In 1609, the flagship of the Virginia Company, Sea Venture, was blown miserably off course by a brutal summer hurricane that wrecked the ship near a tiny island, some 700 miles off the Virginia coast. Fortunately, no lives were lost. Unfortunately, the island offered not a drop of fresh water. Today, that island is among the most densely populated countries on Earth, and it is still without a permanent body of fresh water. Oddly enough, visitors to Bermuda can see the solution to the problem of potability before the plane…
