HAZARDOUS VOYAGE ACROSS ATLANTIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 251, 22 October 1936, Page 7

HAZARDOUS VOYAGE ACROSS ATLANTIC.

GIRL PAT TRAWLER.

Skipper's £5000 for Story of Exploit. TO BE SHARED WITH CREW. United Press Association.—Copyright. (Received 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, October 21. George Orsborrie, skipper of the Grimsby trawler, Girl Pat, which he and his brother, James, are accused of stealing, continued his evidence at the resumed hearing in the Old Bailey. Accused described the Girl Pat's 8000mile voyage across the Atlantic. He told of the passage to Teneriffe, Canary Islands, where he found that three pages had been torn from the log which Stone, the mate, admitted destroying because lie had shipped under a false number and without a mate's certificate. Stone "got the wind up" and quitted the vessel at Dakar.

The Girl Pat crossed the Atlantic in 1(> days, arriving without supplies at Devil's Island, where she shipped stores, and a French cruiser followed her to Georgetown, where a local boat, the Poineroon, with 30 or 40 armed police came alongside the Girl Pat and damaged her side. The trawler was towed to Georgetown, where the ship's company was arrested, but was released next dav.

Accused said he never intended to steal the ship. He agreed to divide among "Ginger" Stephens, Harris and .lames Orsborne, his brother, £3000 of the £5000 for the story of the voyage which he sold to an Anglo-Continental newspaper company.

Asked whether John Moore, managing director of the company owning the- Girl Pat, told him to throw the ship, Gypsy Love, away, Orsborne replied: "Yes, he said so in his own words. I was offered £543, 15 per cent of her value, if she did not return."

Orsborne added that he never tried to scuttle the Girl Pat. He denied putting Jefferson, the engineer, ashore at Dover because he was not a party to what was being done with the ship.

James Orsborne, in evidence, said the vessel left Dakar with only one day's rations because his brother, in a barber's shop, knocked out a nigger who called him a white pig because lie refused to buy stolen tobacco. A horde of niggers, firmed with clubs, arrived at the waterside next morning determined on revenge. The hearing was further adjourned.