The aim of this paper was to present a practical approach for estimating the distribution of water height on the deck of a ship due to a green water event. This distribution can be used to estimate vertical loading on ship and platform decks in the early design phase. The present approach is an extension of the methodology proposed by Ogawa et al. in J Soc Naval Archit Jpn 182:177-185 (1997) for estimating that distribution on a ship with advance speed. In this study, the methodology was adapted for application to a ship without forward speed. The analytical formulation is presented, followed by a parametric study to evaluate the influence of the main input parameters in the results. The results are compared with experimental data from Buchner in Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), vol 7698, Houston, Texas, (1995a) and numerical results from Nielsen in numerical prediction of green water loads on ships, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby (2003). It is observed that the parameters with the greatest influence on the resultant water height distribution are the initial water height at the stem of the ship and the breadth of the incoming volume of water. A smaller influence is observed for the other input parameters. The results indicate potential for the adapted model to estimate shipping water height distributions due to green water events, at least in early design stages.