SOMERSET STOWAWAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 26, 22 April 1927, Page 13

SOMERSET STOWAWAY

£5 FINE INFLICTED WARNING TO OTHERS The s.s. Somerset cast off from the wharf at Brisbane at 9 a.m. last Friday morning, glided slowly down the river, past the Pile Light, and was steaming steadily across Moreton Bay. The officers were at lunch when a banging noise outside the saloon disturbed them. The third officer jumped up from the table to investigate. As the noise was coming from under the hatch covering of No. 2 hold, the cover was quickly taken off, and— Out stepped Amos Staton! No one knew' how he came to bo there. He was not a passenger, and he certainly wasn’t a member of the crew. He was a stowaway, and, as such, was promptly nut to work. He behaved himself excellently on the trip across the Tasman, and -worked well, but on the ship’s arrival at Auckland he was handed over to the police. He couldn’t find work in Brisbane, he told them, so he decided to try his luck in New Zealand. “You’re liable to be fined £2O, or a month’s hard labour,” said the magistrate, Mr. Hunt, when Staton, who is a Welshman, aged 41, appeared in the Police Court this morning. “I can’t dismiss the charge, because that would encourage others to do the same thing. I want to make it as light as I can—fined £5, or seven days.”