CREW OF OFFICERS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17909, 13 October 1932, Page 9

CREW OF OFFICERS

THE PORT GISBORNE ARRIVAL AT AUCKLAND ' (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, last night. Officers in the British mercantile marine do not, as a rule, reel hawsers, scrub decks, batten down hatches and do other.jobs that are the lot of seamen. But they do a|l these things on hoard, the Commonwealth and Dominion Line motor ship Port Gisborne, which arrived at Auckland from Londofi this afternoon.

Every one of the .18 deckhands on the motor ship is a certificated officer, who has shipped as a sailor for want of employment on the bridge of any other:ship. The fact that the Port Gisborne carries on "all officer” crew on the deck is a striking illustration of the wholesale unemployment that exists among seafaring men who are competent to navigate ships in any part of the world. "A sailor’s job is better than no job at all in these hard times,” is tho argument they work on, and they probably comfort themselves with (he knowledge that other fellow officers who have made a voyage or so as an A.B. are now hack on the bridge again, either, with the same company or with some other.