Experiments for several ship forms in ballast conditions show that the bilge keel effects are unexpectcdly small compared to the case of full load condition. In certain conditions the bilge keels even make no increase of the roll damping for some shallow-draft ship forms. Experimental and theoretical studies using two-dimensional cylinders are carried out to reveal that this is partly because of the wave-damping reduction due to the bilge keels and partly because of the eddy-damping reduction of the bilge keels due to the wave created. The former is caused by the phase difference between the wave created by the hull and the one by the bilge keels, and the latter is caused by the decrease of the relative velocity at the turn of the bilge due to wave generation.