Plans to fly girl stowaway home

Press, 4 May 1978, Page 3

Plans to fly girl stowaway home

PA Wellington Plans are being made to fly home a Wellington girl, aged 16, who gave herself up to immigration authorities at Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday, more than three months after stowing away in the American icebreaker Polar Star. She told authorities she stowed away in the Polar Star when it left Wellington on January 20, and left it when it reached Seattle on February 8. “I know nothing more than she has been arrested as an illegal immigrant,” her father said in Wellington yesterday, as plans were made to fly her home.

“She had never done anything like this before. It is very distressing from my point of view. The big thing is not to dignify it. She is the type of person who would glorify in it, and the less publicity accorded it the better,” he said. Later reports from the United States yesterday indicated that the girl had visited her uncle and aunt for a month in San Francisco. “I do have a brother in the' States, but I do not know whether she has been in touch or not,” the girl’s father said.

The girl, whose mother is dead, left school at the end of last year. Coast Guard authorities at Seattle on Tuesday said a report had been received two days after the Polar Star left Wellington that there might, be a stowaway aboard, but no-one had been found. A Royal New Zealand Navy spokesman in Wellington said yesterday that while "nothing was impossible,” it was most unlikely that a person could stowaway in a New Zealand naval ship. “The word that a stowaway was on board would slip through the ship like wildfire, and it would take all of 30 seconds to discover where they were hiding,” he said. He said, however, that the Polar Star was “a pretty big ship.”