PRINCE OF STOWAWAYS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23828, 7 June 1939, Page 6

PRINCE OF STOWAWAYS

HIDING-PLACES ON SHIPS TENTH VISIT TO SYDNEY (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY. May. 26. Frederick Butler, aged 35, of London, one of the world's most efficient stowaways, made his tenth visit to Sydney, stowaway class, this week. He stepped from the Jervis Bay after an uncomfortable round trip from Sydney to New Zealand in three ships. Butler is known in America and England as "Houdini of the Deep," because of his ability to dodge immigration officers. He jumped the Mariposa on her last voyage to Auckland. "I nearly suffocated in a storeroom during two searches for me on the ship," said Butler. " Somebody opened the door when the ship got outside the Heads, and I nearly fell from exhaustion getting on deck.". Butler did the rest of the voyage to Auckland in a lifeboat. Ashore he was stopped by a policeman, but got away and hitch'-ihiked to Wellington. There he jumped the Limerick for Melbourne, exchanging berths. in -the forecastle as the crew went on watch.

At Melbourne he'left the ship undetected and went aboard the Jervis Bay as a passenger. " I wanted to get to Honolulu in the Mariposa to get warm," he' said. "Now I intend to chase the sun north, and oh to Shanghai." . Butler arrived in the brig of the cruise ship Strathallan on his last visit here in March. Smashing the lock, he got ashore past police and immigration officials who came to arrest him. He has circled the world twice as a stowaway.

His major trips to and from Australia in recent years are:—Sydney to San Francisco in the Makura in an empty water tank; America to Tahiti in the Maunganui, and back to New Zealand in the Makura; Auckland and Wellington to Sydney nearly a dozen times—last year in the Awatea's dummy funnel; Sydney to London in the Themistocles, and return to Sydney by the Baradine. Port Melbourne and Port Curtis.