Troubled Waters

The Russian note was stiff. One of their tankers was missing, and the U.S. Navy must have it. The Russian story was that the 8,840-ton Soviet tanker Tuapse was stopped one morning last week in the predawn hours 125 miles south of Formosa by a "destroyer type" vessel. The captain just had time to get off a message reporting this when radio contact was cut off.

Such a seizure, said the note, "in waters under the control of the U.S. Navy, could be brought about only by naval forces of the U.S.A." The Russians wanted their ship, cargo and crew back at once, and those responsible punished.

The U.S. Navy was quick to reply. "No U.S. warship seized any Russian ship," said Admiral Felix B. Stump, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The State Department summarily rejected the Russian charge as "without foundation." Then the Chinese Nationalist government spoke up: the tanker had been seized by the Nationalist navy, because its cargo of fuel oil was a strategic material and was consigned to a Communist company in Shanghai.

The Tuapse, built by Denmark and delivered to the Russians over U.S. protests in 1953, was the latest trophy of the blockade which the Chinese Nationalists have tried to impose on mainland ports since 1949 with destroyers and patrol vessels given them by the U.S. In Kaohsiung, too, were two other recent prizes--the 8,207-ton Polish tanker Praca, seized last October, and the 5,958-ton Polish freighter Prezydent Gottwald, seized in May.

Twenty-two of the Polish crewmen and the Praca's captain have asked for and been granted political asylum in Formosa.

Russia had warned that it "will be forced to take appropriate measures for safeguarding the security of Soviet Merchant ships," presumably hinting that it might provide naval escorts for them in Far Eastern waters. After thinking things over, Nationalist China this week announced that it had decided to confiscate the tanker's cargo but to return the ship itself.

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