HARD LUCK.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 27 March 1915, Page 7

HARD LUCK.

A NEW ZEALAND SCULLER

INTERNED

A well-known sculler, Tom Sullivan,: -news of whose internment as a prisoner in Germany has been received bv cable from Sydney, was at the outbreak of the war under a four years' engagement as coach to a leadIng rowing club in Berlin (says an Auckland exchange). Sullivan is an Aucklander by birth, and his parents, -Captain John Sullivan, of the Devonport ferry service, and Mrs Sullivan, reside at Devonport. Tom Sullivan was well (known throughout the Dominion as a first-class amateur oarsman. He was a member of the famous •crew of the Wellington Rowing Club — McKay, E. Rose, W. Bridson, and T. Sullivan —who for several years in succession won all the New Zealand championship fours, pairs, double sculls and single sculls, and that at a time when amateur rowing was of a high in the Dominion. He afterawards proceeded farther afield and won the sculling championship of England. He coached the.Oxford University eight for five of their annual races -against Cambridge, and on each occasion the Oxford crew was successful.

His Berlin engagement was due to terminate in 1916.

When war was declared, Mrs Sulli-. van was in Berlin, and a son, twenty years of age was also in the German capital. A daughter was at school in Francs, and another son was at college in England. Tom Sullivan, because he was a colonial, was treated exceptionally well, and was not interned, and the passage of Mrs Sullivan to England was so pleasantly arranged that she wrote to her husband's relatives in Auckland saying that she hoped the Germans in New Zealand would be as well treated by New Zealanders as she had been in Germany by the Germans. Her sou, however, was of British birth, and was interned immediately on the outbreak of war. Letters had been received hy Mrs Sullivan from her husband through the American •authorities. Tom Sullivan was made a prisoner in January.