Hoover Affair

Slowly making her way through dark, unfamiliar waters last fortnight, the Dollar Line's crack 21,936-ton President Hoover ran hard aground on a reef 18 miles off Formosa's east coast, 450 miles north of Manila. There was a heavy swell on, and by daylight the 615-ft. vessel was fast on the rocks for more than half her length. A few hundred yards away the 503 passengers and 330 members of the crew could see tiny Hoishoto Island, and within a mile or two a handful of other Japanese islands--all small, bleak, sparsely inhabited. Early messages from the President Hoover's Captain George W. Yardley minimized the disaster but by last week, after six grim days of escape and rescue, the first group of passengers landed in Manila. What they had to say added up to one more shocking charge of undisciplined hooliganism against the U. S. Seaman, New Style.

Although the seas were heavy, Captain Yardley decided to take his passengers off by ship's boats attached to a line sent ashore. The inexperienced sailors--last minute pickups from West Coast hiring halls--according to passengers, capsized two lifeboats in shallow waters trying to land the line. Miraculously without loss of life, all passengers landed on the islands during the next 36 hours. Meantime, on board the President Hoover an unruly group of the crew--estimated from "a dozen" to "most of them"--broke into the bar and began a party. They then decided to visit the passengers on shore and, commandeering boats, the roistering, singing band descended on the island early the first night of the accident.

According to Dr. Claude Conrad, a missionary official of Washington, D. C.: "A majority of the ship's crew came into camp more or less incapacitated and abusive from the effects of free indulgence in the ship's liquor stores. Out of control of officers partially in the same condition, many of the crew men continued most of the night terrorizing passengers and natives." However, when the liquored seamen began hunting for women passengers sleeping in scattered houses ashore, some officers and other passengers formed a vigilante group to protect them. There was no actual molestation. There would have been no disturbance at all ashore, said some of the passengers, if the Hoover's officers had been permitted by Japanese police to land with their guns. What cleared the air was the arrival of two U. S. destroyers, whose crews did come ashore with guns and put an end to the unsettled situation.

In Washington, New York's voluble Senator Royal S. Copeland had been sitting for days as chairman of the Senate Joint Maritime Committee considering last month's Maritime Commission report. That 17-page document by Joseph Patrick Kennedy bluntly declared: "Labor conditions in the American Merchant Marine are deplorable. . . . The employer, for his part, has fostered long hours, low wages and cramped quarters. The employe, meanwhile, has abused his employment in a manner that would not be tolerated in any other industry."

When news of the President Hoover affair reached Washington, Senator Copeland at once ordered a report from the U. S. Consul at Manila to be transmitted to the State Department and Maritime Commission, thence to his committee for "fullest investigation." "This is just one conspicuous example of innumerable incidents of the same sort," snorted he: "Unless we can bring about some better labor conditions so that the traveling public can be assured that passengers and cargoes are safe ... we might as well . . . give up the idea of an American Merchant Marine." Though no complaint had been made against the crew remaining on the vessel, they promptly cabled their union in San Francisco: "We, the remaining crew of the President Hoover in all departments deny drunkenness or abuse of passengers as charged in Washington. We remained aboard throughout trouble and performed duties at all times, which is confirmed by ship's officers. We demand a retraction of Copeland's accusations."

To the "more than 200 similar cases" in Senator Copeland's possession, another was added last week as Daniel B. Irwin, Manhattan engineer, wrote Senator Copeland a hair-raising account of his 13-day voyage on the American Diamond Line's Black Falcon. Enroute from the U. S. to Rotterdam. Passenger Irwin charged that the U. S. crew of the freighter got drunk, cowed the captain, zig-zagged the vessel across the Atlantic, abused and insulted the passengers throughout the trip because the crew thought the staterooms assigned to the passengers should have gone to them.

Meantime, in Baltimore Federal Judge W. Calvin Chestnut found 14 members of the crew of the 5,496-ton Algic guilty of "conspiring to make a revolt" at Montevideo last September. Because they were called upon to load the vessel with Uruguayan strikebreakers, the crew refused to obey orders of the first mate, turned the steam off the winches--both acts mutinous. Sentencing nine of the seamen to two months in jail and fining the other five $50 each, Judge Chestnut remarked: "The conduct of these men was more serious in its implications than anything else."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.