THE LONDON STATESMAN Freighter crew safe

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32965, 11 July 1972, Page 13

THE LONDON STATESMAN Freighter crew safe

SAIGON. July 10. All 45 officers and crewmembers of the British freighter London Statesman escaped injury when two explosions, thought to have been caused bv saboteurs, holed the vessel in South Vietnamese waters, according to shipping agents in Saigon.

They say that the ship is resting on her stern in Nha Trang harbour, about onethird of the way up the South Vietnamese coastline, and that a search is being made to determine if more explosives have been attached to the hull.

An official of the States Marine Isthmian Shipping Company, which chartered the 10,678-ton vessel to bring a cargo of rice to Nga Trang from Galveston, Texas, say that she had been due to end [her charter today, and to sail .for Bangkok, The two explosions an ihour after midnight, ripped 'holes in the engine-room and | No. 5 hatch. S.O.S. HEARD j Distress signals from the London Statesman were [picked up early today by another British registered cargo [ship, the 13,000 ton Manoora, berthed in Melbourne. A spokesman for the Australian Department of Shipping and Transport said that an automate S.O.S. alarm [aboard the Manoora was [activated by high-frequency impulses from the London Statesman at 3.45 a.m. A Manoora radio operator was unable to decipher a later radio message from the [ship, but relayed the S.O.S. to the Shipping and Transport Department’s marine operations centre in Canberra. The Australian authorities at once put Saigon on the alert. Freak atmospheric conditions are believed to have allowed the distress signal to be heard in Melbourne.