Why do ships have the bottom half of their hull painted red?
In: 4566
Its anti-fouling paint. Essentially paint that makes the boat taste unpleasant for barnacles or worms that may want to attach onto the ship or burrow/eat into it. The worms would weaken the wood and the barnacles would slow the boat down by dragging through the water, which in the age of sail could really suck.
Historically, sheets of copper or copper alloys were nailed to the outside of wooden ships (bio-things don’t like copper, tastes yucky). Then later they found that copper-based paints – which tend to be reddish – did the trick just as well on iron hulls.
Nowadays there are several layers of coatings and paints on there to do many things besides keeping the critters off – anti-corrosion and IM sure military ship coatings might absorb sonar or whatever cool things. ~~Degaussing~~*. But the red color kind of stuck around. Mariners are pretty superstitious.
* well, I was speculating.
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