You put the pump on deck. What sort of boat were you on? Standard practice on DLG/DDG.
Not on deck. Down in the engine room on a tug I was working on. The deck was open to the bilge area and water was coming in pretty fast, around the shaft area, so someone brought a gas powered pump down in the engine room.
One guy stayed down there to long and passed out from the fumes even though the deck was open. Probably a 10’ by 16’ sized opening.
Pretty hard to get a pump primed 10 or 15 ft above the water in the bilge.