INQUIRY ORDERED

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 133, 29 February 1936, Page 9

INQUIRY ORDERED

Sampan Crew’s Trespass ACTION BY AUSTRALIA (Received February 28, 10.5 p.m.) Sydney, February 28. The Minister of Customs, Mr. T. W White, has sent instructions io Customs authorities at Thursday Island to investigate the report of a Japanese sampan crew haying trespassed on Flinders Island. Mr. White added: “Reports of depredations by sampan crews in the north are altogether too frequent. I am determined to do all possible witnin the jurisducMon of the Customs Department to cheek them.”

Captain T. Smith, who has been conducting a lightering service in the islands of Torres Strait and who, with his wife, lives alone on Flinders Island, one of the Thursday ’ Island group, said on Thursday that in recent months the crews of five Japanese sampans at different times had landed on the island looking for water, but the most alarming incident arose out of a demand on one occasion for charts, crude oil, and other marine supplies.' Captain Smith said that about 20 men, half the crew of a sampan, almost naked, came ashore and when he told them he had only*a limited supply of water they took possession of the place, walking through the house. They only laughed when he told them to be < ffi and that he had no water, food, or oil to give them. They were very cheeky, and, in the search for crude oil, entered a storeroom, but apparently did not dare to break the lock of another storeroom where supplies were kept. Urging that there should be some form of patrol in northern waters to keep these Japanese in check, Captain Smith said that they were ruining the trochus shell industry, for the beaches were denuded of even the smallest specimens of the shell.