 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 The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... followed by spies—and, blame my skin, Mollie, ef that proud woman didn't break down and CRY like a baby. Now, Mollie, what got ME in all this, was that them Chivalry folks—ez was always jawin' about their 'Southern dames' and their 'Ladye fairs,' and always runnin' that kind of bilge water outer their scuppers whenever they careened over on a fair wind—was jes the kind to throw off on a woman when they didn't want her, and I kinder thought I'd like HER to see the difference betwixt the latitude o' Charleston and Cape Cod. So I ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... set to work and cleared away the penthouse, stowing its heavy timbers beneath the deck along the keel, for they would in some degree take the place of the ballast which the little ship needed. There was some water in her bilge from the great wave, and that we baled out easily, but she was well framed and almost new. It was good to see the run of the decks clear ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler

... 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

... those who say that old age takes no part in public business. They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... beginning of the watch the bilge-pumps had had all they could do to handle the leakage coming from the seams of the strained hull. Twice Neville had taken the throttle and sent his oiler to clear the suctions. The violent lurching of the ship had churned up every ounce of sediment that had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... 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, Mr. Stephenson became gradually ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... completed, 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

... 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 ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... plundered upon the Spanish Main, until they acquired so much money that Bilge Island, Tomb's business address, smelt of hoarded gold, and the beach ...
— The Pirate's Pocket Book • Dion Clayton Calthrop

... with the upper deck flush. She had rather straight sheer, 27-inch bulwarks, a moderately full but easy entrance, a fine, long run, and little drag to the keel. The midsection was formed with moderately short and rising floor, round and easy bilge, and some tumble-home in the topside. The stem raked a good deal for a ship-rigged vessel; the post raked slightly. There was a distance of 6 feet between upper and lower deck planks. The stern was of the square transom, round tuck form, as mentioned ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle

... 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 facilities they offered to favor the discharging of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... tender," said the guide grimly. "He's cunning, as all cats are; and some day, when he's hungry and is enjoying you, he'll say to himself—'This is a deal better than that tough old sailor, who'd taste strong of tar and bilge.' Here, what ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... 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. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... hatches. Now, if so be as how you have a mind to give him a salt eel for his supper, here am I, without hope of fee or reward, ready to stand by you as long as my timbers will stick together: and if I expect any recompense, may I be bound to eat oakum and drink bilge-water for life." ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... shore and Van Tromp's squadron, so that after fighting until our sticks were shot away and our scuppers were arun with blood, we were carried by boarding and sent as prisoners to the Texel. We were stowed away in irons in the afterhold, amongst the bilge water and the rats, with hatches battened down and guards atop, but even then they could not keep us, for the irons got adrift, and Will Adams, the carpenter's mate, picked a hole in the seams so that the vessel nearly foundered, and in the confusion we fell upon the prize crew, and, using ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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 ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... now that there was a chalk-line, as true as the needle, from somewhere above us in the darkness, drawn along the skin of the hold perpendicular to the keelson, and that the man from Boston had begun to cut at the bilge ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... Florence abandoned the attack at the first cry and surged to the hold to fight the conflagration. A gasoline stove, carelessly left burning by one of that vessel's drunken crew, had been overturned by the shock of collision, and had fired the bilge. Fanned by the rising winds, the flames were licking at the oil-soaked timbers and spreading rapidly toward the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... four feet water in her when the carpenter sounded the well at six bells," said Captain Dinks; "and after rigging the pumps we reduced it considerably; but since then, she has made nearly two feet again—all clear and clean without any bilge in it—which shows she's taking it in fresh ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... a lecture on boats to-day. The only thing I don't know now is how to tell a bilge from a painter. The oar was easy. It is divided into three parts, the stem, the lead and the muzzle. I must remember this, it is very important. The men are getting so used to inoculations around here that they complain when they don't get enough. We're shaping up into a fine body of men, our company ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.

... find it shoaler than we expect and I had plenty trouble coming along. Finlay could hardly drive her four knots in last night's breeze and the current put us on Tortillas reef. She stopped there twenty minutes, jambed down on her bilge while ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss



Words linked to "Bilge" :   bilge keel, damage, H2O, leak, bottom, bilgy, bilges, bilge water, undersurface, bilge pump, bilge well, watercraft



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