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9
Twenty-four dead rats were found during the discharge of cargo at Hull,
previously to fumigation, and 23 were trapped alive. The vessel was under
strict supervision in the East India Dock.
I have already, in various directions, drawn attention to the danger associated
with food stores on plague infected ships, and that the course followed by the
epidemic on board has a close relation to these stores and food stocks in general.
The illness in the issuer of the stores and his assistants, i.e., in those whose duties
carry them into the store room is an indication of rat infection on the ship.
Conversely in rat infections, the issuer of stores and his assistants are among the
first persons to be infected and their duties put them in a position of danger.
The cases on the "City of Genoa," and the circumstances under which the
men affected lived, are additional evidence of the somewhat fixed course of spread
of the disease in connection with foodstuffs on ships, through the inevitable
attraction such food must afford to rats.
The ratings and duties of the cases on this ship, as also the sequence in which
infection occurred, are listed as follows :—
1. Goanese Butler 9th March.
2. Native Steward 11th ,,
3. Pantry Boy 12th ,,
4. Deck Boy 12th ,,
5. Topaze 16th ,,
6. Curry Cook 16th ,,
7. Deck Boy 8th April.
8. Trimmer 8th ,,
Cases (1), (3) and (6) occurred in persons whose duties carried them definitely into
the ship's general food stores, which are situated in the after peak and behind a
watertight and rat proof bulkhead. These cases all lived above decks forward in
the starboard forecastle alleyway, and are the only cases occurring in people who
lived above decks. Cases (4) and (7) occurred in Tascars who were berthed in a
lower forecastle ahead of the collision bulkhead. One of the cases was berthed in
this lower forecastle in close proximity to the week's supply of provisions, ghee,
rice, flour, etc., regularly issued to the Lascars. At the time of my visit to the ship,
his empty berth was immediately over a spare berth in which lay part of the week's
supply of food for the Lascar forecastle, the remainder of the food being stacked in
a niche immediately alongside the berth. This stock was easily reached by rats by
the companion way over deck. Case (8) occurred in a similar lower forecastle
devoted to firemen. This forecastle, like the Lascar forecastle, lay athwartships,
with this difference of note that it lay immediately behind the collision bulkhead.
A similar practice of storage of a week's supply of food was in vogue in this forecastle.
The berths of the cases were easily reached, however, by fleas or rats
directly from the hold, through ventilation spaces over the bulkheads into the
firemen's quarters and under the following more or less unusual circumstances.
Cases (2) and (5) occurred below decks in the forecastle, one on each side of No. 1
hatchway below deck ; similarly to case (8) they were easily reached by rats and
fleas from the cargo.
The unusual circumstance was that in this voyage the vertical space between
the No. 1 hatchway on deck and the No. 1 hatchway below decks leading to No. 1
hold was vertically wood battened so as to hold bags of linseed, i.e., the firemen's
forecastle and the two stewards' forecastles one on each side of the hatchway
vertically battened and piled with linseed, were open to attack directly from the
rat attractive cargo ; in each of these forecastles one case occurred. It was definitely
stated that prior to fumigation two dead rats were found in one of these three
'tween deck forecastles.
Were the circumstances of plague infections as widely known in the shipping
community as among Port Sanitary Authorities, the following inferences might at
once have been made on the outbreak.
It should have been inferred from the duties of the person first attacked that
the ship was rat-plague infected and search made to ascertain the facts. I have
no doubt ample proof would have then been forthcoming.
BZ