STOWAWAYS ON RANGITATA

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28870, 15 April 1959, Page 18

STOWAWAYS ON RANGITATA

Compensation Sought By Shipping Line (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 14. A request that two stowaways who boarded the Rangitata in Wellington without authority when she sailed on February 27 should be ordered to compensate fully the shipping company for the expense involved was made by Mr S. G. Lockhart, for the New Zealand Shipping Company, when the two men pleaded guilty before Mr J. B. Thomson, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court at Wellington today to a charge of stowing away. Mr Lockhart said the two men, Z lan William Hooper, aged 20, a seaman, and Patrick William Goulding, aged 24, a seaman, were put ashore at Panama from the Rangitata, detained there in prison under Panamanian regulations, and returned to New Zealand in the Rangitoto which arrived yesterday. He said the expense to the company as a result of the men’s action had reached a total of £474 4s 7d. Similar cases had been dealt with in other New Zealand Courts recently by placing offenders on probation and ordering them to make full repayment, he said. He said Hooper had arrived in New Zealand after deserting from the Largs Bay in Australia in April, 1957, and Goulding was an immigrant still under contract. The Magistrate remanded both men till next week pending a probation report