Tycoon's Triumph

The chief collector of revenue for the Peruvian government leaned back in a chair in his oak-paneled office one morning last week, held up a slip of paper and chortled. "This," he remarked genially, "is the biggest private check ever paid in Peru." Then, turning businesslike, he handed a receipt to the lawyer who had just given Peru $3,000,000 on behalf of Aristotle Socrates Onassis, shipping, gambling and whaling tycoon.

The record check was in payment of a fine levied against Onassis after Peru caught five of his whaleships hunting within the 200-mile offshore limit that Peru claims to control. But in Paris Onassis was just about as pleased as the Peruvian government. He had come out of his troublesome tilt with Peru not only unscathed but possibly money ahead.

Bombs & Bullets. Onassis' 1954-55 whaling expedition sailed from Hamburg last August to hunt sperm whales off Peru for a few months before steaming south for the rich January-May bluefin whaling in the antarctic. The factory-ship and its 15 catchers were barely through the Panama Canal when Peru menacingly announced that she was prepared to defend her "ichthyological richnesses" from the "pirate armada" with force. An Onassis lawyer hurried to Lima to "fix things up"; at the same time Onassis took out a $15 million anti-confiscation insurance policy through Lloyd's of London. A mysterious silence followed--until Onassis' Hamburg agent leaked the fact that the ships were whaling unmolested "between the 200-mile limit and the coast."

Peru's President Manuel Odria, infuriated, shook up his armed forces. Planes and patrol vessels captured four catchers after machine-gunning two of them, and other aircraft forced the fleet's 13,000-ton factory-ship into a Peruvian port after dropping two bombs close aboard. The staggering fine followed.

Laws & Limits. After Onassis had paid up, his ships hastily provisioned and sailed that night. Then the shipowner turned suavely to the insurers and was, he reported, "immediately reimbursed." Moreover, the insurers paid $1,000,000 for the ships' lost time. "My financial status was unaffected by this incident," said Onassis.

The underwriters may appeal to higher courts in Peru, possibly contesting Peru's 200-mile limit. But the laws and customs applying to sea limits are tangled and contradictory.* Three major international conferences are scheduled within the next two years to try to bring agreement on how much ocean a nation can claim. Meanwhile, Peru's Revenue Collector has happily entered his $3,000,000 windfall as "Unforeseen Income."

*Territorial waters two or three decades ago were almost universally recognized as ending three nautical miles out, based on a doctrine, centuries old, that such was the maximum distance a shore-based cannon shot would carry and therefore the greatest enforceable limit. Now each nation makes its own rule.

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