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Evening Star, Issue 20591, 17 September 1930, Page 8

By virtue of a curious old English Act given application in the early days in New Zealand by copied legislation never repealed the big whalers Kosmos. C. A. Larsen, and Sir James Clark Ross and their chasers pay no regular port charges such as are levied upon other vessel? coming into port—a fiat rate of 3d per ton oh the net measurement. Just where the exemption originated is not clear, though old law books properly searched would give the source; but the idea was put forward about the time of the Stuart Kings pf England to encourage the fishing and wha'ling and allied callings, not so much for the encouragement of those industries as for the "good of the King’s Navy, the recruits for which were gathered by the finite effective but unpopular methods of crimping and press ganging. To haul a downright landlubber off to serve his time was" not nearly such good business as to catch (drunk or sober) a wellsalt eel fishing boat hand or a deep-sea whaler, and hence the encouragement offered by Hie State to those industries.