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V WHAT ELECTRICITY IS DOING FOR THE SAILOR. BY S. D. GREENE, LATE ENSIGN U. S. NAVY. / *1 >\\v LARGE proportion of the people of this cotin try are unfamiliar with the many discomforts and hardships *of those whose business it is “to go down to thq sea in ships.” The sailor is more or less cramped and crowded in his quarters: he sleeps in a hammock or bunk, just large enough to ac- commodate his body; he stores his clothes in a space about one-half the size of an ordinary clothes press; his food is plain— often poor; and yet he takes it all as a mat- ter of course. Fortunately, however, naval architects have been paying as much at- tention, of late years, to the practical com- forts and hygiene of those who are to man the vessels they design, as their brother architects have paid to the same subjects on shore. Electricity has perhaps done as much as any one agent to make the modern ship more habitable. On the lower decks of a vessel where men are huddled together at night like sheep, every cubic foot of pure air is precious. The old oil lamp, or tallow 94 dip, besides being a constant source of dan- ger and care, vi.tiated the air to a very con- siderable extent, by the consumption of the free oxygen in it. The incandescent electric lamp of to-day does away with all this, and gives a pure, bright light, which can be con- trolled from any one point, or any number of points. On board of our modern men- of-war, so much importance is attached to the electrical machinery, that it is assigned a whole compartment by itself; is consider- ed as one of the vitals of the ship, and is given as much protection from an enemy's fire as the type of the vessel will allow. The sketch (Fig. i) shows the arrangement of the 44 Switch Board' on one of our latest vessels. Owing to the fact that salt water is a deadly enemy of electrical appliances of all kinds, great care has to be obsrved in the installation of the electric plant on board a ship, to see that every part is absolutely water-tight. So important is this, that several electrical companies have now de- veloped, by degrees, a complete set of special appliances for marine work. Some of these appliances, designed primarily to meet the demands of the United States V