Ships Trapped In Suez Canal For Three Years

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32346, 11 July 1970, Page 7

Ships Trapped In Suez Canal For Three Years

COLIN RAYMOND) An all-expenses-paid, three - month holiday afloat, doing nothing and getting paid handsomely for it: For a lucky group of merchant seamen, this dream life has come true. They are the sailors who make up the skeleton crews on the 15 ships trapped in the Suez Canal by the outbreak of the Six Day War three years ago. The job of the men—from Bulgaria, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Sweden and the United States, and Britain Is simply to maintain the ships in seaworthy condition although whether they will ever sail again is open to increasing doubt. What kind of life is it aboard a ship bound for nowhere and trapped in a narrow waterway between two warring nations?

In Firing Line

According to the men who have already served a tour in the Great Bitter Lakes, which is where 14 of the 15 ships are trapped, it’s just like a holiday. Each crew signs on for three months, and many of the men join the queue for a' new tour of duty as soon as they get home. As one of them said: “I’ve saved more money in the last three months than I could manage in two years of normal duty.” The reason is simple: once aboard ship, there is simply nothing to spend money on. And there is little or no opportunity to go ashore.

The Suez Canal is still very much in the firing line, and expeditions to the Israeliheld south bank of the canal are fraught with danger. The Egyptians, who still control the north bank, are unwilling to allow the crews ashore except for urgent medical attention, and perhaps an occasional game of football or golf. Each crew is flown out from London to Cairo, and then travels overland to Ismalia. From there, they are ferried along the deserted waterway to the Great Bitter Lake, where the phantom merchant navy rides at anchor. The British ships are at the moment moored together, bow to stern. Occasionally, as happened a few months ago, they cast off their mooring, start the engines, and sail around the lake that has become their prison. The last time they did this, the 14 ships joined forces in a symbolic protest by sailing around the lake sounding their sirens, in an attempt to draw attention to their plight. Club Tie And the fifteenth ship, American - owned, joined in from her lonely berth in Lake Tinsah, where she ran aground three years ago, under Egyptian and Israeli gunfire. Some of the men fill in their time by offering each other language lessons. English is much in demand, and other crewmen are taking in* struction in French, Swedish, Czech, Polish and Bulgarian. Model making also enjoys great popularity. The duties of the crews are few. They try to keep the

ships in good order, by painting, chipping rust, and running the engines each day. But beyond that, there is nothing to do except, as one young seaman says: “lie around in the sun, write letters home, and think of all that lovely money.” What is the future for these vessels worth several millions of pounds seemingly caught for ever on the world's most dangerous frontier? Certainly the chances of getting them out grow slimmer every day. The canal is blocked to the Red Sea in the South by the sunken hulk of a ship shelled in the Six Days War. To the North, into the Mediterranean Sea, the way could be dredged open if the Israelis and the Egyptians could reach an agreement. But three years of negotiations have failed to produce anything but hard words and shell-shots across the Suez, and when the Egyptians moved to open the Canal on their own the Israelis forbade a reopening and threatened to bomb the original ships. The shipping companies have long since cut their losses and taken the insurance money for the cargo and the ships that carried them. Lloyds of London, the world’s greatest marine insurance syndicate, has borne the largest part of the cost But the insurers would like to get some of their money back. That’s why they keep skeleton crews on board ... in the hope that one day the 14 ships still afloat will sail out of the Suez, so bringing an end to the voyage of the ships that today, have no port, no destination, and apparently no future.