To the Editor of the "Norrs-Cuina Dairy News."
Siz,—Your correspondent of the 30th instant who signs himself F.H.H., writing on his personal experiences on board the P. & ON. S. Sobraop, puts the damper on tne reliability of Lascar seamen when he states that! some of them hid themselves under the mail bags in the third officer's boat. This was in a fairly calm sea. What would have happened in bad weather if all hands had only a few minutes to take to the boats? This kind of a seaman that hides under mail bags is well out of the boats for some other useful person to take his place, yet F.H.H. states that he would rather travel with a Lascar crew under British officers than any other crew in the world? Ye gods! what price a British shellback these days?
The Sobraon was lost at Tung-ying (close to Foochow) in a fog April 24, 1901 (not 1906: I hope F.H.H. will not mind my correcting him and giving the exact date. Fortunately no lives were lost and this ship carried a Lascar crew and was as fine a ship as ever entered the harbour of Shanghai, both for model, graceful lines, and comfort for crew and passengers, as a mail and passenger ship could be expected to be. Amongst the passengers on board there were four China coast captains, four chief engineers, all from the C. N. Ca., Ld., going home on leave and_ their narrative of the disaster (if published with others) in the local papers in Shanghai it should be of some value, coming from seafaring men regarding the ability of the Lascar seaman and not an express sion from a landsman's point of view.
Another case in point re Lascars was that of the P. & O. S. Bokhara which was driven ashore in a typhoon at the Pescadores October 10, 1892, opposite Amoy, almost 125 lives lost, amongst them several Shanghai residents and the Hongkong cricketers returning after playing a match with Shanghai (Mrs. P. Cunniffy of Shanghai was washed ashore dead with her daughter Lizzie lashed to her breast. with a shawl one of the saddest cases of the recovering of the dead, Captain Sarms of the Bokhara, highly esteemed by one and all, afloat as well as on shore, and as thorough a seaman as ever paced a ship's deck, a relative and dear friend of the writer also was amongst those who lost their lives and his body fo the best of belief was never recovered.)
Should it ever be my lot to take up the sea again as a_ profession, ne more Lascars for me. I would feel much safer with a crew of Paddy Welch's turnpike sailors on board—Europeans of course. For the benefit of those who are not of the seafaring profession the above individual, Paddy Welch, was a noted character, who kept a boarding house in Paradise Street, Liverpool, and took in those who had no employment and initiated them as sailors ('turnpike sailors"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.