EULOGY OF THE LASCAR

Evening Star, Issue 12397, 10 January 1905, Page 3

EULOGY OF THE LASCAR

Before the federal Navigation Commission at Sydney. Mr Edward Trelawney gave evidence. Witness said he favored the establishment of small quarantine stations at ports of call, where persons suffering from infectious diseases could be landed after medical inspection. Answering the chairman, he denied" that cases of smallpox had been brought to the Oommonwealth by the native crews of the P. and 0. Company, and showed that not 1 per cent, of the cases was duo to native crews. Mr Trelawney also related his experience of Lascar crews, extending over forty-two years, and said he had never known them to shirk their work, and to Ids knowledge they undertook life-saving duties refused by European crews. He had seen the members of a Lascar crew during a cyclone in the China Sea risk their lives in small boats when other sailors had refused to undertake rescue work. Mr Trelawney was also exhaustively * cross-examined on his evidence, and held to his opinion that am allowance of twelve cubic feet was a fair one for each seaman. The experience of his company was that it was impossible to maintain speed in the Australian trade if white firemen were employed. It was essential that the firemen should be sober and reliable, and .they found these qualifications in Lascars. He admitted that in the North Atlantic steamers were run by European crews in the stoke-hold, and that the ships maintained a high rate of speed; but the conditions, he contended, were entirely different. The German and French companies trading to the Commonwealth carried European crewa, but they were practically under naval discipline. The drink question, Mr Trelawney said, was the root of the whole trouble. On the long run out, white firemen would get dnmk at the ports of call, in spite of stringent precautions to prevent them. His company employed Lascars because they got greater efficiency. In the event of wax, he could rely upon Laseara as well as white crews for protection. Itwas to the interests of the Empire to employ Lascars. They were British subjects, and it would be found in time of emergency that white and black seamen could fight side by side, as would be the case with the British soldier and the Jndiaa Army.