BULLYING ON THE BRINY ?

NZ Truth, Issue 910, 5 May 1923, Page 5

BULLYING ON THE BRINY ?

"TRUTH" INVESTIGATKJMAZIN6 ALtEGATIONS F»nl F««J Aid K Filthy Fartaeti ALLEGED BRUTALITY ON A WiND-JAMMER

"The "Green Pea Pirates" had nothing on the crew of the 'Yankee, fourmasted schooner, Forest Home, registered in San Francisco, . -which reached Wellington the" other day after a voyage of 85 days ; from with a cargo of Oregon pine. Attention is turned to the 1 vessel through, the fact that members of the crew make serious allegations against the skipper, and that on Monday night another of the crew fell overboard and was drowned while the ship was moored alongside the wharf.* His body was fished but the following morning with the face bruised and lacerated over one eye and with an ear shredded and torn, :. Extraordinary discontent is evinced by the crew; every man of whom swears he will never leave this coast under the skipper who sailed the schooner to these shores. The name of the captain is Wewetzer. He is of German parentage, but is a naturalised .! American citizen. Tales of briital ebullitions of temper on his part and i of Incidents in which he has \ \ PRODUCED A REVOLVER and threatened ex-service members of the .crew that if the Germans didn't get them he would, are related by the seamen. They also aver that for Weeks at a stretch they were fed on disgustingly putrid salt rations, and I complain bitterly of the accommodation in the noisome den known as the ' fo'c'sle. One look at the filthy cubby hole in; which the men -lived is sufficient.. One look at the sanitary arv rangements.more than sufficient. :

The vessel is part owned by Captain Wewetzer and for two or three years prior to this voyage had been under the same skipper in the -fishing waters on the Alaskan coast. Very well then, in January last when- starting for New

CAPTAIN WEWETZEF' (Of the Schooner Forest Home.) Zealand she had no difficulty in shipping a crew from among the hundreds of men then out of work on the Vancouver waterfront. Besides'a first and second mate six seamen were shipped, all British subjects, and a Norwegian cook. A fortnight after the vessel put to sea the trouble started owing to the rations served up. For breakfast there ' was nothing but salted salmon, salted salmon, with NAUSEATING REGULARITY. Though the flfeh was Served hot by the Norwegian cook, the smell of it, the men aver, was awful, and only the necessity of eating something made them touch It. Bread soon ran out and then the dismal monotony of biscuits (weevily, they say) started. For dinner ,*jthere was neither tea nor coffee and only salt pork or beef, with a rice pudding, and as a tin of milk had to last the whole .of the shipjs complement of officers and men for two days the allowance of the lacteal fluid wasn't enough to run such luxuries as milk on the rice. The smell of the salt pork still stank in his nostrils and was a horrid memory of the voyage, one of them declared with feeling to a "Truth" rep. The skipper, they say, was brutality itself and on frequent occasions ominously produced a revolver and used language towards many of the crew that only one who had spent years of flshing on the Alaskan icy seas among toughs and thugs of all nationalities could be capable of. , It is alleged that the captain took a violent dislike to a young Cockney member of the crew— a chap of some spirit who never hesitated to show his resentment. This is. the one, Mullins by name, who talks of going further: One of his allegations is that the master of the ship

KICKED HIM ON THE SHINS and in evidence he produces an extensively skinned and bruised shin., He avers also that the skipper had a veritable obsession for logging him, which, it may be explained, means the loss of a day or couple of days' pay on each occasion, and seized oh the most trivial excuses for so logging- him. Indeed, most of the members of the fo'c'sle crew say they have been logged more than once. They Bay the obsession is easily explained, however, and the explanation they offer la that the master is a part owner of tho vesßel and that every logging incident .mejuit a dollar or two saved. Mulllns -can also show among his wounds a partlyhealod gash between tho second and third fingers, which, he says, was the result of a pure accident, but the gash festered and the inflammation extended right ul> his arm. It was while suffering from this disability, he says, that the skipper instructed him to clifnb to the top of the spanker and unloose the signal halyards. Tho rope ladder on the spanker doe3 not reach within many feet of the halyards, but Mulllns, acting on his instructions, shinned up the rope ladder and was about to tackle the ascent of tho cables when he found he could not obtain a grip with his injured hand. He descended thereupon and was promptly logged for refusing duty and also for insubordination for protesting. Mullins says there Was a fair sea running at the time and that beyond the pain it caused him ho was running a risk of his life in climbing the cables AT- THIS TOP OF THE MAST with a poisoned hand deprived of its tapping power. Again, he declares that onc«?. when at the wheel, he allowed the ship to fall a point off her course, tho skipper flew Into a mad passion, ran to his cabin and returned revolver in hand. Ho informed Mulllns he could shoot him for insubordination and failure to attend to his duties and then proceeded to clean tho weapon in front of tho distressed Mullins. As Mullins mentioned to n "Truth" rep. the seriousness of assaulting: a master at sea Is something; that cannot lightly be regarded and the men before the mast had only one alternative and that was to boar the insults and Injustices in silence. For some time the ship was becalmed in tho tropics and nil nver that during that time the skipper for days and days ut a atretch was in no mood to be trifled with and did nothing else nil duy long but fume and fuss at the delay and consequent waste of money.

