Trio make friends in prison

THREE British seamen walked up the gangway of the Shaw Savill liner Southern Cross on the afternoon of Thursday, April 5, 1963, and looked back to Tamavua Heights.

One of them sighed and said: “We’d like to come back to Fiji some time – we’ve made a lot of friends”.

But all their friends were in Suva jail, which is where the three seamen had been for the last three weeks.

They were sentenced at the magistrate’s court on March 14 of that year, for being unlawfully present in the Colony of Fiji.

The three men were Peter John Tobin of Winchester Rd, New Milton, Hampshire; Robert Edward Keith, 19, of Swaythiling, Southampton and Robert Wetherwick, 20, of Brading, Isle of Wight.

They told the police when they were arrested on March 13, the day after their ship the Northern Star had sailed from Suva, that they had gone for a bus ride and had got lost.

They returned to Suva the day after the ship sailed, and were handed over to the police by the shipping line agents.

When they appeared at court, they all pleaded guilty to being in the colony without permits and were sentenced to three weeks’ imprisonment.

Their sentences ended in time for them to return home in the Northern Star’s elder sister ship.

They were taken from the jail at noon the previous day and later, with an escort of police in attendance, they were taken to the Southern Cross and handed over to the Master at Arms.

“It is up to the captain whether they go into the brig”, the ship’s detention quarters,” said the Master at Arms to a The Fiji Times representative.

When the three stepped into the vestibule of the Southern Cross, the Master at Arms greeted them with: “Well lads, have you enjoyed your stay?”

“Not much,” they chorused.

“It was a bit rough man,” said Robert Edward Keith, in reply to The Fiji Times reporter who asked him how they liked Suva jail. “There wasn’t enough to do and there were no games to play.”

Robert Wetherwick added: “There’s not enough security there – I mean not enough regulations, and the time dragged.”

They all agreed that what they had seen of Suva, from the outside, they liked.

And, as Peter Tobin put it: “We would like to come back, but not to jail though we wouldn’t mind seeing those inside because we’ve made a lot of friends.”