TACOMA INTERNED BY URUGUAY

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 84, 3 January 1940, Page 7

TACOMA INTERNED BY URUGUAY

Expected To Be Beached

FURTHER NAZI NOTE UNAVAILING

By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received January 2, 9 p.m.) NEW YORK, January 1.

Forty minutes after the expiry of the time-limit fixed by the Government of Uruguay the Tacoma, the German tanker which it was believed was to have acted as the fuel ship for the Admiral Graf Spee, still lay at anchor, and Uruguayan marines boarded the gunboat Vallega apparently with orders to enforce the Government’s order of internment. This was duly carried out and the Tacoma has been interned at Montevideo for the duration of the war.

The “New York Times’ ” Montevideo correspondent says it is expected that the Tacoma will be beached inside the harbour on January 3 after arrangements for the crew’s internment are completed. Internment was ordered in spite of a further German Note, maintaining that the Tacoma was a merchant ship, not a naval auxiliary, and that assistance to the Graf Spee was merely humanitarian. When the Note was presented the Tacoma was flying a war flag, reserved for warships and naval auxiliaries.

On receiving an order to depart by 6.30 a.m. on Monday (Uruguay time), the Tacoma left port and lay near the wreckage of the Admiral Graf Spee, where she was tied to tugs by hawThe official announcement said that Uruguay considered the vessel an auxiliary warship because she picked up Admiral Graf Spee sailors at Captain Langsdorff’s orders.