TROOP TRANSPORT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26243, 29 August 1946, Page 10

TROOP TRANSPORT

CONDITIONS CRITICISED REPLY BY COMPANY (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Aug. 28. “All the dormitories on the Dominion Monarch were specially constructed for ex-servicemen’s dependents by the Sea Transport authorities to the satisfaction of the Australian Government official in London,’’ said the commander of the Dominion Monarch, Sir Henry Gordon, when reports of unsatisfactory conditions on the liner, which were made at Melbourne last week and repeated when the ship arrived at Wellington to-day, were referred to him. He admitted that some of the wives did not like eight and 10-berth dormitories. The passengers complained that the laundry and drying facilities _ were hopelessly inadequate. One said the conditions resembled “the Black Hole of Calcutta,” and three bathrooms had to serve about 150 people. “ I am convinced that all these complaints are nonsense,” said Mr E. V. Bevin, New Zealand manager of the Shaw Savill and Albion Company. The Dominion Monarch was still a troop transport, not having been reconditioned since war service, and although the conditions in the dormitories were hard all the passengers had signed an agreement in Britain accepting the fact that the ship was still a transP °Some of the pascqngers described complaints as unwarranted. There were two deaths during the voyage out. A young baby, the child of'a New Zealand serviceman, died when the ship was between Fremantle and Melbourne, and an elderly woman died from heart failure when passing through the tropics.