Stains found in empty ship cabins (8)

'stains' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both human attributes as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?

'empty ship cabins' is the wordplay.
'empty' means to remove the middle letters.
'cabins' becomes 'lodges' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ship' with its middle taken out is 'sp'.
'sp'+'lodges'='SPLODGES'

'found in' is the link.

Can you help me to learn more?