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time and place to get water, is prob-- ably more the result of habit and ig- norance than of willful negligence. Formerly ships could secure good wa- ter almost anywhere, and the idea seems to persist that this can still be done, so that there is not the proper appreciation of the necessity for atten- tion to the important details which the present-day conditions demand. If various municipalities have learned by. costly experience with typhoid epi- demics that not only must extreme care be used in the selection of intake points for water supplies but that in the majority of instances it is neces- . sary to efficiently treat the water be- fore it is safe for drinking purposes, it most certainly follows that ships on these waterways will experience sim- ilar trouble unless the same amount of caution is displayed. Filling of Tanks Where vessels operate on a definite schedule between ports, and their runs are short, filling tanks is routine duty and falls generally in a certain watch, 60 Water 16 obtained at about' the same place or places each trip. How- ever, the demand for water naturally varies according to the number of people on board and is, therefore, very inconstant. If the runs are long or if the ship has no regular schedule for ports of departure and call, there will, of course, be a great variation in the sources of supply. Aboard most vessels it is the duty of the engineer's department to attend to filling tanks. Very often one man is designated for this duty and always looks after it, but on too many ships there is not only variation in source, but also in the one who selects the source. On more than one' occasion tanks have been filled when the vessel was lying in harbor near some sewer outlet be- cause water happened to be needed at the time and some incompetent or careless individual took it upon him- self to start the pumps. Again, it has happened that although a safe source has been selected well out from shore, somebody has forgotten to close a valve or stop the pump and the ship has steamed into some foul harbor still pumping water into her drinking tanks. On practically no vessel is any record kept as to when or where tanks are filled, so there is nothing to show just who attended to this duty each time, or what places were selected as sources of supply during a cruise. Many captains and engineers are very careful about this important matter, but still lack of individual responsi- bility and display of incompetency are very common. The intake system varies more or THE MARINE REVIEW less according to type, size and class of vessel, but in general it may be stated that drinking water is pumped through a sea cock in the ship's bot- tom to the tanks and delivered from the latter by pipes to drinking points. On some ships there is a separate in- take, pump and pipe line for drink-° ing water, but on by far the ma- jority the sea cock, pump and main line are used for various purposes, the pipe line to the tanks being a lateral from the main line and: closed by a valve when not in use. On most of the freighters and on some passenger vessels the tanks are filled by con- necting a hose to the deck line, the tanks having no pipe connection ex- cept for delivery of water to drinking points. s As stated above, the intake sys- tem is frequently tsed when water is needed for purposes other than drinking, such as boiler supply, wash- ing down decks, fire control, flushing toilets, filling water-ballast tanks, etc. When lying in port, water for any one of these purposes may be more or less constantly pumped aboard, and if the harbor happens to be grossly polluted with sewage, as practically all of them are, the sea cock, pump and pipes must certainly become thoroughly fouled with all sorts of filth. The fol- lowing extract and diagram from the article "Wiater Contamination aboard Ship and Its Prevention" (Journal of the American' Medical Association, Dec. 18, 1909) by Sure, J. O. Cobb, United States public health service), graphically illustrates this point: All water used aboard, for whatever pur- poses, is pumped through the sea cocks which perforate the shell of the ship in the bottom, as indicated by the arrow in the diagram, which represents a cross section of a ship, the sea valve, pony pump, and pipes to drink- ing tanks. Now, suppose that valve A is kept -closed when not in use, which is never the case except when the boat is laid up for the winter, then when the ship lies in the Chicago river, say, all that portion of the pip- ing and sea cock from the bottom: of the boat to valve A stands filled with sewage, or Chi- cago river water, which is the same. let us go further: Suppose that the boat is loaded down so she lies in the water to the depth indicated by B, then the river water would rise through the sea cock to the level of B at C. From the sea cock to the pony pump is a long stretch of pipe in most steam- ers, and as the pony pump is constantly in action to maintain the pressure in the various pipes and to feed the 'boilers it is plain that all this section of pipe is filled with sewage all the time that the boat lies in foul water. Where there is direct pipe connec- tion with tanks, if the valve which closes the tank lateral happens to be left open or is poorly seated, some of the sewage water, which is being pumped through the main, will be forced past the valve and into the drinking tanks. It will be stated on board ship that before filling tanks the intake system. is flushed with clean water, but even if this be done--which is not always the case--most cer- tainly the mere washing is not a suf- But: March, 1914 7 ficient surety for the removal of filth and pathogenic bacteria, so that there is always the danger of polluting the drinking water even though the source -- may be absolutely safe. Obviously an intake system any part of which is liable to sewage pollution is unfit for. service if raw water is to be used for drinking purposes. The water tanks are variously placed --in the hold, forward, aft or amid- ship, or on any one of several decks, They also vary greatly as to numbet and size, according to the ship they are on, there apparently being no def- inite scale or standard. As to con- dition, that varies as much as the tanks themselves. Aboard some ves- sels they are never cleaned, while on others this is attended to frequently and carefully, steam being often used for the purpose. On some _ vessels the water supplied to toilet room and cabin faucets for washing purposes does not come from the drinking tanks, but from directly overboard, irrespect- ive of where the ship may be lying. From an esthetic standpoint alone, water out-of a dirty harbor seems scarcely the proper thing for cleans- ing one's face and hands or for wash- ing one's teeth, but, what is still worse, passengers, through ignorance of the source of supply, not infre- quently drink from these faucets. As to the best way to handle the question of drinking water on board vessels taking their supply direct from our inland waters, there are a few measures which if properly carried out will solve the problem without difficulty. Extensive Pollution Exists ixtensive pollution of --om inland waterways exists and can not be controlled or 'Timi by the ships themselves except in. a comparatively slight degree. In regard to the responsibility and care in the selection of immediate sources, however, something can be done. There should be some one on board, preferably an officer, whose duty alone it should be to have charge of filling tanks--this to be done only by his orders and under his super- vision--and to make an official entry in the ship's log stating the time and place where tanks were filled. Though existing conditions prevent absolute certainty as to safety, it should always be endeavored to select places which are known to be free from pol- lution, and obviously polluted areas, such as harbors and rivers into which sewage is emptied, should be avoided. However, though these precautions will aid materially, it may be stated emphatically that if the supply is tak-