Again

"Ouvea" in the News Again

From Our Own Correspondent

Noumea, June 20.

ANOTHER exciting, and perhaps hnal, chapter was added to the eventful life of the lormer Jap sampan “Ouvea the other day, when her two ton boiler oiew up while she was docked for repairs in Noumea. The boiler flew 40 yards through the air and came down on the house of Mr. Hubbard, a New Zealander who has lived long in the Colony. The explosion set fire to the “Ouvea”; and five Javanese and a native, who were near, were injured by scalding vapour and scattered fire.

The “Ouvea” was formerly owned by Monsieur Houssard, of this Colony, who acquired her in this manner; Early in July, 1936, as he, on board his ketch “Caledonian,” wa!s returning from a trading trip up north, he noticed a sus picious vessel off the small reef near the Havannah Passage, through which large vessels clearing the south coast make their way to the Loyalties and Vila. It proved to be a sampan, and it was evi dently fishing trochus in waters reserved for the New Caledonian fishing fleet.

Capt. Houssard is a man of action, so he decided to board and seize the sam pan, which he later brought to Noumea.

When she was put up for auction as a prize, he bought her for 5,000 francs.

IN 1940 the “Ouvea” was one of the first ships in Noumea Harbour to hoist the de Gaulle flag—an act of defiance which angered Temporary Governor Col onel Denis and Commander Toussaint de Quievrecourt, who were trying to bully the Colony into following Marshal Petain.

A week or two later the “Ouvea” bore Monsieur Houssard (who is now overseas with the Free French naval forces) to Port Vila, in the New Hebrides, following instructions from General de Gaulle, in London. The General’s instructions were that the sampan’s owner should ask Henri Sautot (then Resident Commissioner at Vilaj to come to Noumea as Free French Governor of New Caledonia.

Colonel Denis knew the sampan’s mis sion, and he believed Monsieur Sautot would arrive back with Capt. Houssard, whereupon he would have Sautot arrested.

But Sautot, with the connivance of his colleague, Mr. Blandy (British Resident at Vila) and the Australian Government, left on a Norwegian steamer, escorted by HMAS “Adelaide.” On his arrival, it was Denis, and not Sautot, who was arrested, and this not by the military but by the good people of the Colony who had formed their own militia—later nick named “Sautot’s bodyguard.”