We report the first systematic study of the submillimeter water vapor rotational emission lines in infrared (IR) galaxies based on the Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) data of {it Herschel} SPIRE. Among the 176 galaxies with publicly available FT
S data, 45 have at least one H$_2$O emission line detected. The H$_2$O line luminosities range from $sim 1 times 10^5$ $L_{odot}$ to $sim 5 times 10^7 L_{odot}$ while the total IR luminosities ($L_mathrm{IR}$) have a similar spread ($sim 1-300 times 10^{10} L_{odot}$). In addition, emission lines of H$_2$O$^+$ and H$_2^{18}$O are also detected. H$_2$O is found, for most galaxies, to be the strongest molecular emitter after CO in FTS spectra. The luminosity of the five most important H$_2$O lines is near-linearly correlated with $L_mathrm{IR}$, no matter whether strong active galactic nucleus signature is present or not. However, the luminosity of H$_2$O($2_{11}-2_{02}$) and H$_2$O($2_{20}-2_{11}$) appears to increase slightly faster than linear with $L_mathrm{IR}$. Although the slope turns out to be slightly steeper when $zsim 2-4$ ULIRGs are included, the correlation is still closely linear. We find that $L_mathrm{H_2O}/L_mathrm{IR}$ decreases with increasing $f_{25}/f_{60}$, but see no dependence on $f_{60}/f_{100}$, possibly indicating that very warm dust contributes little to the excitation of the submillimeter H$_2$O lines. The average spectral line energy distribution (SLED) of the entire sample is consistent with individual SLEDs and the IR pumping plus collisional excitation model, showing that the strongest lines are H$_2$O($2_{02}-1_{11}$) and H$_2$O($3_{21}-3_{12}$).
