JUSTICE AT SEA.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 November 1919, Page 11

JUSTICE AT SEA.

INCIDENT ON TRANSPORT. ';- SOLDIERS PUNTSH THIEVES. ONE MAN THROWN OVERBOARD. Sydney. Oct. 29. The soldiers on the Australian transport Plassy varied the monotony of their voyage by dealing out summary justice to certain of their number suspected of thieving and other crimes. The whole of the ship's company suffered from petty thieving from the time the ship left England. Officers, nurses, and soldiers lost money, personal effects, clothing, and treasured war mementoes. No one was caught, and the ship seethed wHh indignation. Suspicion finally centred upon three or four men, who had very bad records, and it seems that an unostentatious watch was set upon them. Thing 9 came, to a head at Colombo. The thieves had the cool impudence to carry the ship's blankets and hammocks ashore and sell them to the natives—from whom they were recovered by the military authorities. Some of the troops, enjoying themselves ashore, were sandbagged, and a girl was maltreated—and again the men with the ugly records were suspected. As soon as they were at sea again the officers brought the suspects before a court-martial, and they were sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment. This did not satisfy the "Diggers," however. As the thieves left the orderly room they were seized by the soldiers'and, in the words of one officer, "subjected to the grandfather of a hiding." One man, after being severely handled, paid the'penalty of great unpopularity by being thrown overboard. He could not swim, but a salior threw a lifebuoy, which the drowning wretch'managed to grasp. The ship was stopped, and the officials tried to launch a boat. Something went wrong at the davits—the "Diggers" are held guilty—and the boat spilled its officers and Lascar crew into the sea. Other Lascars, looking on from the forward deck, raised a frightful noise, and had to be forcibly quelled. Another boat was launched, and the first boat's crew was rescued. Then they went after the soldier. He had been an hour altogether in the water, and was very exhausted, but recovered after a few days in hospital. There was no more thieving aboard the Plassy after that.