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For details of Fumigation of Vessels, see Appendix XXVII.

Hygiene of Crews' Spaces.
Owing to the continued depression in the shipping industry few new ships are
being built and it is therefore not possible, from observation in the Port of London,
to say what has been the effect of the recommendations of the Manning Committee of
the Shipping Federation contained in their reports on "Officers' and Crews'
Accommodation in Cargo Vessels " to which I referred in my last Report.
Although, in spite of the plight of the shipping industry, we may reasonably hope
that, in new construction, the recommendations of the Shipping Federation Committee
will be adopted, we cannot at the present time expect that structural alterations to the
accommodation in existing ships will be undertaken. In these difficult days we are
obliged to make the best of things as they are, and therefore it is a particularly
appropriate time to draw attention to the fact that the sanitary condition and the
comfort of crew quarters depends in no small degree upon the crew themselves.
It is not uncommon to find in one ship accommodation looking clean, bright and
reasonably comfortable and in another ship where the crew quarters are structurally
exactly the same there are dirt, vermin and every evidence of discomfort. There is
no doubt that Officers who take an interest in their men and know how to handle them
can work wonders with the most unpromising accommodation. The men themselves
must be consistently clean and tidy in their habits. Spasmodic efforts to clean up
after days of neglect are thoroughly unsatisfactory. This is particularly true in the
control of bed bugs. Your Medical Officer believes that if on the first appearance
of bed bugs an insecticide spray is used intelligently at regular intervals of a week,
and if the quarters are kept thoroughly clean, it is possible to get rid of them, but if
infestation is neglected nothing less than a prolonged fumigation with hydrogen cyanide
will effect a cure of the condition. He recently visited a ship in which the crew
accommodation was ideal for the development of infestation with bed bugs. The
firemen's quarters were heavily infested, in the sailors' quarters there was not a bug.
The difference was entirely due to the efforts of sailors to keep their quarters clean
and free from vermin. The firemen "just grumbled about the bugs and occasionally
squashed one on the matchboard sheathing of the bulkhead.
Seamen in this respect are like tenants of houses ashore, some of whom will create
slum conditions in good property, others will make an attractive home in a slum.
But just as the better class of house attracts the better type of tenant so the better
type of crew accommodation attracts the better type of seamen, and the ships with
the worst living quarters get the worst crews.