French Capture Third Sampan,

Sight Others

ARTICLES in the Bulletin du Commerce, of Noumea, of September 2, 5. 12 and 26, describe how the French officials in New Caledonia captured a third sampan in August (they caught and confiscated two in June and July), and how others have been seen off the coast.

The steamer Orne was on her way from Thio to Noumea on August 26, with the gendarme from Yate aboard, when she sighted a sampan fishing the coastal reefs.

The French captain, co-operating with the gendarme, manoeuvred his vessel in such a way that the poacher could not escape; and the Japanese submitted and were taken to Thio and placed under arrest.

The sampan, which was named the Taifu Maru, was sent in charge of the Caledonian, to Noumea, where she arrived

on September 2. The French officials noted that she carried modern marine maps of the New Hebrides, New Caledonia. Fiji, Samoa, the Philippines, the reefs to the North of Australia, and Java, etc.

The vessel and cargo probably will be confiscated, as was done in the case of the other two sampans.

The Japanese captain said that the coast of New Caledonia was regarded as the richest region in trochus shell in the Pacific. He got three tons of shell in six days’ fishing. Three tons of burghaus which he had aboard he said were obtained in the Solomon Islands.

A few days later, on September 12, it was reported in Noumea that a small steamer and two sampans, each of 50 or 60 tons, had been seen fishing the reefs around the Isle of Pines, southward of New Caledonia. The three vessels worked in close communication with each other, and presently disappeared together in a northerly direction.

The French are of opinion that the small steamer is being used to revictual the fleet of sampans, and that a formidable organisation of these small Japanese ves sels is engaged in robbing the French Colony of its marine wealth. Sharp retali ation is threatened.

After numerous exchanges between Noumea, Paris and Tokio, the Japanese Government gave instructions that the Japanese poachers, marooned for many weeks in New Caledonia owing to the con fiscation in July of their two sampans, were to be returned to Japan, at the Gov ernment’s expense.