a line on the side of a ship showing the highest point that the water can safely reach when the ship is loaded （船的）载重线，吃水线 Word Originnamed after Samuel Plimsoll (1824–98), the English politician whose agitation in the 1870s resulted in the Merchant Shipping Act of 1876, ending the practice of sending to sea overloaded and heavily insured old ships, from which the owners profited if they sank.