Percy The Race Horse Feels Like A Sea Horse

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30666, 4 February 1965, Page 5

Percy The Race Horse Feels Like A Sea Horse

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) BOSTON (Massachusetts), February 3.

Percy Tarport, the strikebound Australian trotter, is raring’ to go. . . . But the crew of the City of Brisbane daren’t let him out of his stall aboard the freighter, the Associated Press reported. They are afraid he’d be so frisky he’d leap over the foredeck rail.

Percy’s home for the last two months has been a “barn” on the City of Brisbane. He has not been outside the

makeshift structure since he was hoisted aboard in Sydney two months ago. Percy, a three-year-old stallion, is bound for Meadowland Farm near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he wil stand at the stud of Mr Delvin Miller. But a watersiders’ strike along the Eastern United States coast has prevented him from being unloaded. The City of Brisbane docked in Boston on January 10. Percy Tarport was to be the first unloaded the next morning. Then came the dock strike. The freighter headed for Halifax, Nova Scotia, to unload 800 tons of frozen meat, which had been destined for discharge in Boston.

The horse was still aboard when the ship returned to Boston on January 21. Donald Lambert of Carver,

Massachusetts, an agent for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, gave Percy Tarport his tri-weekly examination yesterday and pronounced him healthy and strong as a horse. He said the horse had shed his summer coat and now has his warm winter coat. He’s also protected by a blanket. Mrs Elizabeth Kerr, of Kilmarnock, Scotland, wife of William Kerr, the City of Brisbane skipper, visits Percy every day with apples and carrots.

Two apprentice deck officers, Laurence McCory, aged 19, of Belfast, and Adrian Luckett, 17, of Norwich England, take turns serving as aides to Percy Tarport. “We’d bet on him anytime,” they said. “We'd like to see him go ashore —for his own sake.