SHIPS’ EQUIPMENT

Evening Star, Issue 22572, 13 February 1937, Page 4

SHIPS’ EQUIPMENT

DIRECTION FINDERS AND TELEPHONES The number of ships fitted with di-rection-finding apparatus has nearly doubled in the last five years, and is now well over 5,000. There is also a rapidly-increasing number of small craft fitted with low-power telephone equipment suitable for communication up to a range of about 150 miles. It is interesting, too, to see how this fitting of vessels with wireless has affected the safety of the ships and the men they carry, and in this connection the Chamber of Shipping has issued some informative figures. From these it appears that our shipping is now two and a-ha'lf times safer than before the war, and foreign shipping nearly twice as safe. Of the world’s tonnage we own a third, but of the world’s losses we suffer only a quarter. As regards crows, the loss for the four years before the war was 1 in 582 (or, if the Titanic and Empress of India, which were exceptional losses, ■were included. 1 in 412), whereas in the period 1932-34 the losses were only 1 in 2,360, indicating that the losses are now about four to six times less than before the war. As regards passengers, for every 19 lost in the period 1910-14. only one was lost in the period 1929-33.