The Glamor of the Mysterious East

NZ Truth, Issue 1186, 23 August 1928, Page 6

The Glamor of the Mysterious East

TT takes a Peter B. Kyne to weave an absorbing romance of the business side • of shipping. But sometimes a slice of real life provides as engrossing material as was ever conceived in'the agile fancy of the novelist. , Not so many years ago an irascible chief engineer of a vessel leaving Wellington for the East made a fuss at the last moment. A young marine, engineer, named Stewart Williamson, ready for any unexpected adventure, stepped into the vacant berth. A kindly twist of Fate it turned out, for it led to a romantic and. remarkable rise m the world for Williamson. He was an insouciant' member of the "Black Squad," ready for a night's fun ashore and equal to a fistic argument with the grimmest and grimiest member of the stokehold. And when he set out on the fateful voyage, not a notion did he have of the giddy possibilities of the glamorous Orient. Yet m a few years he was to advance from a . post on a small Eastern vessel to the ownership of a fleet. Ample m physical bulk and modest to a pin-point, Williamson is not now overbearing or puffed up with pride. He is simply an average New Zealander, who'has used his native wit, resource and abundant energy m carving out a career away, from his native, shores. Never top of his class at the Terrace School, Stewart, nevertheless, knew how to. play the game m the rough and tumble of life. Gaming his ticket as a marine engineer, he sailed many seas before his final voyage eastward. A ship having subtle personal associations, Williamson has affectionate memories of the old, "Stormbird," that venerable little craft which crept for fifty years up and down the East Coast before piling up on the Wanganui bar. , Quite all right about the lure of the East, but the home call is a more powerful and incessant urge. Thus, we find Williamson renewing the friends of his youth, and, very incidentally, purchasing a vessel or two as additions to his fleet. . * -,",«• ''■'„ c v- L-" i i A booster, and also a good, ready-made advertisement for his native land, he is yet a trifle dubious of the high-falutin' stuff about the riches cropping ~ out everywhere m "God's Own." At any rate, if,he has achieved more than he ever dreamed of m an Eastern land, he yet indulges m an atmosphere of home by sporting his colors at the Hong Kong race meetings.