The Strange Case of
p. 129 · Read in the full issue
Hief Engineer
[?] Chart Room
The Strange Case of the MV Tulagi
IfHEN Burns Philp & Co.’s MV ▼ Tulagi arrived in Sydney re cently at the end of her maiden yage from a British shipyard, it mediately became known in the rt that “something was cooking” card. There were many comings d goings of men with snap immed hats and up-turned collars the days following her arrival, d it soon was apparent that a j-flight matter of “protocol” was mlved. [t is well known that ever since pincers were allowed aboard ships in event which occurred when it d to be conceded that fickle winds I not bring dividends —there has in an inherent tension between dge and engine-room, sometimes the feeling has been ense, in other cases almost — •ugh not quite—absent. So long the two tribes are reasonably regated and not thrown into too se or lengthy contact all is usually 'ulagi, however, seems to have n made the object of a rather stic experiment—drastic in the se that one might have thought t the ship designers would have
been well aware that what they had designed would be unacceptable on the Australian coast, or probably anywhere else.
The sin of the designers was in placing the accommodation for Master and Chief Engineer not only side by side on the same deck, but also with the Chief Engineer’s accommodation opening into the sacred chart room! The full im port of that can perhaps be appre ciated only by a seaman.
Needless to say the arrangement was not acceptable to the deck officers’ Guild, nor was certain other officers’ accommodation acceptable.
An arbitrator was appointed. He
found in favour of the complainants —and as a result some very nice passenger accommodation has been taken over for the ship’s personnel, and the passengers have moved down a step.
A suitable state of segregation has been re-established, the accepted protocol of the British Merchant Service upheld, and a state of normalcy again exists aboard Tulagi fi Assistant Superintendent R. B.
Winthrop, who left Fiji in June for vacation leave in England, also plans to take a course at the Police College, Hendon.