VALUABLE TRADE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 333, 21 September 1932, Page 7

VALUABLE TRADE

BOOTLEGGING WORTH MILLION FRANCS TO PAPEETE YEARLY.. PUZZLING PROCEEDINGS. Alongside the wharf at Papeete a steamer was discharging a cargo of wine and spirits. An Aucklander who has since returned to that city was sunning herself on the wharf at the time, and innocently inquired the destination of the valuable cargo. To her surprise she learned that soon it would he reloaded into the ship from which it had been discharged and taken many miles away from the sundrenched islands of Tahiti. Unknown to herself, the Aucklandei* who watched the dark Tahitian labourers handle the many hundreds of cases of wine and spirits had looked upon a branch of the huge bootlegging business that is being carried on along the Pacific and Atlantic seaboards of the United States and Mexico. The innocent-looking steamer was a bootleggers' ship, although there was nothing illegal in the fact that she was reloading a cargo she had herself discharged. "The cargo had been loaded at Vancouver and consigned to Papeete," said the Aucklander in telling the story. "When it was put asliore it was carried into sheds near the wharf. In the sheds the cases were ripped off and the bottles, still in their paelcets, placed in sacks. Possibly the sacks were intended as a form of camouflage although I was unable to satisfy myself on that point. The sacks certainly made the liquor more easy to handle. "When enclosed in the sacks the liquor was reloaded in the steamer, which eventually left Papeete carrying the identieal cargo she had loaded at "Vancouver," continued the Aucklander. "From Papeete her destination was Vancouver, but 1 learned that somewhere on her voyage home she would rid herself of her valuable freight. And the steamer I saw is not the only one that drops into Papeete to land a cargo, reload. again, and sail away." It may be taken for granted that the cargo that the Aucklander saw handled at Papeete was transferred to one of the "mother ships" that keep just beyond the twelve-mile limit in American territorial water. From the mother ship it was probably raced ashore in fast motor boats and landed in secluded places, where other bootleggers were waiting to send it on to the last stage of its jouimey. "I understand that the bootlegging business is worth one million francs a year to the French Administration," said the Aucklander. "This money, together with the wcalth that is brought by tourist trade, chiefiy from America, h'elps Papeete to prosper when the rest of the world is in difficulties. Papeete would be in a bad way, for the price of copa-a is very low, anu motherrof-pearl shell and vanilla, the other principal exports, are practically unsaleable."