sinking ship

plural sinking ships

1. idiomaticSomething which is doomed; an impending debacle; an ongoing disaster.

   [T]he only future for Syria is without the Assad political dynasty. […] The government is a sinking ship.

   2012 May 30, Haitham Maleh, “Opinion: A Peace Plan in Name Only”, in New York Times, retrieved 01 Aug 2012

   3 more examples

   He said that […] Bella had been perfectly right to leave him, because he was a sinking ship, and deserved to be turned out penniless into the world.

   1910, Mary Roberts Rinehart, chapter 2, in When a Man Marries

   […]you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified—and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony.

   1920 April, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, book II (The Education of a Personage), page 255

   My word, won't it be funny when there's no Tevershall pit working. […] And now the men say it's a sinking ship, and it's time they all got out.

   1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter IX, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, [Germany?]: Privately printed, →OCLC

   Synonyms: lost cause