AMERICAN VESSELS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 121, 23 April 1936, Page 9

AMERICAN VESSELS.

SEAMEN’S ALLEGATIONS. WASHINGTON, April 21. Two hundred striking seamen, some of whom were involved in the recent mutiny charges, which . incidentally have not yet been pressed, although the men lost their jobs, appealed to the Secretary of Commerce (Mr D.'C. Roper) and the Secretary of Labour (Miss Frances Perkins), to-day, for arbitration of their case.

They also urged tightening of the safety-at-sea laws. Several men testified to almost unbelievable incidents of inefficiency and carelessness practised by ship operators, and told of passenger vessels carrying life-boats with holes in them, and others that could not be budged from their moorings. In one case a vessel with nine lifeboats had only eight licensed seamen aboard. Veterans of the Morro Castle tragedy attributed the heavy loss of life to the presence of inexperienced seamen carrying forged credentials, while they said the loss of life in the Mohawk tragedy was largely caused by life-boats being frozen to the deck. The evidence was presented in answer to charges that sabotage by radicals was responsible for recent sea disasters.

A cable dated March 14 stated that a Sharp clash of opinion over the handling of the recent Pacific Coast shipping strike had developed within the Roosevelt Cabinet. From March 2 to March 5 striking members of the crew delayed the sailing of the steamer California of the Panama Pacific Line from San Pedro for New York. The Secretary of Labour (Miss Francos Perkins) personally intervened and, after an hour of telephonic negotiations from Washington, a basis of arbitration was reached and the vessel sailed. It was revealed later, however, that the Secretary of Commerce (Mr Roper) whose department controls shipping, insisted that the crew was' guilty of mutiny and had turned the case over to the Department of Justice for prosecutions. Miss Perkins still insisted that the incident was merely a strike, and therefore perfectly legal.