THE SAILORS' HOME.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 100, 28 April 1888, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE SAILORS' HOME.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—Thelcttcrsin lasbThursdofts Stakwill give landsmen an idea what a shipmaster has to encounter when he finds himself in command of a ship managed by a mixed crew of foreign seamen and sea lawyers. What has the Homo, builfc according to their missionary, expressly to save sailors from being plundered, to do with destitute persons, is beyond comprehension. Other persons in like positions fall back on the pawn shop, borrow from friends, or go to the Charitable Aid Board. To attempt to work the Home, as homes are worked m other places in the New Zealand colony, is impossible, for the simple reason that there are no ships for men to ship in—the colonial shipping trade being now worked almost exclusively by steamboats manned by tho Seamen's Union, whoso rules to strangers are simply prohibitory. Mr Moss evidently has a feeling heart, as he readily agreed to pay out of his own and wife's scant earnings tho boon the seaman asked. Without doubt somo place where seamen can meet when on shore of an evening is tli® means of keeping nmny of them from bad associates, and tho Rest has done good in that respect. Our over-wise legislators, uro-ed on by teetotal fanatics, have stopped the sailor's recreation of my boyhood, the music hall, and left him nothing but the street corner or footpath on which to spend his evenings. Some of the grandest precepts of the world arc to be found in Dibdin's songs and our old English ditties. the temperance people got their back backs up for their suppression I could never understand. All that was desired could have bean gained by excluding, by police supervision, lewd songs. The Rest is therefore a necessity, whether it is conducted on its present line or otherwise. If tho Home once opens its portals indiscriminately to sailors, with a week's board in advance and no more, and then gives credit till men ship, hundred. 1 will flock to its doors now obtaining a living on the gumfields, and the profession will be swamped with men hard up, glad to work for any wages that shipmaster.may offer. In conclusion, it would be edifying and instructive to tho Committee, who are, as your correspondent says, not all nautical men, to invite suggestions for their consideration from jailors and parsons to give them ideas for devising a just and equitable code of rules for tho Home and Rest that would give satisfaction to all both lay and clerical, and save bickerinp and contention over money that should be used justly for charity and philanthropy.— 1 am, &c, Duke Humi'lirey.