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A girl stowaway has just arrivedhome at Edinburgh from halfway across the world. Romance and pathos attach to her story, for she made her desperate adventure,' dressed as a boy, so thatshe could take the place of her dead mother and look after her crippled father—who has now died, too—and his young family,I found Bessie Chalmers, the heroin© of this s/tory, to-day in her little one-roomed home in College street, under the shadow of Edinburgh University. It was. a Inimble home, but scrupulously clean and tidy. She is a bright, intelligent girl who is allowing a brave face to a, black outlook.When I sought to obtain a detailed account of her adventures I found herhard to draw.4lt;I never told anybody here aboutit,1’ she said, “except, of course, myfather, and I don't want it talked1 about among the neighbors,”She was doing well in New Zealand,slio told me, earning good wages andhaving a good time, with prospects of doing much better than she could have done at Home. Yet when news of her mother’s death came to her, and she thought of her invalid father and tho motherless family, she never rested until she returned home.“I tried at first,” she said, “to save out of mv wages enough to take me hack. But 1 was always sending home as much as I could spare, and you cannot send home money and also save. So i gave up the idea of paying my passage, and turned next to attemptingto work it.”She made her way to Lyttelton. At first .she thought of obtaining a post as stewardess on a homeward-bound liner.From tliat the idea of playing the role of stowaway occurred to her. She bought trousers, n jersey, and a cap'.She received temporary employment at an hotel, and applied for a post to the* captain of the Port Hunter, a car** go boat belonging to the- Commonwealth and Dominion, Ltd., which was carrying a few passengers home, but ho said that there wa« no accommodation.“It was n terrible disappoirttment when ho refused,” she «aid. “I was desperate then, and I determined tofail n» i\ stowaway.“So, changing into my boy's clothes,I .stoic on hom'd and hid in an emptycabin.“For three days I. never touched food. Then a storm cam©. I was sick and so miserable and ill that I did not care what happened. 1 crawled out of my hiding-place, having first changed back into the girl’s clothes, which I had brought, with- me in a small brown paper parcel, and gave myself up to the captain.“He was angry, and I thought dread-ful things were going to happen, but Iwas so ill J did not care. Nothinghappened. The women passengers, when they heard my story, were very kind, mid I tried afterwards as muchati passible to work by passage by assisting the stewards.“When we landed in London after avoyage of nearly 12,000 miles by way of Cape Horn, T had just enough money to pay my train faro home to Edinburgh. The owners of the ship were very kind. They did not }*roae-cut© me. And hero 1 am,” she concluded, fook-{ nig round the room whore she and three younger sisters and’ a boy of seven all live together.Her father, an old soldier of the Regular Army, who» served in the Soots Ureys, was a crippled invalid for eighteen years. He died recently and was buried with military honors.
Newspaper Details
Clyde Dunstan Times
Clyde, South Island, NZ
Mon, Jan 05, 1925
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
GB 29 Oct 2019
Other Publications Near Clyde, South Island
Clyde Dunstan Times
