STOWAWAYS' WOES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 16, 19 January 1924, Page 16

STOWAWAYS' WOES

EXCHANGES MADE IN MID-OCEAN.

lour stowaway, whatever elese he is, is seldom a coward, declares H. M. Forbes, in the "Daily Chronicle." The roaring waves, the howling .winds, the kicks of irate sailormen, the prospect of Court proceedings at the end of his adventure, he regards more or less calmly. But he has one dread—wireless. Why? Because it is by means of wireless that many a London or Southampton stowaway, instead of being carried to Quebec as he had fondly hoped has been suddenly reshipped—oh, ignominy' oi ignominies !—in mid-Atlantic on to a I vessel returning to the port from whicb i he fondly set sail. It is not everyone who knows about ' this exchanging, of stowaways. Tho system, however1, is likely to become quite the established order of things, lhe Barossa of the Green Star Line, say. is making the- Swansea from Norfolk; Va., while-ait the same time the Pyren- i ees,-, of the same line, is five days out from the Mersey bound for New Or- I •Jff-, ,™ skipper of the Barossa finds j that he has on- board, beside his usnal freight, a couple of chunks of human cargo in the shape of a Cardiff ne'er-do-well and a Birkenhead tough. "All he does 13 (to have the Pyrenees called up by wireless, when he may learn that ehe also has a "stranger or two" on board, i What more simple than, to exchange the stowaways? . .; .. Why such a fuss over a nondescript illiterate.who,-, for all can be. proved to the contrary, may have travelled free, « fare the entire Red Route? It is purely a matter of economics.! Without papers, passport, money, no one is allowed to land on American, soil. If the captain takes a stowaway to an American port, he has to assume responsibility for him andjn-ing him back to England, iftis at .the very least, of course means feeding him. On the other hand if the stranger" manages to leave the ship in America, a heavy fine is imposed on the shipping company. This apnlies to ! ail deserters from foreign vessels but, more particularly to stowaways as these are undesirables. " When informed that he is about to be exchanged for another ocean tramp, the look on a stowaway's ! face is worth seeing. Small wonder he curses the wireless,'for it has brought him to this after he has lain concealed ! and hungry for days in a cainfully enfrnped position among the gloom and filth of a coal bunker, or amid the cargo lof a rat-infested hold. .