Crew Tense After Steward’s Death

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30369, 19 February 1964, Page 18

Crew Tense After Steward’s Death

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, February 18. The master of the New Zealand Star, Ifor Bodvel Owen, told the Magistrate’s Court at Wellington today that after the death of the ship’s chief steward, David Alan Rowe, members of the crew requested to be allowed to keep watch on the “monkey island” with the officer of the watch instead of in the forecastle head and moved about the deck in pairs.

The Court was taking depositions on a charge of murdering Rowe against John Vincent, aged 20, a deckhand.

The hearing is before Mr R. D. Jamieson, S.M. Mr W. R. Birks and Detective Inspector F. A. Gordon appear for the Crown, and Mr J. A. Tannahill, for Vincent.

Owen said that on December 26 and 29 there were bingo nights attended by passengers and crew. It was customary to provide an extra beer ration for the crew, but there was no extra ration last Christmas. The extra ration was given on New Year's Day. He was not aware of a social function in the seamen’s quarters on New Year's Eve. Owen said that he and the chief steward drank lemonade together and parted between 10.20 p.m. and 10.25 p.m. At the time Rowe appeared to be his normal self. He did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol to any extent. At 12.10 a.m. he was called by Matthews, the captain’s steward, and he went below to the chief steward’s cabin.

Rowe was lying in bed. His head was covered in blood, as was the bedding. He had a bandage over his head. His eyes were puffed up and his lips swollen and blood was coming from his mouth. Owen immediately had equipment brought from the hospital. Check On Crew The chief officer and fourth officer were instructed to check the crew and tc look for anyone with bloodstained clothes or hands. Rowe died at 9.25 a.m. on January 1 and was buried at sea on January 4.

In the chief steward’s cabin there was a safe. A check revealed that all the contents were intact.

On January 2 an investigation was started by Owen and the first officer. Vincent was the last member of the crew to come for interviewing. Vincent told the captain he had been in a party in the messroom and somebody threw ice-cream in through a skylight. He with others went out to see who threw it. That was the only occasion on which he left the party.

The party had been held in the seamen’s mess.

The captain asked Vincent about a visit to Rowe’s cabin on the night of December 26.

Vincent said he had gone to the cabin for a drink and had fallen asleep on Rowe’s settee. As a result of further information he interviewed Vincent again on January 3. Vincent admitted that on December 26 he had been in bed with the chief steward, but had been too embarrassed to tell the captain about it the day before.

Brian Ernest Meadows the ship’s carpenter, said he had

noticed a stanchion missing from a rack on the deck of the vessel after Rowes’s death. The stanchions were used to hold the rails on the gangplanks. He could not recall exactly when he noticed the bar was missing. William Edward Mathews, second steward, said he had known Rowe for about eight years.

Rowe was a homosexual, he said. He had called Rowe at 6 a.m. on December 27. It was the morning after a bingo game.

“I called the chief steward from the window of his cabin,” Mathews told the court. “I looked in and saw Vincent and Rowe in bed together. Both were asleep. Vincent came out of Rowe’s cabin about 6.5 a.m.”

Roland Granville, of Lower Hutt, New Zealand representative of the British Seamen’s Union, said he had gone to Napier on January 27 to meet the New Zealand Star at the request of his London office. In the afternoon he had had drinks with a number of crew members at the Central Hotel in Napier. Walking back to his own hotel, he met Vincent. “We had a discussion, mainly about union matters,” Granville said. “Then Vincent asked me if I knew of any organised entertainment in Napier. I told him some of his crewmates back in the hotel had something arranged.

“Vincent said he did not want to mix with them because they associated with ‘queers’. He said he hated ‘queers’ ”. Vincent then said something which “rather shocked me,” Granville told the court. “He told me the job aboard the ship was a job well done.” “I assumed he was referring to the tragedy aboard the vessel, and told him he should not make such statements.” Twelve witnesses were called by the Crown today. Fifteen more are, expected to be called when the hearing continues tomorrow.

First Tanker.— The first tanker to bring crude oil to the Whangarei refinery at Marsden Point has altered her estimated arrival date again. The tanker, the 31,456ton Mobil Enterprise, is now likely to arrive on Sunday.— (P.A.)