MORTALITY AT SEA

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 22

MORTALITY AT SEA

I The Board of Trade has published arresting, statistics relatingto mortality in the Mercantile Marine, states "The Shipping World." Major •P. Granjville Edge, of the. statistical department of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, points out that "sea life remains, even if in a lesser degree than was demandedin the great days of sail, an exacting,. exciting, and somewhat hazardous occupation, calling for a high degree of physical fitness on the part of. its followers, and tending to present a particular attraction for young fit males." His investigation embraced records relating to one year from October, 1929, to September, 1930, which .is admittedly an insufficiently long period from which to draw definite conclusions. The death rate per 1000 of British seamen was 24.83, of lascara 5.45, and of foreign seamen in British ships 11.57, giving a total death rate of 18.6. per 1000 for all classes.. The numbers of deaths for lascars and foreigners are, however, for special reasons, necessarily incomplete. Of the total of 3620 deaths analysed, 2879 were due'to disease,.292-to drowning, 21.' to injury, 93 to suicide, and 141 tj old age. As regards alcoholism amongst British seamen, Major Edge's

statistics show that, all ages considered, mortality (due to this" cause in the Merchant Navy differs; little; if at all, from that relating to "dock labourers" and "all occupied and retired males." In the- case of suicide, again in relation to British seamen, the proportionate mortality figure for seamen afloat, all ages considered, is in excess of that relating to any shore occupation, being 4.8 per cent., as compared with 1.6 per cent, for "all occupied and. retired males" ashore.