Shot Across the Bow

The 946-ton British freighter Nigelock, a converted wartime corvette loaded with fruit and vegetables, steamed through the China Sea one velvet night last week, outward bound from Communist Shanghai to Communist Amoy. At-first light, a gunboat appeared on the port bow and ordered the Britisher to heave to. Not me, said Nigelock's captain, and rang for full steam ahead. His radio crackled an S O S to the British destroyer Cockade, on patrol in the Formosa strait.

By 11 a.m., the interceptor had pulled within range. She flew the flag of the Chinese Nationalist navy, and her machine-gunners opened fire. Nigelock's crew leaped for cover, but before the gunboat could close, a 4.5-in. shell whistled across her bow. H.M.S. Cockade had come racing to the rescue. The Nationalist gunboat, "suitably rebuked," as Cockade's offhand report put it, turned tail.

"The Riffraff." For Nigelock's crew, the excitement was old stuff. A week before, they had been captured by a Nationalist warship but released under the guns of the Royal Navy's frigate St. Bride's Bay. Nigelock is one of a hundred British merchantmen (some under charter to Red China) engaged in Chinese coastal trade. Its crew and skipper expect to run into trouble: war-risk insurance on the China coast is the world's highest.

Since the Korean armistice was signed two months ago. eleven merchant vessels --nine British, one Danish and one Italian --have been intercepted in the China Sea. At least two were escorted to the Nationalist port of Keelung, where their cargoes were confiscated. One, the S.S. Inchkilda, was rescued by the British light aircraft carrier Unicorn, which signaled the Admiralty: "Unicorn closed and ordered the gunboat to stop. None of the riffraff on board could read the signal . . ."

After each interception, the British consul in Taipei protests to the Nationalist government. Taipei's invariable reply: "We know nothing about it ... They must be sea guerrillas." The British cry "piracy," but the Nationalists do not even call it a blockade; their phrase is "port closure," which they insist they have the right to enforce, on Ihe grounds that they are still the legal government of China. So far, both sides have avoided a breach out of deference to their common ally, the U.S. The State Department says, "We have no policy in the matter."

Bitter Seadogs. British policy is to forbid "strategic trade" with the Chinese mainland (as required by the U.N. embargo), but to encourage as much non-strategic trade as possible, for, after all, business is business. The Royal Navy has orders to keep the sea lanes open, but British commercial vessels, even under Communist charter, are not allowed to be armed or to carry strategic cargo.

British seadogs are bitter. "You never hear of the Nationalists attacking Communist [e.g., Polish] ships trading with the mainland," beefed a Hong Kong trader. Snapped a Royal Naval officer: "If it were politically possible to shoot to kill, this trouble would all be over in an hour."

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