LEAKY QUARTERS

Hokitika Guardian, 23 February 1929, Page 5

LEAKY QUARTERS

ON S.S. HORORATA

[By Telegraph, Per Press Association.]

AUCKLAND, Feb. 22,

The New Zealand Shipping Coy’s Hororata has been held up at Auckland owing to trouble with the crew. The vessel was about to sail tor Bluff to-night when 38 members of the stokehold staff walked ashore, and refused to take the vessel to sea. At sailing time some of the stokehold staff were quarrelsome and were fighting among themselves.

The stokehold staff complained in a body that their quarters were leaking and they refused to go to sea unless the fault was remedied. They then went ashore, but they were kept on the wharf by the water police. The leak complained of was the result of very stormy weather when crossing the Atlantic on the voyage to New Zealand. The Hororata reached Wellington on February Bth. It is understood that no complaints were made there about the leak. When the men left the boat to-night they requested that a surveyor from me Marine Depawnmnt should inspect the hawser pile, where the leak originated. This was done, but the surveyor was unable to class the pipe as defect-

His decision was conveyed to the stokers, but they still refused to return aboard.

The engineers then took the steamer into the stream, and the stokehold hands drifted into the city.