Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




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








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Bilge" Quotes from Famous Books



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

... 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, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... has been too monotonous to afford a 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 ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... 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 ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... 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 sea ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

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

... 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 ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... 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 at ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... 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 Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... issuin' orders 'board here now," growled the Cap'n, bending baleful gaze on the foreman of the Ancients. "Go for'ard and tell 'em to chop down both masts, and then bore some holes in the bottom to let out the bilge-water. Then they can set her on fire. There might be something them blasted Ancients could do to a vessel ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... that the miseries, and 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... encouraging. One would declare that the sea could not be made interesting; that it was tame, monotonous, and without any other movement than unpleasant storms, and that, for his part, the less he got of it the better. The women very generally protested that such a book would have the odor of bilge water, and that it would give them the maladie de mer. Not a single individual among all those who discussed the merits of the project, within the range of the author's knowledge, either spoke, or looked, encouragingly. It is probable that all these ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... tell the horrors 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 ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 Cochrane in the Imperieuse was watching, with powder-blackened face, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... float; and to hit upon the happy medium of velocity and stability seems to me the art and mystery of shipbuilding. In order to give large carrying capacity, we gave flatness of bottom and squareness of bilge. This became known in Liverpool as the "Belfast bottom;" and it has been generally adopted. This form not only serves to give stability, but also increases the carrying ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... aft to the Brutus, moored astern, and boarded the little vessel. He struck another match 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 therein was ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... 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

... could dry, and 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 life miserable for all on board. These wooden ships ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... 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 ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... lowest ebb. I mean, spiritual life as exhibited in the poetic and dramatic literature of the time, whose poisoned fountain-head was the dissolute court of Charles II. All the slops of that court went into the drama, all the 'sentina reipublicae', the bilge water of the ship of state. The dramatic writers of the time, to use the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, "walked in the vanity of their mind; having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in them ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... 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 pushed ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... nowhere. It gathers up all the loose snow an' ice crystals an' drives 'em in a whirlwind. Presently the wind starts the ice to buckin' an' tremblin' like a jelly under you, splitting inter lanes. You lose yore direction even when you got eyes. I'm left in it by that bilge-blooded skunk, blind on the rockin', breakin' floe, while he scuds back to the schooner with his men. That's Honest Simms! Jim Lund's left behind but Honest Simms has the position ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... 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

... about that time, what with the stale cookin' and bilge water scents that was comin' from the stuffy cabin, and this charmin' mood that old Spiller was in, I was gettin' restless. "Say, Chunk," I breaks in, "you may be enjoyin' this, all right; but I've got enough. It's ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... 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

... the boss and powerfully project it thence in a direct line with the longitudinal axis of the ship. To give this cigar-shaped curvilinear hull perfect stability when resting upon the ground, it was fitted with a pair of deep and broad bilge-keels, one on either side of the ship, extending fore and aft for just a third of her length. These bilge-keels contained four grip-anchors—one at either extremity of each keel—by means of which the ship could, when necessary, be firmly ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... sailed up the Muscadobit, or Bank's Inlet, to fish, in which river the pilot ran us ashore three times; each time obliged to shore up, being left almost dry at low water, and on one night about eleven, all in bed, down she came bumpus on her bilge; in consequence of our shores being made of trees with the bark on, the bark and lashings went together. We returned to Halifax where I refitted, and have not been out since, but sail on Monday on a cruise to the eastward in company with Leander and Dee, which will be very ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... than common; and though there was deep water 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 ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... apple barrel 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 sections ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... the sailor, 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 of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... 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 I remained unnoticed and uncared for ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... had lost one arm, earnestly pumping bilge-music out of an accordion with the other, holding it to his body with the stump. There was a woman, pale with hunger and gin, three match-boxes in one extended hand, and the other holding a baby to her breast. As we looked, the poor baby let go its hold, turned its little ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... live five minutes, sir! We are cut down from rail to bilge; there is a hole in our side big enough to drive a coach and six through, and the water is pouring into her like ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... we are ever going to make it, this year," Dalzell gasped, while they were making ready for supper formation. "We'll bilge this ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock

