STOWAWAYS' TRIALS.
FOOLHARDY GERMANS. (thom ottr own correspondent.) SYDNEY, April 16. Extreme privations lasting nearly a month were ■ suffered by two Germans who stowed away on the steamer Hamburg at Durban (South Africa) with the sole desire of reaching Australia and living there. 'They certainly attained the_ first part of their objective, but their stay in this country will, be only temporary. _ Apprehended Borne weeks after escaping from the steamer, and charged with being prohibited immigrants, they were sentenced by an.nn j sympathetic Sonth Australian magistrate to sir months' imprisonment pending deportation. .. . At Durban the Germans secreted themselves in the coal bunkers of the Hamburg, and securing a few pieaes of timber, they improvised a hut about four feet square to keep them free from dust and to prevent the weight of coal bearing down on them. This was their home for 23 days. It was close to the ship's boilers and they snffered greatly from heat. At night, probably .with the connivance of the crew, one of the stowaways emerged from hiding and stealing to the galley, purloined food left over _ from the previous, meal. Mostly their fare consisted of -bread and water, for when they left the steamer at Port' Adelaide, they were on".the verge of starvation. But their worst torture was provided by the limited space of their hiding place. In it they were unable to stretch their limbs, and their only relief from this intolerable confinement was to'leave the enclosure and lio at full length on the coal. At Port Adelaide the men eluded the authorities and escaped from the ship. Although handicapped by inability to speak English, they managed to travel some distance northward by train. With resources exhausted, they found employment on a farm for some weeks before they wsre arrested as prohibited immigrants, and earned the praise, of their employer as industrious fellows. Before the Port Pirie Court, an interpreter unfolded the Germans' story. He said that the men expressed a wish to remain in Australia at the expiration of their sentence, as they did not want to face the unemployment which existed in Germany. But the Australian law in regard to admission of ex-enemy aliens is still being rigorously enforced and their entreaty failed to move. the Federal officials in their determination that the men must return to their native Bavaria,
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19250424.2.132
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18365, 24 April 1925, Page 20
Word count
Tapeke kupu
389STOWAWAYS' TRIALS. Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18365, 24 April 1925, Page 20
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Press. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Acknowledgements
Ngā mihi
This newspaper was digitised in partnership with Christchurch City Libraries.