EARL OF SUFFOLK

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 141, 12 December 1923, Page 5

EARL OF SUFFOLK

EXPERIENCES AS A SAILOR

LEANINGS TOWARDS LABOUR.

(MOM OBR OWN COBRESPONbKKT.i

SYDNEY, 6th December

The Earl of-Suffolk and. Berkshire, an earldom dating back to the Tudors, is one of nine cadets on the sailing ship Mount Stewart, an old-time clipper, "which has arrived in Sydney from Liverpool. The earl is a chubby-cheeked lad of 17 ■ summers, and signed on as a cadet for one trip. When he returns to England he will go to Oxford. He is known on the ship as Charles Howard, and received no distinction. He has to take his turn with the other boys in the routine jobs of the ship. "I've knocked round a bit,. You know," the Earl told -'an ' interviewer. "I Wae at Osborne, but I didn't make much of that, co I went to Radley, near Oxford, and then to Italy and France."

_ Next, quite simply, it seems, he ■ decided in favour of signing on the Mount Stewart before the mast. So tire ancestrale state was left behind, and blisters quickly developed on the aristocratic hands. The. step was taken, he said, partly because he was "fed up with the Conservative rot," and "partly because he lias a habit of "doing things like this."

Some of his youthful companions—they are the sons of doctors, lawyers, and other professional men on the other side —and all but one. are, like the Earl, having their first taste of salthorse, and saltwater—then took up the cudgels on behalf of their shipmate. "A pood sailor—should think he was. The skipper or matest have only got to suggest a hand aloft, and he is one of the first into the rigging," they stated.

Then _ the Earl became reminiscent. He considered that he was being unduly though not untruly praised. "Oh, I don't mind it now, but I can tell you frankly that on the first occasion I looked at the deck from the royal yard—somewhere in the English Channel—l felt more than dizzy." He then explained how it soon became second nature, as it does to all young seafarers, to creep like a fly at'these giddy heights when the seas were making the old clipper pitch and toss like a plaything at their mercy. ' "The chaps aboard are an extraordinarily nice crowd," he said. "Awfully nice, I shouldn't think you could get a better lot of ship's apprentices. They are all gentlemen, and very well educated. The officers are the same."

"I have worked harder in one day here than I had worked during the relt of my life," he added. But he candidly admitted, that he was a "lazy blighter," and while he said that the experience was the finest thing he could have had, he x made no hypocritical pretence that he was keen on" the life. His intentions, he said, were" to enter the University after his return to England, and then go and "raise Cain" on his estate. He thought' of becoming a journalist until he was_ told how hard they had to work. He insists upon being called a democrat. He has distinct leanings towards Labour. "I believe Labour will be the salvation of England," he said. "If the Conservatives would only get a move on they would be all right. But they won't move."

It is in this strain that he talks. He says he is quite willing to give his views on any question whatsoever, if they are worth hearing, which he doubts. There is no doubt about his being a humorist, say his mates, and they know him well. "Ships and the sea are all right, but I like the lights of London. This voyage will about set me up for all the salt water knowledge I'want. But we're here now, and I am going to Manly. It's Hot so much the breakers, but I want to see all the girls but in their Sunday best."

While he gives his views and plans away, his mates, lyin? in their bunks, give him plenty of bickering. But he can well hold his own. He can stand any amount of chaff, and, according to his mates, is the easiest-going cliap in the world, this breezy youth, England's premier Earl.