SOUTH AFRICAN SHIR

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 59, 7 September 1937, Page 12

SOUTH AFRICAN SHIR

CREW GIVE TROUBLE

CAPTAIN PEELS POTATOES

LONDON, September 6.

The Antwerp correspondent of th« "Daily Telegraph" reports -that" the Sherard Osborne, the South African, ship on which trouble was reported last week, arrived at; Antwerp unkempt and coated1 in rust. The,master, Captain Charles McClure, and the crew went.to London last night to. attend the official inquiry. .

Mr. W. Gore Graham, the fourth engineer, who studied at Harrow and Cambridge, said that before leaving Cape Town, the men objected to 72 chickens near the sleeping, quarters. Then the cook became ill and: %vas replaced by three men, one able to cook, one a baker, and the other "a butcher. The crew complained that the potatoes were undercooked. The captain surprised the crew by peeling and cooking the potatoes' himself. '

He tried to stop the men . isoing ashore at Walvis Bay to complain to the authorities against the food, but failed. The strain told on everyone. At Sierra Leone the second engineer stayed in his cabin. The captain's wife took refuge behind the hen coop astern when tempers became too frayed for her. . v

Several of the crew refused to sail from Madeira until the forepeak,' which was leaking, was pumped dry. The captain summoned the British, Consul at Madeira after an overtime dispute. Finally the captain thought the men were interfering with the compass, and summoned, naval assistance. The arrival of the destroyer Broka staggered the crew, as they had not) threatened violence. ,

The Antwerp correspondent of tha "Sketch" says that the ship's butchei? jumped to the quay after the Sherard Osborne berthed. He said that pigs and sheep were quartered in the forecastle, and that the crew were ill from the smell. Once there was a fight between two officers.