CONTRABAND GOODS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 70, 15 December 1939, Page 9

CONTRABAND GOODS

Interceptions By British Control (British Official Wireless.) (Received December 14, 7.5 p.m.) RUGBY, December 13. During the week ended December 9, in which 7000 tons of suspected‘contraband goods was intercepted—a figure which compared with a weekly average of more than 34,000 tons for the fourteen weeks since the beginning of the war speaks volumes in itself for the success of the measures taken by the Allies to prevent essential supplies from reaching the enemy—there was also satisfactory progress with the system designed to reduce inconvenience to neutrals and under which advance copies of manifests of cargoes are received and considered before the arrival of ships at British ports.

The system resulted during the week in 25 cases being so dealt with and in 19 cases of the

ships concerned being released by the

committee and subject merely to formal checking of the original manifests on their arrival at the control base. The 7000 tons intercepted last week included 1400 tons of cotton, 1200 tons o f miscellaneous foodstuffs, 900 tons of fodder, 800 tons of oilseeds, 700 tons of non-metallic products, 550 tons of ores and metals, 250 tons of rubber and quantities of petro leum products. In the first 14 weeks of the war the contraband control detained a total of 483,500 tons. On December 12 there were 61 neutral ships in the three contraband control bases of the United Kingdom, of which 47 had been there for five days or less. During the week ended December 9 the contraband committee considered the cargoes of 121 ships which had arrived since December 2 and 48 outstanding cargoes from the previous week. In three cases the entire cargo was seized and in 73 cases the entire cargoes were released.