LOOTING CARGO

Evening Star, Issue 17369, 3 June 1920, Page 6

LOOTING CARGO

ENORMOUS ANNUAL LOSSES. Tho statement was made bv a Sydney polica oriicer apropos of stealing oil the wharves that hardly a ship that arrived at Sydney escaped the thief immediately prior to, during, or soon after the end of the voyage. The public, he said, did not realise how extensive tho operations of the thieves were. The value of goods 6to!en from tho ships coming to Australia, or trading round the coast, aggregated roughly a "million pounds, and it had been going on for years. Tho thieves work with extraordinary cleverness, and, though they do not operate under the cover of darkness, they managed to sort out the valuables from securely-nailed cases, closing them up again so neatly that no 'one would believe they had been tampered with. | " The story of the piano and the bricks," he said, "best illustrates the expertnes3 of the class of thief. A- Sydney firm ordered a, piano from New York, and it was packed and despatched upon its journey across the United States railways. The case arrived in Sydney in due course, but when it was opened there was no piano in it. Instead it contained hundreds of ; bricks—enough to weigh about the same as the piano. The bricks bore the brand of a Chicago maker on them, and when investigations were commenced it was naturally thought the exchange had been made in the great meat-killing centre. But this was found not to be the ca.se. Millions of bricks had been sent from Chicago to San Francisco for shipment, and the piano had been removed in the Pacific Coast city. There are some of these bricks about now. I saw one of them the other day. '' One well-known firm which ordered a large consignment of hate from an En dish company found, when the cases' were opened, not hats, but thousands of copies of London papers. The lads on the wharves were reading the papers for months afterwards. Another case from America, supposed to contain blouses, arrived at the Sydney house full of bits of light wood, seaweed, and a Christmas card."