GIRL STOWAWAY

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 November 1927, Page 8

GIRL STOWAWAY

REVEALED BY LIQUOR HUNT.

NEW YORK, October 11.

Customs men had found seventyseven bottles of liquor on the Belgian freighter Mercier, which docked at Pier 2, Erie Basin, yesterday, and they decided to search further. Led by Inspector John Sweeney, they went forward to the bo’sun’s locker. One of the bulkheads sounded hollow when they rapped it, so they broke it down. A flaxen-haired girl, 11 years old, was cowering in the darkness where the Customs men had expected to find a stock of contraband drinkables. She was in tears. On deck she told in Flemish how she came on board the vessel at Antwerp with her mother and lier brother.

Inspector Sweeney called the bo’sn. John Vandemeer, who, after considerable pressing, explained how he had discovered the three stowaways outside Flushing. The mother, and the boy, who is 15, Vandemeer had dressed in coal heavers’ dungarees. They had stood watch and watch in the bunkers, trimming coal for the firemen all the way over, he said. Inspector Sweeney called for them. Two overailed figures stepped out of the gang on the forward well deck. Blushing because of her unfamiliar masculine clothes, the buxom Mrs Constantia Van Lerberghe, with her son, confronted the watchmen at the gate of the new world.

Immigration officials then learned her story. More than a year ago her husband packed his big paper trunk and took ship for America. Mrs Van Lerberghe stayed behind with Jules and Maris. She heard from him. He told her New York was the biggest city he had ever seen, and wrote that he would send for them soon. Eleven months ago all letters stopped. She waited, but he did not write. So she decided to come to New York to find him? She slipped on board the Mercier with the two children at Antwerp, and hid. John Vandemeer found them. It was he, she said, Who gave her the chance to work her passage and hid Maris in the bos’un’s locker. The three were held at Ellis Island and will be returned to Antwerp on the Mercier when she sails. Vanemeer was charged with attempting to bring in the contraband liquor, and was fined three dollars a bottle.