THE LINER'S TOILET

Evening Star, Issue 19407, 16 November 1926, Page 5

THE LINER'S TOILET

Very cautiously the big steamship comes into dock. There is none too much room for her, and the hydraulic capstans use their power with restraint as they wind in her steel landing strings' Watertight iron gates close smoothly behind the ship, and then the pumps are set going. Ravenous pumps they are, with a suction that makes the water sink before your eyes (writes Jay Pollock, in the ‘Daily Mail’). Wires stretched from each “ corner of the ship hold her over the submerged blocks upon which she is to rest. And all along her sides men are putting into place the heavy wooden “ shores ’ which, wedged between ship and lock, are to-prevent her toppling over. The ship weighs thousands of tons, but the steady sinking of the water presently lands her as lightly as a feather. On hoard, you do not feel the least jar; only the sudden outbreak of echoing hammer blows as the “shores are wedged up tells you that keel and blocks have met. Standing on rafts rjongside, the scrubbers begin to scour off the sea grass and slime, which, if _it is once allowed to dry, becomes thrice as hard to remove. So the scrubbers ply their brooms in a race to keep pace with the receding water. llecently in Southampton dry dock 110 tons of live mussels were scraped off a steamer’s bottom. I have seen a vessel go into dock so encrusted with barnacles and other shellfish that, from underneath, she appeared to be made of rock rather than of steel plates. Bespattered from caps to boots, the painters slop on the anti-corrosive paint with long-handled brushes. When the anti-corrosive paint has been fully applied, anti-fouling paint goes on. Antifouling paint contains arsenic or other poisons to repel barnacles and the like.