The bilge is the lowest compartment on a ship where the two sides meet at the keel. The word was coined in 1513[1].
Contents |
The word is sometimes also used to describe the water that collects in this compartment. Water that does not drain off the side of the deck drains down through the ship into the bilge. This water may be from rough seas, rain, minor leaks in the hull, other interior spillage, or stuffing box. The water that collects in the bilge must be pumped out to prevent the bilge from becoming too full and threatening to sink the ship.
Bilge water can be found aboard almost every vessel. Depending on the ship's design and function, bilge water may contain water, oil, urine, detergents, solvents, chemicals, pitch, particles, and so forth.
By housing water in a compartment, the bilge keeps these liquids below decks, making it safer for the crew to operate the vessel and for people to move around in strong weather.
The development of bilge pumps went from buckets, to hand pumps, and now electric bilge pumps are available for even small vessels. Bilge coatings are applied to protect the bilge surfaces. The water that collects is often noxious, and "bilge water" or just "bilge" has thus become a derogatory colloquial term used to refer to something bad, fouled, or otherwise offensive.
A feature of the bilge is the swash plates, which serve to damp the rush of water from side to side, which might destabilize the ship if allowed to run freely. The swash plates run fore and aft and have small openings near the bottom where the water is allowed to run through.
Cleaning the bilge and bilge water is also possible using "passive" methods such as bioremediation, which uses bacteria to break down the hydrocarbons in the bilge water into harmless byproducts. Of the two general schools of thought on bioremediation, the one that uses bacteria local to the bilge are regarded as more "green" because they don't introduce foreign bacteria to the waters that the boat sits in or travels through.
The term "bilged" refers to the deliberate flooding of the bilge in order to incapacitate the ship, to slow its speed or to make it hard or impossible to handle. This process may be carried out by enemy action, such as in the Battle of Vigo Bay, or by the crew of the ship itself in order to save it from falling into enemy hands, where a Spanish ship was grounded and bilged. It could later be recovered by being pumped out and re-floated during a high tide.
|
|||||