SOVIET FISHING FLEET

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26119, 23 May 1950, Page 5

SOVIET FISHING FLEET

SHELTER IN CORNISH PORT VARIED PRESS COMMENT IN BRITAIN (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, May 22. Chance and a freak of the weather took the aircraft-carrier H.M.S. Theseus and the destroyer H.M.S. Corunna and “the mystery fleet” of 30 Russian fishing vessels with their 2900-ton mother ship, the Tambov, all into the same Cornish fiishlng port of Porthleven last night. The carrier and the destroyer which had been visiting the Scilly Isles were seeking shelter from a south-east Wind and the Russian ships, whose appearance in the Channel on May 17, caused a British newspaper sensation, were driven into port by the same south-east wind. The 30 trawlers spent the night at anchor but the Tambov sailed after a few hours. The Tambov’s master had explained that the trawlers were on their way to the Black Sea for sprat and sardine fishing. The reaction of some British newspapers to this has been sceptical. The “Daily Mail,” mentioning that combined manoeuvres of the Western Fleet were due to start to-day, said that the presence of Russian ships was an “exercise in tactlessness bordering on the lunatic.” The “Daily Graphic” said that the Russian trawler fleet delayed its departure from the English Channel as units of the British Home Fleet left Portland for the Western defence combined manoeuvres. The Liberal “News-Chro.nicle,” said that it was absurd to place an extreme construction on the presence of Russian ships. The Communist “Daily Worker” described the British interest as “a sprat scare.” and Moscow radio, quoting the Tass News Agency, said that the affair was a “hysterical antiSoviet campaign” on the part of the “bourgeois British press.” Shins of the British Home Fleet, includin’? the aircraft-carrier Implacable and the enusers Superb and Cleopatra are on their way to combined exercises with fhe French and Netherlands fleets. They will rendezvous off the Bay of Bis -ay. The purpose of Ihe exercises is to give officers and ratings experience in the standard system of communications to be used "by North Atlantic Treaty and Western Union countries.