"We're Going to Get You"

Shipping can be a hard-knuckled business, but never had the Australian Tonnage Committee, a group of 15 shipping companies involved in Europe-Australia trade, heard such a barefisted challenge. Dropping in at the committee's London office recently, N. I. ("Nicky") Zuev, vice president of the Soviet Union's ship-chartering agency Sovfracht, was in a vile mood. He complained that the committee, which is made up of shipping operators from eight countries, had unfairly treated the Russians, then warned: "Now we're going to get you."

With that salvo, the Soviets last month launched their latest assault on what has long been pretty much a free-world preserve: seaborne trade between non-Communist nations. The Soviet merchant fleet has been ranging beyond bloc trade routes for years, of course, but never have its excursions been quite so bold. At stake in the London confrontation are shipping revenues of about $192 million a year, which are now shared by the Italian, French, West German, Dutch, Scandinavian and British lines that form the in-group serving trade routes between Europe and Australia. Last year the Russians sent six ships to Australian ports to pick up 146,000 tons of wool destined for the Soviet Union. Bargaining for a bigger piece of the action this time, they have proposed to run 36 round trips a year to Australia. That would be enough to take a third of the entire Australian trade, worth $31 million. If not allowed into the conference, the Russians threaten to sail outside--at profit-busting rates.

Real Threat. The Soviet push is backed up by a fast-growing merchant fleet. A virtual nonentity 15 years ago, the Red fleet now numbers 1,350 oceangoing ships totaling 10 million tons, ranks sixth in the world, after Liberia (actually a "flag of convenience" for ships of many nations), Britain, the U.S., Norway and Japan. At its current million-ton-a-year growth rate, the U.S.S.R. could well be at the top by the early 1970s.

Many shipowners agree with President Manuel Diaz of American Export Isbrandtsen Lines that the Soviet fleet is a "very real threat." Since the Soviet government need not show a profit on its ships, goes the argument, Communist ships could easily cut rates and drive free-world ships out of business. For their part, the Russians say that they are anxious to join the rate-setting conferences that they once condemned as "capitalist cartels." "I see no reason why we should not operate like other shipping men," says George Maslov, London-based boss of Russia's Anglo-Soviet Shipping Co. "We do not aim to dominate world shipping, but if opportunities do arise to make some money on the side with our fleet, we certainly won't pass them up."

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