MANY ADVENTURES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 108, 29 December 1931, Page 6

MANY ADVENTURES

VETERAN STEWARDESS RETIRES FROM SERVICE UNDER SHELL FIRE LONDON, Saturday. Nicknamed "Ma" on the waterfronts from Rio to Hongkong, Mrs. M. A. Phillips, aged 75, has resigned after 50 years' employment as a stewardess, mostly with the Inchcape group. "She has travelled 3,000,000 miles, and is the only Inchcape employee who mutinied and got away with it," says her old shipmate, Captain J. H. Hamilton, who was on the Kyarra when she was commandeered as a troopship in Melbourne. Mrs. Phillips, on that occasion, refused to sign off like the other stewardesses, saying the officers would still want their socks darned. Eventually she was retained. When a German submarine shelled the Kyarra in the Mediterranean, and Australian navy gunners aboard sunk the submarine, Captain Hamilton went down to comfort "Ma," fearing that she would be nervous at the firing. He was astonished to learn it was not her baptism of fire, as she had been "the wife of a settler in western Queensland, and defended the holmestead with a revolver when aborigines stabbed her husband with a poisoned spear, crippling him, and forcing her to seek employment. When the Kyarra was torpedoed in the Channel,. "Ma" kept the survivors amused with tales of women crooks and sharpers, when the Kyarra was carrying people to the Coolgardie gold rush. Mrs. Phillips received' recognition from the Royal Humane Society for bravery when the Kanowna was wrecked at Wilson's Promontory, and also when the Arafura broke her propeller shaft in a typhoon, and -drifted helplessly. The Arafura was carrying a big crowd of tourists at the time.