That should be fine. Do you have a gear type?? or does is it a flexible
impeller pump?. If it is a true positive displacement gear type, then small
solids could jam it. However I have never seen a true gear type raw water
pump. Maybe some larger boats (ships?) may use them but I don't know about
that. So if it is a "gear" pump you may need some thing else but If it is
the normal flexilble impeller raw water pump , you should be fine with what
you have as the size of solids passing that type strainer intake should pass
the pump too.

--
Ron White
My boatbuilding website is:
www.concentric.net/~knotreel

Thanks Ron.

Yes, this is a true gear pump. A picture is here, on the second page:
http://tinyurl.com/spsv

Wow! what a project I didn't know that we were dealing with and antique. I
was doubtful that you had a gear pump but one picture ( actually 93) is
worth 93,000 words.Apparently your pump is a gear drive as well as being a
gear pump. I would hate to guess what one like that would cost today. I
guess the flexible impeller pump was still on the drawing board back then.
Well, as far as a strainer, it might be a two edged sword. If it got clogged
and water flow was too little to cool the engine, and there were no alarms
well that could be bad. If it were me, I might tend to trust the rather
beefy gear drive pump to just chew up anything that is light enough to
float. Things that would likely damage that pump are more likely on the
bottom? But then in the final analysis I don't know what you should do.
Either way there are risks. The boats I am familiar with that have sea
strainers are mostly offshore boats and have high temp alarms and often run
in sea grass like Sargasso. One of my old boats didn't have a sea strainer
and spun and impeller after getting fouled with grass. But I think mere
grass would be no match for your "rolling mill pump". Anyway, strainer-no
strainer, I it may depend on personal preference in this case more that the
usual considerations? Keep up the good work.
--
Ron White
My boatbuilding website is:
www.concentric.net/~knotreel

PS:
Ron, Nice site. Any photos of the work when it was in progress??