... proprietors of this kiln say about one-half the 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... darkened. And the ship ran on her way for no long while, for of a sudden came the shrilling West, with the rushing of a great tempest, and the blast of wind snapped the two forestays of the mast, and the mast fell backward and all the gear dropped into the bilge. And behold, on the hind part of the ship the mast struck the head of the pilot and brake all the bones of his skull together, and like a diver he dropt down from the deck, and his brave spirit left his bones. In that same hour Zeus thundered and cast his bolt upon the ship, and she reeled ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... under the bunk in the bilge-water, which swung from side to side as the vessel rolled, I must admit that I would have presented a sorry spectacle to any one who could have seen me, clad only in the trousers of my pajamas, and suggesting ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... into a chill greyish-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 to Fleury's Ray. If a speck of oil, if even the natural ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... sly, twistical lookin' chap, as you e'enamost ever seed. He had a sort of dark, down look about him, and a lear out of the corner of one eye, like a horse that's goin' to kick. The captain guessed he read in his face, 'Well now, if I was to run this here Yankee right slap on a rock and bilge her, the King would make a man of me for ever.' So, says he to the first leftenant, 'Reeve a rope through that 'ere block at the tip eend of the fore yard, and clap a runnin' noose in it.' The leftenant did it ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the fog-horn bluff 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 of ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... purpose; Othello, that the perpetual silt of some one weakness, the eddies of a suspicious temper depositing their one impalpable layer after another, may build up a shoal on which an heroic life and an otherwise magnanimous nature may bilge and go to pieces. All this we may learn, and much more, and Shakespeare was no doubt well aware of all this and more; but I do not believe that he wrote his plays with any such didactic purpose. He knew human nature too well not to know that one thorn ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... taken possession of by O'Gorman 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, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... extirpate the vermin overrunning her. At midnight, the larboard watch, to which I belonged, turned out; and instantly as every man waked, he exclaimed at the now intolerable smell, supposed to be heightened by the shaking up the bilge-water, from the ship's rolling. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

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

... Traders many a word to make their ears sing. They were in his place, and every man had the right to speak as he chose in his own house. But when Israel led them back to the old Tabernacle, with its pleasant smell of tar obscuring the more ancient bilge, and had told them that they were all "a lot of hell-deserving sinners who, if they missed eternal damnation, it would be with their rags badly singed," they sighed a blissful sigh and felt themselves once more ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... 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 hope float on the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... 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. Nailing on the board ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... 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, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... worth two squirts of bilge water," Captain Noah lied glibly. "However, I'll take him off your hands and reimburse you for the expense of bringing his successor down from Seattle or up from San Francisco. My two mates have just ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... 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 ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... way as it backed its sails and Jason fell from his precarious perch into the stinking bilge. "The descent of man," he muttered and ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... 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 ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... in its place, the cylinders containing the gun cotton 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 and the shock distinctly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... 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 ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... ain't up before me 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 ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... near 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 ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... 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 make ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... here was searching to a very painful degree: for the room was narrow, and every inch of it contested by two puissant essences, the one of raw wood, the other of bilge water. With wool the place was pil'd: but also I notic'd, not far from the ladder, several casks set on their ends; and to these the ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... supper. Jack went down the companion steps into a forepeak stuffy with the heat of the sun and a galley stove, a cramped place where they ate heartily despite faint odors of distillate and burned lubricating oil from the engine room and bilge water that smelled ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... long as there was any thing left to drink or pick up; however, a considerable part of the cargo was safely stowed, though there were few of the rum casks that did not afterwards turn out impregnated with bilge water. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

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

... 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 ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... lids and fell away into slumber again; for he had thought himself vexed with the creak of cordage and noise of feet, stived in his dark and narrow cabin, on a filthy bed in a foul air, if any air at all were in that noisome place, reeking with heat and the ferment of bilge-water and fever-smell; and here, unless a new delirium chained him, a mattress lay upon the deck with the awning of an old sail stretched above it and making soft shadow out of searching sun, a gentle wind was blowing over him, a land-breeze full of sweet scents from the gardens on ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... way through the dark passage between the partitions, evidently less familiar to him, halting before each door to listen. Returning forward he reached the second hatchway that had attracted Rosey's attention, and noiselessly unclosed its fastenings. A penetrating smell of bilge arose from the opening. Drawing a small bull's-eye lantern from his breast he lit it, and unhesitatingly let himself down to the further depth. The moving flash of his light revealed the recesses of the upper hold, the abyss ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... that's 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 just ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... 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 of the FAI—the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... course, sea sick; and were continually groping and tumbling about in the dark prison of a ship's hold. They suffered a double portion of misery compared with the sailors, to whom the rolling of the ship in a gale of wind, and the stench of bilge-water, were matters of no grievance; but were serious evils to these landsmen, who were constantly treading upon, or running against, and tumbling over each other. Many of them were weary of their lives; and some layed down dejected ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... 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, boiling and subsequent sedimentation and removal of the ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... sails, which had been lowered to the decks, a whole people of amphibians was swarming,—red legs bare and caps pulled down over ears—repairing nets or tending galley fires where fish were frying with appetizing fragrance. The hulls, of wide bilge, painted white or blue, stretched away along the glaring shore, like big-bellied sailors lying on their backs and taking ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... 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

