Sailor's Girl

ARMY & NAVY

Before any decision had been announced in the cases of sailors who were a month ago accused of smuggling five girls aboard four navy vessels (TIME, April 23), one of these baggages appeared in Manhattan, eager to talk to newsgatherers. Her name, she asserted on various occasions, was Rumilda, Murilda or Ramilda Avery. When taken off the destroyer Sands a month ago, she had claimed to be a waitress.

This time, Miss Avery forgot about being a waitress. Her story was published in the N. Y. Evening Porno-Graphic. She was an adventuress, she said, and had without any persuasion from seamen clambered on the Sands from the port of New Orleans, because she was "crazy for adventure." She was in New York to testify to the innocence of the Sands' crew; she said the other four girl stowaways who were found on navy vessels had probably, like herself, been led only by their own inclination to such extravagant behavior.

Ramilda Avery's career in adventuring began when she ran away from her home in Des Moines, Iowa; it led her to what she called "sleuthing," in Chicago; when this became tiresome, she wobbled off to New Orleans and got a job as a detective. While "sleuthing," in New Orleans cabarets, she met several sailors. Inspired already with her calamitous yearnings, she cultivated their friendship. Then one early morning, clad in a uniform which she had borrowed from one of them by saying she wanted it for a masquerade party, rowdy Ramilda sneaked onto the Sands and hid herself and suitcase in the torpedo room. There, several days later, she was discovered; first by a sailor, then by officers.