Bilge Pumper

There is no more dreaded, reviled, or disgusting work on a ship than pumping and cleaning out the bilge. The bilge is the lowest compartment of a ship. It is here where all leaking liquids will collect. And sit. And it all continues sitting there until bad odors, caused by bilge slime, rises up into the other parts of the ship.
Once that unsavory aroma reaches the nose of a ship's officer, someone has to be sent down there to the bilge. If a sailor has been tossed in the brig, a ship's jail, it is they who are taken down to the bilge. Unfortunately, there are too many times when no one is in the brig and so the inglorious duty falls to one member of the crew who has earned the title of bilge pumper.
In social ranking amongst their fellows, they are the least liked and the one most often shunned and hazed. Despite this, they are the only member of a crew to never ever be robbed even if their fellows are pirates. By sailor, and especially pirate, tradition, to rob a filth blige pumper was a sign of such desperation that the culprit become the new bilge pumper. Water aboard a sailing ship is limited, and the opportunities for non-officers to bathe or even wash clothes are not that common. When it comes to combat, the bilge pumper, is always last to be sent in. No one wants to loose their bilge pumper in case they are the next ones to be assigned that vile duty. And then, there was the sailor forced into piracy, Fenton "The Slug" Rivers.
Ever since that sad day Fenton went to the tavern right after his workday as a clerk instead of going home, he was forced onto a ship and made into a sailor. String bean thin, he made a terrible sailor. It did not take long for him to fall to the rank of bilge pumper. Now he works hard to become the bilge pumper of every ship he works thus earning his prate name, The Slug.

by TheDigitalArtist