bilge

If you have ever sat at a restaurant, marveling at the bilge offered on the kids’ menu and wondering how on earth we got here, “Picky” has the answers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026

Chief Engineer Roberto Cayabyab Penaflor admitted to violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships for knowingly discharging untreated oily bilge water directly from the tanker into the sea, federal prosecutors said.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 9, 2023

“Officers and surgeons roamed the decks, sniffing out potential culprits: foul bilge, moldy sails, rancid meat, human sweat, rotten timber, dead rats, piss and excrement, unwashed livestock, dirty breath,” Grann writes.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 18, 2023

“I’m just thrown away here — a nobody,” the sailor who was assigned to clean the bilge said in an interview.

From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2022

Then the squall struck whining from the west, with gale force, breaking both forestays, and the mast came toppling aft along the ship’s length, so the running rigging showered into the bilge.

From "The Odyssey" by Homer

She urged measures such as requiring fishers and riverboat operators to bleach boat hulls, bilges, and wells after passing through an affected area.

From Science Magazine ● Oct. 20, 2021

We mapped the bilges out in the fall, came back and looked at them in spring, and there was nothing there.

From Slate ● Jun. 16, 2017

But it actually is a Spanish expression, “of where the sea goes”; while the Spanish never settled this area, they would empty their bilges so the ocean would wash away their effluence.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 20, 2016

Since hitchhiking to the Great Lakes in the bilges of ocean-going ships, they have expanded virtually unchecked and are considered a major threat to waterways including Lake Erie.

From Washington Times ● Mar. 29, 2015

With each dip and plunge of the boat, Worsley swooped the pot up in the air lest their precious hoosh go slopping into the bilges.

From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong

Many of them bilged, or failed to graduate!

From Time Magazine Archive

Our boat, very probably, had gone half her length on top of the edge of it, and was then washed off again after she had bilged; and the strong current had set us clear.

From Rídan The Devil And Other Stories 1899 by Louis Becke

As Smooth is a national Christian, he believes the timbers of the old ship tough and strong, or they had been bilged ere this.

From The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth by Timothy Templeton

We caught one & brought him on board, and sent our prize alongside to save what goods we could, for the ship was bilged.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 48, October, 1861 by Various

But she was so badly bilged, and the water was gaining so fast, that her hours were numbered.

From Yankee Ships and Yankee Sailors: Tales of 1812 by James Barnes

"And that perhaps you've saved us from bilging?" added Midshipman Hayes.

From Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

In another instant she would be bilging helplessly among the sands of Africa, or would be on her course free and unimpeded for the shores of America!

From Ran Away to Sea by Mayne Reid

The Trial sloop was a great way to leeward, having lost her mainmast in this squall, and having been obliged, for fear of bilging, to cut away the wreck.

From Anson's Voyage Round the World The Text Reduced by H. W. Household

The Tryal was a great way to leeward, having lost her main-mast in the squall, and having been obliged to cut away the wreck, for fear of bilging.

From A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time by Robert Kerr

She was bilging fast, with an ominous list to larboard, and it could be no more than a question of moments before she settled down.

From Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini