Education at Sea

In December 1949, the 7,836-ton Empire Marshal put out from London to pick up war materials at French ports for hard-pressed French soldiers fighting Communists in Indo-China. At Dunkirk, Communist dockers refused to load the ship. Propaganda leaflets, mysteriously appearing in the crew's quarters, read: "Young Frenchmen are killed every day far from their homes and country in this criminal colonial war because American imperialists want to use Indo-China as a strong point against Free China and Soviet Russia."

A Voyage with Sabotage. At Le Havre, the Empire Marshal's heavy derricks were damaged by unknown hands. At St. Nazaire, union workers and longshoremen refused to touch the ship; it was repaired and loaded by French troops. At Marseilles, the Empire Marshal had generator trouble; crewmen noticed that another British ship in the harbor, also bound for Indo-China, had mysterious generator trouble, too. The voyage to Indo-China was trouble-free, but at the mouth of the Mekong River, four hours from Saigon, French soldiers boarded the ship, cleared the decks and set up machine guns. They explained that the Communists commanded both sides of the river. The crew saw a French ship, disabled by a Communist mine, being towed upstream.

By the time the Empire Marshal had finished her Indo-China stint, the Korean war had begun. Her charterers, London ship brokers P. B. Pandelis Co., signed her up with the U.S. Navy's Military Sea Transportation Service. The Empire Marshal began ferrying soldiers from Japan to Korea. The crew got to know and like their passengers. The morning after the first assault landings at Inchon the Empire Marshal went in with tanks. When the Red Chinese began to close in on Hungnam and Wonsan last December, the Empire Marshal was waiting offshore to evacuate U.S. and British troops. Master and crew were praised by Rear Admiral J. H. Doyle, U.S. commander of the Hungnam operation.

A Decision on Principle. Last week, her Navy contract ended, the Empire Marshal lay at a Yokohama dock, her rusty, barnacle-encrusted hull high out of the water. Skipper William Lamont returned from the agent's office with the news that the Empire Marshal had been ordered to Dairen to load soybeans for England. A crew member yelled, "That's Red China!" Unanimously, the 58 crewmen--four Poles, three expatriate Chinese, one German, 50 Scots and Englishmen--applied the lesson they had learned from the Communists on the way to Indo-China. They voted not to take the ship to any Communist port. Explained Chief Steward Vincent Rottgardt: "We decided on principle. We've been on the anti-Communist side all along."

Down came a British consular official with handlebar mustaches to tell them that the penalties for their decision might include having to pay their own way home, to pay for the transport of a new crew from Britain to Japan and to pay the cost of delaying the ship at Yokohama. Said Electrician D. G. MacNaughton: "We'd sooner take the penalties than help the Reds."

There will be no penalties. At week's end the Empire Marshal's charterers cabled that the ship would not be sent to a Communist port.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.