A FLOATING HELL.

NZ Truth, Issue 112, 10 August 1907, Page 4

A FLOATING HELL.

In this glorious country, where everybody gets enough to eat, and nigger driving . is a matter of such rare occurrence as to attract general attention when it is made public, the bowelless character of the average British shipping company is apt' to occasion .surprise. The greed, rapacity, and inhumanity of the British shipowner are well exemplified m the condition of the crew of the steamer Invertay, which has been detained m Wellington during the past week owing to insubordination amongst the crew. She is a vessel of 2541 tons, and left England with 'a crew of thirty, of whom nine were firemen. She has nine furnaces, and the British Board of Trade fixes the minimum number of firemen- to be employed at nine, but these have al;;o to act as greasers. The New. '/iCaland maritime law places the number . of firemen for a vessel of ibis tonnage .it fifteen, it being recognised by humane authorities that, there is quite enough work m .the stolrcho l^ for men up to that number. Imagine, then, 'tho..' slavery to which the nino unfortunates must have boen subjected when they left the Cold CouY.try. As a matter of Tact, it was round to be a physical impossibility to . work ■ the ship shoii.-liaraled, and two extra men verc taken on i:i America. Between that country and Australia thsre were a number' of desertions, the arduous nature of the duties being ■aggravated by the rotten food served out to the men ; and early this wrck,.whcn the vessel was berthed at Vellinffton and the crew were enabled to get a decent meal ashore, several of them refused duty and declined to proceed +0 sea unless a full complrwiHit of from on was provided, and f<">od fit f^r human consumption was taken on board. Cap-

tain Houghton complained to the police, and Sub-Inspector O'Donovan endeavored to induce the men to do their duty. His efforts were unavailing, and three firemen— Bailey, Mountain, and O 'Byrne — were taken before Magistrate Riddell and fined two days' pay for insubordination. The vessel sailed on Wednesday, but returned again m the evening, thfc three malcontents and a sick fireman named Seamont having again refused duty, and the master prudently decided not to proceed to Monte Video under such conditions. Bailey, Mountain, and O'Byrne were again haled before the Magistrate's Court, when some startling evidence was given m justification of the mutiny. Although the vessel had eleven firemen, two of them— McKenzie and Seamont— were ill and unable to work, and the whole of the firing fell upon nine men, or, practically speaking, seven firemen, as two were told off to do the work of greasers. That is to say, the vessel was six firemen short of the complement enforced by the New Zealand shipping law, and the unfortunate men who had to do the work were nothing more nor less than galley slaves. In addition to this, the men state that on the v voyage between Sydney and New Caledonia the crew were literally starved. O'Byrne stated that the meat was ) badly cooked ; also, it was stinking, and unfit for human consumption. He offered his meal to a hungry Solomon Islander, and ;the savage rejected it with disgu&tq j'For two days O'Byrne subsisted ' dn eofiee and biscuits. He had'i rbeen,<j twenty-seven years at sea, • an'djihartinever before experienced sublila toelltiafloat. Mountain corroborated thia,!vand said that sea biscuits, dipped m fat, was an insufficient meal on which to do four hours' work at night. The ship was grossly undermanned, and, m opinion, there should be, at least, fifteen men down below. The character of the food was brutal and criminal. Between Honolulu and New Caledonia the crew were suffering from wholesale poisoning, and the safety of the ship was thereby endangered. He tried to work nine fires himself, but succumbed to illness. Bailey stated that continual complaints were made to the master concerning the food, which was not fit for pigs, and the work for nine firemen was "horse labor, not man labor." The three men refused, point blank, m Court, to work on the ship until she was full-handed and proper food was supplied. Then Magistrate Riddell sentenced them to two months' imprisonment. It. is true, as remarked by his Worship, that the men signed articles to work the ship with nine firemen, but t'licy apparently had no option. One of them (Bailey) is a 'married man. There are also proper persons to whom complaints might be made, but these men were m, what is to them, a foreign country, and the only method of adjusting their grievances recognised by them was to secure an investigation by committing an infraction of the law. The horrors of life on the Invertay may be realised when Bailey and Mountain shook hands m the dock when they heard the Magistrate's decision. These men would rather sacrifice a guinea and costs out of their miserable pay and do two months' with hard labor m a foreign prison rather than return to the floating inferno where they had suffered, so much. In the opinion of "Truth," the Minister for Marine should institute an inriuiry into the case of these men, with a view to mitigating their sentence. , Also, it is up to our Democratic Parliament to seriously consider an amendment of the shippiniT laws by prohibiting the use of New Zealand ports by vessels that do not conform to New Zealand maritime laws with resnect to manning and the food supplied. A large number of moneyless deserters are dumped into the e:aols of this dominion annually, and. the sordid shipowner m Britain collars their forfeited wages and pays nothing towards their keep m this country.