STOWAWAY TROUBLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 2, 3 July 1939, Page 16

STOWAWAY TROUBLE

MASTER'S COMMENT

NO RESPECT FOR OFFICERS

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, July 2.

The cheeky and abusive manner being adopted by some of the stowaways who have been found on the transtasman liner Awatea in recent weeks was mentioned on Saturday by the master, Captain Davey. Three were discovered, he said, just after the liner left the wharf at Sydney last week, and one of them said when he was being sent ashore that he would "pick up" the ship on the next voyage.

In her last three crossings, said Captain Davey, nine men boarded the ship with the intention of stowing away. Three were found on the last voyage from Wellington to Sydney and after being taken ashore were sentenced to 23_days' imprisonment.

On crossing back to Auckland, the liner had just left the quay when the purser reported the discovery of a stowaway to Captain Davey. Since the ship had to stop momentarily at Rose Bay to take on air mails for New Zealand, Captain Davey ordered the man to be sent ashore by the mail launch. Between the time the first man was found and the time the mail launch drew alongside, the purser had a search made of the ship, and two more men were found. The three of them were put into the launch.

One of the men was most abusive to the purser, said Captain Davey, and it had also been noticeable for some time that men stowing away were becoming increasingly cheeky. It did not matter to them that they were putting the ships and their officers to great inconvenience and trouble. Capain, Davey also mentioned that the Wanganella, which recently left Auckland for Sydney, took two stowaways across the Tasman. Every ship making the crossing, he said, was being troubled by these men.