sinking ship

sinking ship

A failing or floundering organization or entity. After all of the recent layoffs, most consider the company a sinking ship.
See also: ship, sink
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

a sinking ship

If an organization or cause is a sinking ship, it is failing and unlikely to recover. Insiders regard the company as a sinking ship. Note: You can also say that someone abandons, deserts or leaves a sinking ship, to mean that they leave an organization or activity which is about to fail. I know some people will say that I am leaving a sinking ship. He seems to be suggesting that we're deserting a sinking ship, but that's not the case. Compare with like rats deserting a sinking ship.
See also: ship, sink
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.
See also:
  • a sinking ship
  • go down with the ship
  • abandon ship
  • break ship
  • be broad in the beam
  • when one's ship comes in
  • when ship comes in
  • when someone's ship comes in
  • when your ship comes in
  • when your ship/boat comes in
References in periodicals archive
This time next week we might see this Boomtown Rat scurrying off the Remain sinking ship on to any passing do-gooder lifeboat.
Five passengers were rescued from the sinking ship while the bodies of the 15 who died were recovered from the water.
The four-piece are releasing, How to Steer a Sinking Ship..., the follow up to their latest EP Magpie Spirit, on October 9 through North East based record label, Anyone Can Make These Records (ACMT).
Recorded anywhere from a professional studio to a Metro carriage, using anything they could get their hands on, 'How to Steer a Sinking Ship...' is a constantly shifting, fluid piece of pop that isn't afraid to change direction or move into new territory while maintaining a comforting and honest sense of home.
Altafaaq said that when they were alerted about the sinking ship, the municipality immediately sent a team to the sea that found 400 diesel drums floating in the sea.
Of the Nelson's 10-person complement, only one survived: skipper Andrew Haganey, who witnessed the sinking ship pull down the still-attached lifeboat containing his wife, infant child, and crew of seven.
Also covered are such vital topics as how to store and use all the foods, tools, and other "calamity commodities"; how to perform those everyday tasks that keep you alive from cooking, washing the dishes, and clean clothes, to bathing, going to the bathroom, and keeping everything sanitary; how to fashion all kinds of household items in simple and useful ways; how to deal with disasters at home or at work, in a public building or while driving, in a plane crash or train wreck, on a sinking ship or in the vicinity of a shooter; how to deal with disasters without generators, weapons, and wilderness survival skills; and so much more.
The crew members face criminal charges, including "homicide through willful negligence", for abandoning the sinking ship before the passengers, who survivors and prosecutors said were repeatedly told to stay on the ferry and were trapped as it sank just off the southwestern tip of South Korea on April 16.
Tonight's programme also looks at how the strain of working in accident and emergency departments are driving staff away, with one former consultant describing A&E as a "sinking ship."
The ad, titled 'Captain of a sinking ship', read: "No experience required, seven-month contract, no perks, CVs to Selhurst Park."
ANOTHER judge/rat deserts the sinking ship as Danny O'Nobody quits The Voice to concentrate on any old thing...
In his inaugural address at BJP national executive at Surajkund, near Delhi, party president Nitin Gadkari asked his party to prepare for polls as the Congress-led UPA government is a "sinking ship" and the people have lost all love for it.
Rats may leave a sinking ship but on this vessel every performer with an equity card is trying to get on.