Maritime Misconduct at Swansea Docks
Maritime Misconduct at Swansea Docks South Wales Daily Post A Daft Act: Six Months for £11 The case of John William Bell , a seaman, came before Swansea Police Court in an incident reported in the South Wales Daily Post , June 1914 . Bell stood charged with stealing £11 — equivalent to roughly £1,350 today — the property of Captain Ole Johannsen of the Norwegian vessel Venus , then lying at the Prince of Wales Dock . His task that day had been a simple and routine one: to clean the mat in the captain’s cabin. Yet a fellow seaman later observed him moving toward the cabin, changing his clothes, and leaving the ship without permission. Bell’s disappearance triggered a wider search, and he was eventually located and arrested at Sale, Cheshire , by Detective Tucker , acting on a Swansea warrant. When confronted, Bell admitted the theft, remarking that it “ must have been a daft ” thing to take the money from the captain’s trousers pocket and squander it while “travelling the country fo...
