CHARGES AGAINST TWO SEAMEN

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27404, 17 July 1954, Page 7

CHARGES AGAINST TWO SEAMEN

Endangered Ship To See Girl (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, July 15. Two 18-year-old British seamen risked the loss of their ship and its £1,000,000 cargo because they wanted to stay in a British Columbia port to see a girl, it was alleged in the Bristol Magistrate’s Court today. The ship was saved just in time by a boy apprentice who overheard them plotting and reported their plans, it was said. Robert Edmonds and Charles Martin faced three charges concerning the removal of a connecting pin from the 5385-ton motor-ship Trelevan. The prosecution said the ship, an ocean-going trade steamer, was lying in the Frazer river at New Westminster ready to sail on the evening of May 31 with valuable cargo. The two seamen went ashore that evening and met a girl at a dance hall who greatly attracted both of them. They decided they would like to find some way of delaying their ship’s departure. The prosecution said an incident then occurred which could have come from Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.’’ An apprentice, Richard Thomas, standing on a woodpile nearby in the darkness, heard the two seamen talking and realised they had interfered with the ship. The apprentice went to the bridge and reported that the steering gear was out of action just as orders were being given to cast off. According to the Trelevan’s captain, the ship would have been helpless on the river with a five-knot ebb tide flowing, and would have drifted on to a nearby sandbank and capsized. Edmonds and Martin wepe committed for trial to the Bristol Quarter Sessions on all three charges. They reserved their defence.