CHINESE CREW FOR KAIKORAI ARRIVES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27043, 30 March 1949, Page 4

CHINESE CREW FOR KAIKORAI ARRIVES

They were quiet and subdued as they climbed off the train. Then exclamations sprang spontaneously from one or two of them and soon they were hurling torrents of words back and forth. These were the 40 Chinese who arrived at Port Chalmers yesterday afternoon as a crew for the steamer Kaikorai. *

The 30-year-old ship has been sold by the Union Steam Ship Company to the Hwah Lee Steamship Company of Shanghai and will probably leave Port Chalmers, where she has been moored since she was laid up in October, 1947, about the end of this week. She will take provisions aboard and will go to Westport first to bunker, before sailing for Shanghai. “ I see no soldiers. Why is this? ’ asked one of the officers immediately a reporter had spoken to him. “In China we have plenty of soldiers but here, no soldiers.” Spotting a seagull sitting on top of one of the Kaikorai’s masts, he grinned: “Good luck for us because he never drown.” Wireless operator C. K. Huang, speaking English with a trace of an American accent, said they had left Shanghai on March 17 and had flown from Hongkong to Auckland in specially chartered Skymasters. “We had only one stop—at Darwin—and the plane, she was much uncomfortable. We arrived in Auckland on Saturday and it was very quiet, you know, not like our Shanghai. There many people, too many people; here few people, too few people.” Captain C. Tsao, a small dapper man more like a young business man than a foreign-going master, was non-

commital when asked what he thought of the Kaikorai. “ I say nothing; I sail the ship to China.” Members of the, crew continued to speak and gesticulate violently, but whether they were talking about the ship is another matter. Mr Huang was quite pleased with the §hip. “ She is not so bad as we expected, you know,” he said. A colleague of his was more gloomy. “ She looks pretty bad,” he said, shaking his head. “ See those plates, all rusted, you know. She looks pretty bad, yes. “The air, it is clean here; in Shanghai dirty,” said one officer. “ You have a nice country. The houses so small and neat, you know? It is not like China, no.”

The train service, usually the target for severe criticism, was commended by this officer. “It is very nice,” he said. , , The collection of the crew’s luggage from the station and its distribution again at the ship was accompanied by volleys of commands, counter-com-mands and exclamations. As members of the crew went aboard, an ominous crack from the gangway heralded a further burst of high-pitched verbal exchanges. It was not long, however, before the commotion died. The Kaikorai had become Chinese property.