CUNNING SMUGGLERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 July 1940, Page 3

CUNNING SMUGGLERS

OPIUM IN CAPTAIN'S BUNK. ENGINEER'S DISCOVERY Opium smugglers are notoriously cunning. One of their most impudent efforts is described by Mr William Blain in his book, "Home is the Sailor," the life story of Captain William, Brown. It happened that the electric light in Captain Brown's cabin had gone wrong when his ship was at Singapore. The second engineer was told to sec to it. When the captain came to ask how things were going the engineer, he says, mumbled, and seemed to be avoiding meeting my eye. There was something queer about his manner, that I resented. "What's wrong, man?' 1 said.

He faced me squarely enough, then. ‘•Well, captain, to get at the wiring I had to take out all the drawers beneath your bunk.” ‘■Well, that was quite in order.” This reply evidently relieved the engineer's suspicions. He immediately pulled out one of the drawers and said:

"Look in there. The whole space beneath the drawers is packed full of opium." I looked and saw row upon row of the characteristic square tins in which the drug is packed. The tins were hidden unless the drawers were removed. There was clever organising here. The ship may have been carrying a cargo of opium on every trip, for all 1 knew, and in my own room. The culprit was never discovered. The opium was thrown overboard, and no more found its way into the captain’s cabin.

Again, on a Liverpool freighter, “a thoroughly reputable British vessel.," commanded by a friend of Captain Brown's, opium searchers found thousands and thousands of pounds’ worth of the drug concealed on the ship. In the front of the bulkhead separating the engine-room from the stokehold a dummy bulkhead of wood had been found. Between the true and false bulkheads were the opium tins. The construction work on this false bulkhead must have been exceptionally well done to deceive men accustomed to the ship. The mystery of when the dummy bulkhead.was fitted remained unsolved. [