THEFTS ON SHIPS.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 April 1921, Page 3

THEFTS ON SHIPS.

WHY FREIGHTS ARE HIGH. Writes Lord Inchcape, the shipping magnate, to the London Times: — Ships are being laid up all over the world because they cannot be run under present conditions. Ports are congested everywhere. Thousands of officers, engineers, seamen, stokers, and stewards are out of employment, and yet a Commission is sitting in Brussels to consider the advisability of limiting employment at sea to eight hours a day. The unions dictate to the shipowners what men are to go in the ships, with the result that incompetent men of whom nothing is known have often to be taken merely because they have joined the union, while men who have been in the service of the company for years are excluded. One result is that passengers’ belongings and enormous quantities of cabin, saloon, and table furnishings are constantly being stolen. On one voyage alone of a P. and O. steamer plate and linen to the value of £1,043 were removed from the ship. The thieving that is- going on at sea and in the docks is beyond anything in history. A man recently removed the clocks from the smoking and music rooms of one of our steamers while the passengers were embarking at Tilbury Dock, and they have never been traced. Within the last few days a piano was removed from one of the steamers in dock and carried off to a cottage, where, however, it was fortunately recovered. The quartermaster, who on watch, and found to be in leagfie with the thieves, has gone to gaol with the receiver, find they are now picking oakum instead of playing the piano.

If it had not been that there were so many passengers requiring to go East in the last few months, who would have been immeasurably inconvenienced if they had not been able to go, we should certainly have taken no stewards except on our own terms. We may be forced next season to terminate our passenger services at a Continental port in order to rid ourselves of the union tyranny and the Maritime Wages Board’s oppression. Tn any case, as things are now, we would be in pocket by discharging all our men and laying our ships in the River Fal in charge of a 70-year-old caretaker and a few aged charwomen.