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The Master must therefore:-
(1) Send a wireless message to "PORTELTH," LONDON, stating the name of his vessel and
the time* she is expected to arrive off Gravesend. This message must be sent off
not more than 12 hours and not less than 4 hours before the arrival of the ship. (If
wireless is not carried the Port Health Authority must be notified of the arrival of
the ship as soon as possible.)
(2) By day, when within the Port of London, hoist the flag signal L I M, meaning "Port
Medical Officer required";
By night, when approaching Gravesend, flash letter "Q" repeatedly from the morse lamp.
(3) Be prepared to muster the crew for inspection by the Port Medical Officer.
(4) In the case of vessels bound for the Medway, the wireless message must be sent to
"PORTELTH," LONDON, but must be as follows
"(Name of vessel) (Time of arrival) Sheerness."
(If the answers to all the questions on page 1 are "NO" and the vessel has not called at any of
the ports mentioned above the Master need not communicate with the Port Health Authority
unless directed to do so by a Customs Officer.)
The maximum penalty for breach of the Port Sanitary Regulations, 1933, is £100.
CHAS. F. WHITE,
Medical Officer of Health,
Port of London.
*Name of ship as one word. Time on 24-hour clock.
Every vessel from "foreign" is hailed by His Majesty's Customs off Gravesend.
When a ship is boarded by one of your Medical Officers he collects the Declaration of
Health. The Customs Officers take the forms from the ships which are not medically
inspected and the Boarding Medical Officer collects them each evening when he makes
up his list of arrivals from the Preventive Officer's log. The day's batch of forms are
then posted to the Port Health Office together with the Medical Officer's other records
and reports.
At Sheerness the Declarations of Health are collected by the Medical Officer or
the Customs and forwarded by the former with his weekly report.
Boarding of Vessels on Arrival.
The Port Health Authority maintain at Gravesend a hulk, the "Hygeia," on
which the Boarding Medical Officers live during their tours of duty. In November,
1935, the old "Hygeia," which was the hull of a two-masted schooner built in New
Brunswick in 1873, was replaced by the new "Hygeia," a double-bowed lighter
built of steel in 1918 for the Admiralty, on which a steel deckhouse has been
constructed providing a sitting-room, three cabins, an office, a galley and a shipkeeper's
cabin. The interior of the hull has been fitted up as a storeroom and
engineers' workshop. The vessel is permanently moored fore and aft, is connected
to the shore by telephone, and is lighted by electricity from the Gravesend Corporation
electricity supply.
The boarding launch "Howard Deighton," which has an ambulance room on
deck, lies alongside the "Hygeia." There are three Boarding Medical Officers and
three crews for the launch, each having 24 hours afloat and 48 hours ashore. Ships
are boarded at any time of the day or night as soon as they arrive off Gravesend.
The Customs also maintain a launch constantly on duty in this reach of the river,
and it is here also that the sea pilot hands over to the river pilot. Thus all three
services are in close touch with one another. The only criticism is that all these
activities take place at the extreme eastern limit of the Boarding Station, which may
lead to some congestion when there is a rush of shipping after fog. Consideration
has been given to a scheme whereby the Boarding Medical Officer would live in the
Hospital during his tour of duty. This would be an advantage in that there would
always be a Medical Officer at the Hospital; the cost of maintenance of the "Hygeia"
would be saved; visual signals from approaching ships would be more quickly and
easily observed and there would be less congestion at busy times. On the other
hand, it Avould be very expensive to construct at the Hospital a jetty at which the
boarding launch could lie at any state of the tide and in any weather, for it would be
necessary to run out some 420 feet from the shore, and the situation would be much