THE MAHENO’S DELAY

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 79, 28 December 1925, Page 6

THE MAHENO’S DELAY

TROUBLE CAUSED BY FIREMEN

VESSEL TO BE WITHDRAWN FROM TRADE

AND REPLACED BY OIL BURNER By Telegraph—Special Correspondent. Auckland, December 25. The departure of the Maheno for Sydney was delayed for five and a half hours on Thursday afternoon owing to a shortage in the crew. The: vessel was scheduled to sail at one o’clock, and at that hour the cargo and mails had been loaded and the 270 passengers were on board. However, the steamer was prevented from sailing, owing to a number of the stokehold hands being on shore. Some of the absentees were very intoxicated, as was seen when they wandered leisurely down to the ship, singly and in pairs. At half-past two eleven, men were still missing, and some of these were afterwards picked up on . the wharves and brought to the ship in a motor-car by the police. In the meantime the passengers, and also a large number of spectators on the wharf, were entertained by fights which took place among the intoxicated men on the foredeck of the Maheno. Three times the police went on board and separated the combatants. On one occasion one of the "men fighting was found to be a man from shore who had no business on board. He was put off in quick time by the constable. One amusing incident, occurred when a man who had been Sleeping on the wharf near by was led to the Maheno’s gangway by a kind-hearted bystander. The man went on board, but returned to the wharf a few minutes after having found that he had been taken to the wrong ship. After a considerable amount of tact and diplomacy on the part of the local secretary of the Seamen’s Union, the ship’s officers, the Union Company’s shore officers and the wharf police, all but one of the stokers had been coaxed aboard the Maheno by a quarter to five. Another stoker was then signed on in place of the missing man, and the vessel left the Queen’s Wharf at a quarter past five. When the Maheno was off the wharf and backing out into the stream the missing stoker boarded the vessel from a launch, so she had an extra man on board at the finish.

After leaving the wharf the Maheno anchored in the stream for an hour until she had sufficient steam in her boilers to take her to sea. She finally left for Sydney at 6.35 p.m. The behaviour of some of the stokers on the Maheno has been the cause of the vessel being delayed at different ports on a number of occasions lately. In consequence the Union Co. has decided to withdraw the vessel from the intercolonial and to replace her with the Marama, which has been converted into an oil burner for the purpose. From Sydney the Maheno will go to Wellington, where she will be laid up and her time-table will be taken up by the Marama, which will run in the Auckland-Sydney-Wel-lington service in conjunction with the Maunganui—also _an oil burner. The service will be improved considerably as both the Marama and the Maunganui are ex-trans-Pacific mail liners. As they do not carry stokers, delay through crew trouble should be reduced considerably. The Marama is the seventh passenger steamer of the Union Company’s fleet to be converted into an oil burner. Others are the Makura, Tahiti, Maunganui, Maori, WaMne, and Mararoa. In addition the Niagara and' the Tamahine were built to burn oil, and the Aorangi is a motor ship.