All wooden ships leak, a stark fact that has terrified sailors since the earliest days of ocean travel. Maritime historical literature is filled with horrific descriptions of being aboard a slowly sinking ship. Starting from this human perspective, then, Thomas J. Oertling traces the five-hundred-year evolution of a seemingly mundane but obviously important piece of seafaring equipment--and tells the story of nautical innovation--in this one of a kind history of the ship bilge pump. Beginning with early sixteenth-century documents that recorded bilge pump design and installation and ending at...