A MOTLEY CREW

Hokitika Guardian, 13 July 1929, Page 6

A MOTLEY CREW

THIRTEEN N ATIONALITIES REPRESENTED. : T AUCKLAND,. July 11. As a floating Tower of ; .Babel, the . steamer King Gruffydd, winch arrived 'at Auckland yesterday from Antwerp, is'xOiie oif the best examples this pol-t has ever seen for a motley crew. In the ship’s company of thirty-six are representatives of ' thirteen nationalities. Brazilians, Portuguese, Jamaicans, Estonians, Russians, Swedes, Belgians, Germans, Greeks,, Spaniards, Turks, Scotch and English are found in that mixed company.

In: Antwerp, wher.e the crew were signed on, sailors gather from all parts of the world, and the capacity to speak fluent English is not regarded as an important qualification for those seeking a place. When all arrived on hoard at the end of April, just before the steamer’s departure for Auckland, it was found that half the national types of Europe were represented. The oldest of all was a Swede of sixty-five, who went to sea in sailing ships back in the early ’eighties, and knew every port worth mention in any part of the world. The merry-faced cook is a Belgian, whose grey hair suggests long experience of the sea. He was a galley boy twenty-five years ago, and had been chief cook on steamers of, the Red Star line. His assistant was a galley boy of nineteen, who had been brought up neantJerusalem and >was the son- of a successful Palestine Jew. A sailor who had fought in Austria during the war and is a native of Sow Russia was busily painting on one of those stages they hang over the side oif a ship in port. Working on the same plank was an Estonian from Reval, the capital of a Baltic State that obtained its independence as a result of the war. “We know nothing,” said this man when asked if he hinT struck up acquaintance with other members of the crew. A fellow countryman of his bad been on submarines in the Baltic during the war, and had since lost contact with his native land.

•Surprisingly few of the crew are married. A South Russia, who went to sea when he was nine, and had been a sailor for twenty-two years, said New York had been bis home port for a wlrle, but he had been out of woik at Antwerp for three months belfore commencMig +his voyage, and was blissfully indifferent about the future. Tt was nineteen years since lie left Russia, and he had no relatives or friends to draw him back. A Brazilian in the stokehold seemed out of his element. Then there are a Turk, a good worker like the rest, a Portuguese and a Spaniard. English is indisputably the universal language on board. All seem to speak it a little and to understand what is said. Any deficiencies are helped out by gesticulation. Conversation is, under the circumstances, somewhat restricted, and the forecastle is a place of comparative quiet.