I thought that’s what Gatorade was.
And a smart sailor knows which is the leeward side of he ship. I can’t speak to the issue of urine, but I know it applies to orange peels.
From the OP’s cite: “Urinal drain pipes clog more than toilets and therefore can be smellier and costlier to maintain, Meyer said.”
This makes sense. What doesn’t is the fact that every ship I rode that had out-of-order or otherwise not avaialbe urinals, had absolutely horrible toilet stalls in the heads. Even discounting the pitch and roll, male sailors just don’t lift the seat first.
The larger ships can probably go this way without serious difficulties, as there will be a large number of fresh seamen to keep busy cleaning the heads.
As to a whiz off the deck, on the small ships I rode (mostly frigates) the only place you could to that was off the fan tail, (where there is no leeward while under way), or a short length of midships where the onshore Quarterdeck would be (not a good place to be caught with the whizzer out. Also no leeward while under way.
As I understand it’s not unheard-of for sailors simply to fall off the boat from the unexpected motion of the waves, wind, ship, etc. If you’re standing at the edge, you want both hands firmly on the rail, not otherwise occupied.
Pissing over the side is a cherished naval tradition. It owes its heritage to the other tradition of keeping a vessel clean and ship-shape. You see, there aren’t any janitors on ships: this function is filled by junior enlisted personnel released from their normal duties. But as naval warfare has become more and more technologically complex, fewer people can be spared from their vital functions. Therefore, to keep the bathrooms cleaned, once they have been “field-dayed,” they are locked.
Rather than search the length and breadth of a large warship with full bladder, barking ones shins on doorways every few feet, the beleaguered seafarer, unable to maintain watertight integrity, may duck outside the ship and relieve himself from one of the balcony-like “catwalks.”
If done in port from a large ship, it makes a hell of a racket as the fluid hits the water from three storeys up. Any other sailor within earshot, trained to listen for anything that may mean trouble, will know what you’re doing.
If done at sea while underway, ducking outside the skin of the ship for a piss is a disciplinary matter: At night you will have violated “darken ship” by opening the door to the lighted passageway; you’ve broken condition “yoke,” and opened a watertight seal (and mark my words: yoke is no joke!); and like as not your ship is conducting flight operations, when no unauthorized person is allowed outside for safety reasons. Why, you could be swept overboard, and Uncle Sam would have to pay your mom that whopping ten thousand dollar insurance money.
(Slithy Tove: King of the Raging Main, has pissed into the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the South China and Phillippine Seas and the Sea of Japan: but never vomitted into any)
Not unlike this, it seems.
