STOWAWAY PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 1, 1 July 1939, Page 19

STOWAWAY PROBLEM

GROWING SEVERITY

CONFINEMENT AT SEA

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, June 23. Stowaways are presenting a growing problem to the companies whose liners voyage between Sydney and New Zealand. In the last six weeks twenty stowaways have crossed the Tasman. Most of them have paid the penalty in gaol sentences ranging from a month to ten days. The hope that another country will offer better chances ot employment is the incentive that impels the majority of stowaways. Sometimes an Australian, having tried his luck in the Dominion and failed, or a New Zealander who cannot earn a living in Sydney, stows away because he wants to return home and has no passage money. In the first eighteen months of her service the Union liner Awatea rarely had a stowaway,, and officers used to laugh and say the ship was too fast for them. But a few cases developed into an epidemic, until, in the last month, fee Awatea has carried many unauthorised passengers. On May 12, three New Zealand youths were found hiding on board after the liner sailed from Sydney. They were able to k meditate in confinement on the perils * of a Tasman crossing. It is merely a legend of the sea—as far as the Tasman is concerned, at any rate—that the stowaway can be put to work, and work out his passage. The liners have union crews and free labour is not appreciated. The shipping companies are not compensated by the efforts of the stowaway, however energetic he may be. In the last few weeks, the Matson liners Mariposa and Monterey have had three stowaways. One was an American who boarded the Mariposa in Melbourne, escaped detection in Sydney, and was discovered when halfway to Auckland. He could-not be landed in Auckland, and. had to be carried on to the United States. AMERICA CAN BE HARD. The Americans are the most severe on stowaways. American merchant marine regulations allow ship masters to feed "free travellers" for a week on bread and water, giving them one square meal at the end of each week. Thus, a stowaway legally can be forced to live on bread and water throughout a voyage to or from New Zealand. Right in the forecastles of the Mariposa and Monterey are the "brigs." These are tiny steel grilled cabins, where every pitch of the liners is felt, with little or no room for exercise.

On recent voyages the Huddart Parker liner Wanganella has carried eight stowaways from New Zealand and four or five from Australia to New Zealand. Three were aboard from New Zealand on one voyage. The Wanganella has a dummy funnel, and this is used with a couple of bunks for housing them. It makes an .uncomfortable cabin. Shipping men point out that it is difficult to detect every prospective stowaway before . a liner leaves the wharf, but • additional searches are being made. Stowaways when caught are sent straight to the police courts, both in Australia and New Zealand, as soon as they are released bj the immigration authorities. There are times, in Sydney when a New Zealander is not allowed to land and has to be returned. He is then usually charged in New Zealand; Once a stowaway had a chance if jhe had a genuine hard-luck story, but Iso many impostors have told heartrending tales that officials are becom-, ing more difficult to convince. '