WORK FOR DESTROYERS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4729, 25 July 1924, Page 1

WORK FOR DESTROYERS.

SUITRESSION OF SLAVE TRADE. LITTLE WAR AGAINST ARABS. (By Jackstaff, in the Daily Mail.) The Foreign Office announcement that fast destroyers are to be used for the suppression of the slave trade in the Red Sea conies as a reminder that we have a little war that never ends ; it is the war our Navy wages against the Arab “blackbirders” and gunrunners in the Persian Gulf, the Red sea, and off the coast of Zanzibar. The Arab, that faithful adherent of tradition, changes neither hijs tricks nor iiis trade. He will pack a horde of unhappy blacks into the hold of a dhow where it ■ is as dark’as pitch, absolutely unventilated, and hotter than Hades, and run for a port where lie knows a good price is obtainable for “black ivory.” When the hatches are lifted such of the wretched slaves as have survived are inarched ashore and sold. The dead ate thrown overboard and the trader goes off after another cargo. down “blackbirding” and gun-running is one of the many mis-, cellat cons jobs allotted to the British Navy. And it is usually one of the most exciting. Sea patrolling is done by ships or boats according to the locality. Much of it falls to the lot of armed cutters, commanded by an officer and manned by a few bluejackets, which sail about in search of dhows. A patrol boat that goes alongside a dhow on the leeward beam speedily learns how tricky the Arab , can be. Hi; promptly smothers boat and crew by dropping the dhow’s sail over them, and then proceeds to finish off the ciew -by stabbing or shooting them through the cloth of the sail. So well known is this dodge that all boats when starting off- dhow chasing are warned to be on their guard. Hitherto only ships of low speed have been employed in suppressing slaving and gun-running. A smartly handkd dhow could nearly always show them her heels and get away into hiding. But fast destroyers will be a : ew thing to the Arab, who will no doubt anathematise the unspprts-

manlike conduct of the British Government in sending after him ships against which the best sailing dhow would have about the same chance that a dray-horse would against Sansovino;