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A PASSENGER'S COMPLAINT.
Met de man
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY PRES8."
Hongkong Hotel, 20th August. SIR,-I should feel much obliged by your inserting, in the interest of the travelling public, the following account of my voyage from Bombay to this port in the Austrian Lloyd 8.8. Nippon, which arrived bere last night via Colombo, Penang, and Singapore.
The Nippon, a fine large steamer of 8,000 tons. is now on her maiden voyage from Eu ope to Japan; it is a cargo-boat with so-called single- class accommodation for
passengers, which really means second-class, her cabins accom. modating 20 persons.
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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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board, it is not for the ship's officers to remove them from the accommodation for which they have paid, but which, I believe, under the circumstances in question, would have been done by another Company.
It is the Austrian Lloyd Co. which is to blame here, and I consider it nothing short but scandalous, that this Company, under contract with the Imperial Goverment of Austria, from which it receives a heary subsidy, should subject its passengers to herd with coolies, and subject them to surroundings on board its steamers which could not be wors! on a con ig-carrying boat in the coast trade. It is in my opinion grossly unfair that the Company should advertise, without any cominent, that she has accommodation for passengers, without mentioning that she take Chinese coolies, or worse, also as such; if they had informed me beforehand of what I had to expect in this regard I could have no cause for complaint of course; but when I fake passage with an Europeau S.8. Co., and a mail steamship to boof, I have a right to expect freniment on board as an European, and not to be subjected to such disgrac-ful surroundings as was the case ou board the Nippon. Paragraph 3, of | the "Internal Regulat ons displayed in a conspicuous place in the sleep ng accommoda- tion downstairs. says: "It is not allowed to lie down with boots cr shoes, either on the sofas or the beds; neither is it allowed to keep luggage in the saloon to enibarrass the private cabins, or to spoil the books, furniture, aud utensils of the ship' But I wonder whether it
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is allowed for nuweshed Mongols to li down with their dirty feet, and perhaps dirtier clothes, on the plush covering of the ship's scfas? am almost certain that the damage done to the furniture and utensils of the ship by the Nippon's Chinese cabin-passengers (2) will not balance the $25 a head passage-money. In the present instance, however, the Company is condemned out of its own mouth I think, for paragraph 12 of the Internal Regulations says:
From Bombay to Colombo I was the only passenger, and felt on the whole very satisfied with the ship, its accommodation, and quiet ness. At this first halting-place, our pas- senger list was increased by an English lady with her baby aud ayah, bound for Penang in the saloon and some European and nativo deck-p
-passengers. These left us on arrival in Penang, when a Chinese lady with baby, and arah took the place of her paleface sister besides a couple of hundred of Chin se deck-passengers. But the latter all remained ou the afterpart of the ship, and left me the forepart for promenacing. We left Bombay on the 29th July, and arrived on the 10th inst. at Singapore, from which port my trials com- menced. We were to leave Singapore on the morning of the 14th inst., and having been out. to dinner the night previous, I did not come on board till late at night. I went straight to my cabin downstairs, where a veritable pan- demonium reigned. The pas-ages were fill, d up with boxes and cases of every description, while a savage and sweating horde of Mongol- ians was hurrying to and fro amidst the most frightful din and uproar, carrying ever more baskets and boxes, and all the paraphernalia of Chinese travellers. The cabin opposite mine was occupied by a Japanese gentleman Passengers having a right to be treated like and two ladies, who all through the voyage persons of education will no doubt conform conducted themselves as such. "But from some themselves to the rules of good society by of the other cabins te most unearthly sounds respecting their fellow travellers." etc. If and noises emanated; shrill yells from the the Austrian Lloyd cousiders it consistent with Chinese babies and all sorts of throat-noises this right of their passengers, and with the from the men! With the help of the chief rules of good society, that her Chinese pissen. officer, a certain amount of quiet and peace was gers continually offend the sense of decency restored; but he informed me that they were and propriety of their European fellow-passen- cabin-passengers, and that he had no power to gers by a disregard for the first udiments of interfere too much with them. With a few civilisation, then I have nothing more to say, interruptions the noise lasted the whole except that the Internal Regulations should night, und when 1 woke up after EL be amended to this effect, in order to avoid bad night we were already noder way.misconception.—Yous, etc., It did not take long to transform the passenger accommodation, hitherto looking like the abode of "white men,' into a veritable pigsty. The addition of a dozen Chinese cabin-passengers, including childr. ¤, with all their servants and hangers on, made our quarters resemble a Chinese back slum. As the Chinese had their food brought to them by the Chine e cook, there was a continual carrying down of great quantities of rice, accompanied by large trays of the most evil-smelling messes and unholy stews which it is possible to imagine; while the intervals of meal-times were occupied by the consumption of fruits and sweets, and with the refuse of the same the floor was littered.
