Injustice to Seamen.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1680, 11 May 1885, Page 2

Injustice to Seamen.

The injustice and harshness with which seamen are treated when they come before the Eesidont Magistrate’s Court, at Wellington, are proverbial. Recently, some 20 seamen and firemen of the steamer Coptic knocked off work and refused to proceed to sea. The Coptic had been chartered by the Imperial Government to take 4000 tons of coal to the Cape of Good Hope, and pessibly other ports not designated, and in fact was cleared at the Customs for “ Guam,” which is a sort of “No man’s port,” for which vessels are entered when their various possible destinations are doubtful. Besides this, the Coptic was to sail “ under sealed orders from Admiral Tryon.” Some 20 of the crew did not relish sailing in a vessel with such dubious sailing orders. They had been shipped at London in the Coptic to proceed to New Zealand and back, the rate of wages being the English one. Naturally enough, the men considered that as the vessel had been chartered, after her arrival in New Zealand, by the Imperial Government to take coal as war supplies to a certain place or places, as the sealed orders might dictate—they were entitled to have a new engagement offered, with the colonial rates of pay. Bailing such terms being offered to them, the men struck work, Eor doing this they were prosecuted in the Wellington Resident Magistrate’s Court, and each and all of them sentenced to 10 weeks’ imprisonment, the Chairman of the Bench being Mr G. G. Fitzgerald, J.P. and Editor of the New Zealand Times. This sentence seems to us to be a monstrously unjust one. The men were only demanding, that with a change of masters they should have accorded to them the right of making a new contract of service. But Mr G. G. Fitzgerald denied them any such right, and sent them to gaol as crminals for daring to claim it. The outeome of the business is, that while these men —guilty of no crime—are being punished as felons, the owners of the Coptic have been obliged to give the colonial rate of wages to the new bands whom they have shipped in their places, and with whom the Coptie has sailed for “ Guam.” Verily, Law—is Law.