This is briefly the state of affairs tHajb is declared- to have existed on board the American schooner Forest Home on the long voyage from Vancouver. Mullins and the rest of tKe crew want to forsake the ship for eyer, but tbe stopper won't pay them the full "wages due and so they hang on. They state also that the arrangement when ■ they signed on was that any of the crew could leave the ship in New Zealand if they desired, on condition that substitutes were obtained. They all found substitutes, but none of them found their money, they say, and there they. are.. \. As it is "Truth's" invariable custom to hear and air both sides of a dispute, a reporter, with no ltttle perturbation, and with his pencil well-sharpened and held at the,, alert in case of necessity for its instant use as a stiletto, approached th(s nautical Ajax, Captain Wewetzer, on his own pbop decß, while the long slings of Oregon pine were being yanked, in flying tackle from the schooner. At the moment the skipper 'is ' anything but truculent. He is 'harassed and distressed, and in the attitude of the crew towards him and, [their relationship one to another there is something so absurd that it Is -difficult to credit its existence OUTSIDE OF COMIC OPERA. Take the following: inimitable excerpt from the log-, written while in mld'ocean On this queer craft: . "Seaman McLallan refusing, to keep watch on | deck, claiming having headache and: sore ear. When examining ear found small feather in ear. Pulled the same out. Also, having a small boil under arm, put linseed poultice on same and gave wine-glass full black draught."

In port it appears to be a case of "nobody works but father." The cook lies helpless in his cabin; and on Wed-

SEAMAN MULLINS . (Who Alleges that he was Manhandled) nesday the crew wouldn't work, and the old man can't pay them off. Barely enough has he in the locker to pay the expenses of the ship in New Zealand ports while loading a cargo. Every day in port Is irksome to him in the extreme. He longs to get to sea. again with his crew. One will :be missing, of course — the one who fell overboard and was drowned. Attention &t the inquest delayed the skipper for an hour or so on Wednesday afternoon, and on his return to the schooner the mate and two seamen stuck him up for money for tea — supper, they call it. "There's not a thing to eat," wailed the mate, "and the cook's worse." The old man's voice x'ose in a roar of protest about the galley being full of sausages and roast beef. The cook he consigned to a galley more frizzling than anything earthy or marine and then produced a handful of silver. Tea was 1/3 each at the "caf." The skipper hadn't got the odd threepence and was reluctantly obliged to hand over 4/-. He flew then to the galley ;ind in the stinking place, among grease, refuse, and unwashed pans, struck matches one after the other, eagerly peering Into pots and displaying the chaotic mess of SAUSAGE AND HUNKS OF BEEF lying about. Then to his own quarters wont the irate skipper and the pressman followed with his companion the cartoonist. On the way he was called aside by one of the seamen to have a look at the fo'c'sle. No fear, ho had seen the place before. "Blankety, blankety, blank," roared the master of the Forest Home, "do they want me to clean the blasted place up for them?" In his own quarters the skipper lit the dingy, swinging oil-lamp and turned about to confront three more seamen after tea money. As a man resigned to his fate the captain handed out 3/6. After fumbling and feeling In i every pocket three times over he came at length on a threepenny piece and handed the coin across. "They'll never eat, either," he walled as If this was the crowning" Injustice. "Straight to the saloon they'll go." Two minutes afterwards- In slunk a lone sailor for tea money. This was the last to be fed, and the skipper knowing it handed over 2/6 with a sigh of relief and told the man to bring back the change. He did, too, half an hour afterwards, like a big schoolboy. "I've got to get mine now," the captain dismally observed as he took the change. How Captain ■ Wewetaer is going to face this ordeal for many more days only Captain Wowetztr knows — and perhaps even he doesn't. ' Never had he such a time in his life as ho had had with these men, the captain declared with feeling. It wasn't that they were toughs, but that they weren't sailors. He'd manage them though. "Why buddy," he said, with tho memory of a triumph affecting his voice, "I've mastered worse than these scum. That was the time I sailed u schooner out of the Bluff with the crew at THE POINT OF THE GUNyes, the point of tho gun." Tho captain. It must be explained, has been In these waters before and says he Ukes this country. He frankly states he was born in Germany and says that while he was Railing this const during tho war he had a great time and the people were very nice to him. Captain Wewetzer speaks with a strong Amorlcan accent. He Is a short man, very thick set, with big hands, horny and tough, which he displayed in evidence of his statement that he had to work all hours all tho way over, doing the sail repairing and splicing practically all on his own. He has lately acquired a half-share In the schooner and "I've got to make ends meet," he says. The men were procured for him by an agent, so runs his story, and when he got to sea he was faced with the fact that ho had a crew who knew nothing of the management of a < sailing; ship. Many nlffhtH he was scared to go to bed in cam of u change, in the wind when he would havo to be on deck to alter the Kails, for. he Bays, "the crew couldn't do It for themselves." As for MulHns, tho skipper reckons he mitfht havo DISMASTED THE VESSEL • owing to his atrocious .steering on one I occasion when the mariner admlta he was assuredly stung to wrath. Captain Wewetzer do«s not conceal t)*;

foct that he carries a revolver and a rifle, but ho maintains that he produced the revolver only once on the voyago and that was on the festive occasion when he nhot a sucking-pig for the delectation not only of himself, but iho men as well. The enptaln Jb emphatic that he complied with the American regulatlonn governing rationing and na.va that he made u point of calling at a small Island on the voyago across to take In quantities of fruit. This the men a tucked ho voraciously that for a week they ate nothing else, and when the fruit was all demolished complained of the lack of groun food. -I'd be darned «iad to puy them off." he saya, and then relates hia ilnanclal troubles. -They're nothing but u lot of • I.W.W.'u,"