water inlets on ship

It has been a long time since I studied a steam plant -like at OCS in 1962,
but there are indeed "condensers" on the bottom of the ship that convart the
steam back to water and feed it back to the boiler for re-use.

Probably one of our "black shoe" brethren can give us a better
details/explanation.

tc
"mah" wrote in message ...
Not really an aviation topic, but at least naval.

Was looking at a book on the Iowa class battleships. Went through the
engineering section and saw the design of the engines. A thought came
to mind - where does the cooling water come from or are they single pass
engines with the steam exhausted overboard. That sounds grossly
inefficient and makes more sense to have a closed loop design with
cooling water.

Is there a set of scoops below the waterline or some type of flush
opening below the waterline to draw in seawater for cooling? Or is it
all "fresh" water that has been drawn through the evaporators.

Is the system similar on any ship? (There, finally a tie into aviation
if a carrier uses a similar powerplant)

Thanks in advance

MAH