Russians Fire Across U.S. Grain Ship’s Bow

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30498, 21 July 1964, Page 19

Russians Fire Across U.S. Grain Ship’s Bow

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, July 20. A Soviet naval vessel fired three shots across the bow of an American grain ship in the Black Sea after it left a Russian port without official

clearance. The United States State Department has made an oral protest against the "excessive” action of the Soviet authorities.

The grain ship involved was the Sister Katingo, of 20,549 tons, registered in New York. After the shots were fired across its bows, the vessel was boarded and searched. Her master was ordered to pay a £2O fine before being allowed to continue his voyage to Istanbul from the Russian port of Novorossisk. The State Department added that, according to the American ship’s master. Captain Artur Fertig (New York), his vessel was 16 miles from land—and therefore well outside territorial waters—at the time of the incident, which occurred on Wednesday.

The department said that, according to international law, the Russian authorities “may have been within strictly legal rights” in pursuing, boarding and searching the American ship. “But the methods employed by Soviet authorities were excessive and clearly outside the norms of acceptable behaviour.”

The State Department said that, according to Captain Fertig, the incident stemmed from a dispute over stevedore charges in the Soviet port. The dispute had been referred to the Ministry of Merchant Marine in Moscow, where it had been confirmed that differences would be arbitrated and the ship permitted to sail after discharging its cargo of wheat. Local port authorities at Novorossisk, however, refused clearance and the ship sailed without permission.