You’ve probably never rescued a ship yourself or seen a ship turned upside down. However, if you’ve ever seen photos of a shipwreck or a new ship being launched from the shipyard, you’ve probably noticed that the bottom is often red.
You may be thinking that there is no apparent reason to paint an area of a ship that is always below the waterline and that no one normally sees. But there may be a reason for this.
One way or another, there must have been those who wondered why the bottom of most ships is red. While there is no definitive answer to this, we do know that two alternative answers have been mentioned.
Reason 1: Devotion to tradition
The answer may be hidden in tradition. Shipping is a tradition driven industry. For example, even today ships are called “she” (Woman), based on an ancient maritime tradition. It is possible that the story of the red is also connected with ancient traditions.
Among the many challenges a ship must face during its voyage are plant life and various aquatic organisms such as mussels, as well as various aquatic organisms such as worms that “eat” ship hulls.
Apart from transferring invasive species from one marine ecosystem to another and affecting the normality of marine life in each, this accumulation causes the structural integrity of the ship to deteriorate and, more importantly, the ship to run slower and consequently consume more fuel.
Shipbuilders in the early years of shipping used copper plating as a biocide to prevent organotins from sticking to the ship’s hull. This copper plating was responsible for the red color of the ship.
In the 21st century, we can do this in different ways, with chemical dyes. So why is red still used on the bottom of ships? Of course, the maritime tradition…
Reason 2: Determination of the load
Another explanation is that the red part indicates whether the cargo load is excessive. The more cargo a ship carries, the deeper it goes. So this part can be seen as a kind of indicator. If it sinks too much, the load is too much. In fact, on many ships, measurement markings can be seen in this red part.
In short, it is not clear why shipbuilders stubbornly use the color red. Even they can’t explain it for sure. But we can easily say that the two reasons we mentioned above do not sound very unreasonable…
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