J. N. KALFF.
She was
some
P. S. Since writing the foregoing, I received the following treatment at the hands of the Austrian Lloyd S.S. Company. As the Nippon was to have no more Chinese passengers on her voyage from this port to Yokohama, I decided to continue my journey in her. duly advertised to sail on the 22nd inst., but there was on the following day not the slightest evidence that she would leave Kowloon Wharf either that day or the next. The ship's officers would not commit themselves by naming day and hour of departure, and referred me to the agents. By them I was informed on Saturday that she would not sail till Monday, and if I The bathrooms and lavatories were used for
was passing there during the morning of that the most disgusting and ludicrous purposes, day they might be able to give me until one of each of these were exlusively information about the sailing time. I men. reserved for the use of myself and the Japanese. The female portion of the Chinese passengers never stirred from the accommodation down stairs, neither did the babies; while the male and female servants remained there also most of the day and night, sleeping either on sofas or deckchairs in the passages, carrying with them, from their occasional visits to their friends on deck, all the dirt and filth inseparable from hundreds of cooped-up Chinese. The stench of all these unwashed barbarians, coupled with the smells of Chinese food, and the opium fumes emanating from some of the cabins, became at last in this badly ventilated locality well-nigh unbearable. The chief officer who on board these steamers is in charge of the passengers-did his best to improve mat'ers, but what can one do against the passive resis-
tance of the heathen Chinee? That officer has other duties; besides, with 700 Chinese coolies en board, one is perforce compelled to compro- mise, and if the Company puts the passengers on
[Angust 30, 1902,
on Saturday the ship would be ready so soon; that they were really not re-pousible, as these ships were not properly speaking passenger-boats, etc., etc., but that he would return me the passage-money, and that I would even that day find another steamer.
Here I had been specially waiting for this ship, and at the eleventh bour was simply left in the lurch by the responsible representative of the Company, who was aware of the name aúd residence of the friends I was passing the Sunday with at the Peak. But all my re- presentations that my ticket implied a contract which they could not break at will, and in such an unjustifiable and unbusinesslike way, met wiha non possu nus from even the head of the house, who coolly stated that on principle be refused to accede to my request, sir, to send mto my place of destination at the Company's expense; uo, all he could do was to refund me my passage-money! Now, sir, what is one to do in such a cynical ilustration of the right of the strongest?
J. N. K.
We omit, some portions of our corres- poudent's letter, partly from reasons of space. Ed. D.P.]
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY PRESS.'
Hongkong, 27th August.
"
SIR, Wo shall be obliged by your inserting a few remarks, called for by Mr. Kalff's renti- lation of his grievances in this morning's issue.
tribulations to tell, but somehow he did not find Mr. Kalff has a long tale of woe and
second-class and never was promised anything room to make it clear that he only travelled
in the cabins but might he not have met with better. Ha objects to the presence of Chinese
steamer? them in the first-class, saloon of any mail
Some may have been moved by reading Mr. Kalff's new trials in Hongkong. It is an awkward thing, no doubt, to find out at 11 p.m. felt sorry for Mr. K.'s disappointment; however, that one's ship has given one the slip. We
if a man is told that the ship he is counting with, will leave as son as discharged, he will look out for himself. Extraordinary enough, before she left, when it was evident that the Mr. K. was on board te Nippon four hours ship was as good as ready for ses but it did not strike him to ask and to trouble himself about it.
Steamer agents who look for belated passengers at their hotel to warn them, may well be said to have done their due. If wrong information is left at the hotel, passen- gers must bear the consequences.-Yours, etc.,
SANDER, WIELER & CO., Agents, The Austrian Lloyd's
Steam Navigation Co.
NAVAL WASTE AND JERRY. BUILDINGS.
*
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY PRESS."
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Hongkong, 25th August. SIR. To most people there may appear no significance in this heading, but there is. Whenever anything larger than a torpedo-boat enters the barbour the Naval people consider it tioned to the agent that I intended to pass the necessary to fire off big guns and waste a lot Sunday with some friends in the Peak, but of powder, with the result that houses anywhere that I wished to be guaranteed against being in the line of fire are caused to vibrate at every left behind. No, there was no danger of that explos ou, The mortar in most buildings is so coming to pass, and I was assured that I could bad that no competent building authority would se fely spend the day in the Peak, which I accord- sanction its use, and instead of being allowed to ingly did. I took the 10.30. p.m. ferry on
barden in the work it is gabject to these vibra- Sunday night, but found on arrival at Kowloon, tions which gradua ly but surely, as drops of no Nippon. Thinking she had gone into the
water wear away stone," reb it of all adhesion stream, I returned to Hongkong, and took a
and so weaken it that a driving rain penetrates
that "Me savvy Nippon-big ship, four masts. sampan, whose skipper assured me confidently the joints and saturates the heart of the wall to such a extent that any extraordinary weight or After an hour's uusuccesful search in the road wind pressure may cause a collapse. Thus one stead, I returned to shore, where I roused department allows jerry-buildings to go up and up the Chinese stevedore of the Company, the other helps the elements to knock them from whom I learned that Nippon gone
down. As a suggestion :-Better and stricter fo away
o'clock." On arriving at the supervision by both the architects in charge Company's office on Monday morning, I and the government building authorities, and was met by a hearty laugh from the agent, until the existing rotlen buildings are replaced who considered the whole thing evidently that a Naval order be issued that small as a joke, and informed me that such light charges be used.—Yours, etc., things would happen; that he had had no idea
guns and
B.
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