Mutiny of the Puszczyk

Three months ago, with the help of a local British fisherman, a Polish fishing vessel, apparently in trouble, was guided into the port of Whitby. In incomprehensible Polish and ragged German, seven members of the Polish crew managed to explain that they had locked their captain in the lavatory, the political officer in his cabin, and had headed for Britain to seek asylum from Red rule.

The British put the seven mutineers in jail for safekeeping, let the captain out of the lavatory, and gave him back his ship, the Puszczyk (pronounced, by Poles, pushchick). He promptly sailed for Poland with the remaining six loyal crewmen, muttering philosophically: "To me is equal. Those seven wanted to leave. Let them."

But Poland's Communist government felt differently. First they sent a Polish official in London to see the seven in jail, armed with letters from their relatives. "We had and still have much trouble be cause of you, and the amount of tears we have shed would nearly make a bath for you," wrote one rebel's family. The sailors recognized the letters as having been writ ten under pressure. Dropping all pretense, the Polish government brusquely demanded the sailors extradition.

Government on Trial. Scrupulously adhering to international law, Britain put the seven on trial for "revolt against the authority of the master of a ship on the high seas." Britain's big community of Polish exiles (200,000) rallied to the sailors' defense. Mostly veterans of General Wladyslaw Anders' army, which fought gallantly in Italy, they have little money, bicker constantly over the shadows of power left to their government in exile, but instantly unite when it is a question of combating the Communist Warsaw government. Pennies, shillings and pounds poured in, enough to hire Britain's top Laborite lawyer, Sir Hartley Shawcross.

In London's musty Bow Street court, crowded with Polish exiles, Shawcross in effect put the Polish government itself on trial. Said he: "These men are charged with what amounts to mutiny ... It might have been revolt on the high seas, but it was political revolt against political tyranny on a vessel being run by a political officer with more powers than the captain." He introduced as evidence a persuader found in the political officer's cabin--a spring-handled bludgeon. "It seems a curious form of political argument," said Shawcross dryly.

Revolt in a Parish. Recognizing a tricky legal issue, the judge referred the case to the High Court of Justice on the ground that there had been no legal reinterpretation of mutiny since the last century. Last week, after hearing Sir Hartley argue that the Puszczyk was in reality "a small territorial unit or parish of Poland," and that the seamen had only "revolted from what they regarded as the tyranny of a police state," Lord Goddard, Lord Chief Justice, ordered the prisoners freed. Happily, the Polish community threw a huge coming-out party for the seven, who had established a legal precedent for the kind of age which the Bounty's mutineers never knew.

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