CAPTAIN'S BOAST

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1937, Page 11

CAPTAIN'S BOAST

"RUNNING BILBAO BLOCKADE." ARRESTED ON FORGERY CHARGE Roy Jackson, 51-year-old ex-public schoolboy and devil-may-care "skipper" who boasted that h?' was going to run the blockade of Bilbao with a cargo of medical supplies, has gone to gaol instead. When he should have been beating down the Channel in his 250-ton ketch he was listening to a 'London Magistrate, Mr R. E. Drummet, sentencing him to 12 months' hard labour for obtaining £10 by means of two forged cheques. Still wearing his master's jacket with gold braid on the sleeve, still carrying his officer's cap with the badge of the Merchant Navy (states the Daily Express) he heard Detective-Sergeant Payton tell the Court that "Jackson does not even possess a mate's ticket let alone a captain's, and he had no right whatever to take a ship to sea as master. Mr. Drummett looked down at the dejected man in the dock, so changed from the sea dog who delighted in yarning about his rum-running exploits, of the ships he had owned and lost, of his days as an actor and as a busfcer in London streets. "He is a man who is a perfect fraud." he said. "He cannot run straight. He

seems to be prepared to forge anything to obtain his own ends. He is a man whom the public should • be protected from as long as possible." Not Responsible. Mr. T. H. O'Connor, for Jackson, said that Jackson wa. not. responsible for his actions. Following a twain opertion he was at times quite irresponsible. Jackson's father, Mr. W. H. Jackson, C. M. G., was an acting-Governor of Ceylon. The boy was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and ran away.. He

wanted to go to sea, so . his mother apprenticed him aboard the. windjammer Port Patrick. ■ He soon tired of that and came back to study , for the stage at Neville's Dramatic Academy. He toured with Sir Frank Benson. Then he went to sea again. He owned and lost four coasting ships. With the insurance money from the Genesta, dismasted off Start Point in 1931, he produced Dick Whittington at Collins' Music Hall. For the last two years he had been busking in London

streets. He started the Buskers' conoert party and played at New Cross and the Stratford Empire, but misfortune never ■ left him. ' :pi 'In 1915 Jackson was convicted for lar- : ceny. Four years later he went to prison . again, for unlawfully wearing the V. C. He was sentenced to 12 months' hard labour in Jersey for bigamy, and in 1926 ej got 14 months at the Central Criminal - Court for larceny and bigamy. .. j Another conviction for larceny in 1927 was followed by 12 montlis for false , pretences in 1928. - ;:|rS ^ /*. ; ':: iV l :',v£