... length, and 9 feet beam at the line of flotation. The laps of the 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 by 7/16 inch L-iron top and bottom with the sheer ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

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

... at 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 ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... 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 tubs in which Guernsey ordinarily ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... tongue,' 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

... little 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. I was off Smyrna, cruising for a French ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... pump her out, and then she would float again. To effect this, we had to lighten her as much as possible, by taking out of her her guns and stores of every description; then to get purchases on her from the shore, and assist the purchases with rafts under her bilge, so as to raise her again upon an even keel. On the second day after she filled, when the tide had run out, we removed all our chests from the lower deck; most of them were broken, and a large proportion of the contents missing. On the 27th May every thing ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... going round 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

... "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 of ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... 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 are you going ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... 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 might enable the craft to withstand the pressure. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... desired to be paid. Hugh handed the piece of gold to the man who had led them to the boat, whereon he was seized with a fit of uncontrollable fury. He swore, he raved, he took the piece of gold and cast it down on the bilge-boards, he spat on it and his ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 heavy, square timbering, ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle

... from stem to stern formed a series of 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 ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... talk about it," said Shirley, setting off. "I'd rather get my mind down to marlin-spikes and bilge-water." ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... took 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 the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... 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

... in labour with a song." Jill filled his glass and he drank. "Another instant, and you shall hear the deathless words. I always felt I should be buried in the Abbey. Anybody give me a rhyme for 'bilge'? No, it doesn't matter. I have ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... he began, nodding 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 give 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 ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a three-decker, drawing the most water, lay outermost on the north-west edge of the Palles Shoal, nearest the deep water, where she was most exposed to attack; whilst all, by the fall of the tide, were lying on their bilge, with their bottoms completely exposed to shot, and therefore beyond ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... expostulation; 'twas no laughing matter—'twas an anxiously grave concern for my welfare. He disapproved of the beverage—having never tasted it. "You," cries he, with a pout and puff of scorn, "an' your bilge-water! In irons with a bottle o' ginger-ale! Could ye but see yourself, Dannie, ye'd quit quick enough. 'Tis a ridiculous picture ye make—you an' your bottle. 'Twould not be hard t' give it up, lad," he would plead. "Ye'll manage it, Dannie, an ye'd but put your ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... 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 ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... 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 ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... and cursed them both down and issued commands. Mulhall, the supercargo, and Hermann were set to work in the cabin at double-straining and triple-straining the gasoline. A hole was chopped through the engine room floor, and a Kanaka heaved bilge-water over the cylinders, while Grief continued to ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... Eve, now, if she had not some little kindness for me, would she be so pleased with these thundering yarns I keep spinning her, as old as Adam, and as stale as bilge-water? You that are so keen, how comes it you don't notice her eyes at these times? I feel them shine on me like a couple of suns. They would make a statue pay the yarn out. Who ever fancied ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... the chaps, however, insisted on scoopin' up with his hands the briny water that flowed from the pumps. It was mixed with bilge water and smelt horribly. He went mad, too. But we couldn't afford to lose any man's work and we lashed his hands to the pump handle. He went mad in a happy fashion and pumped wildly, singin' and talkin' in a way that made your heart curdle to hear it. Still, he pumped. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... Worthington pumps, besides the bilge injections, we could keep her afloat for hours, even with a ten-inch shell in her hull," I assured him, repeating that there was no water in ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.

... Elsie 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 ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... 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

... I fear, give pain to our cousin Montferrat. I have been breaking the back of the Count of Saint-Pol.' At this the Marquess, suffused with dark blood till he was colour of lead, broke out, pointing his finger as well as his words. As the bilge-water jets from a ketch when the hold is surcharged, so did the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... 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



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



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com