The Great Leap Overboard

In 1958, when Communist China built its biggest freighter, the 11,182-ton ship was christened--naturally--Yueh Chin, or the S.S. Leap Forward. With almost as much fanfare as when she was launched, the Leap Forward sailed from Tsingtao last week with the first cargo shipped from China to Japan since the two countries signed a recent trade agreement ending their five-year official boycott of each other's goods. Then, half way across the East China Sea one afternoon last week, the Leap Forward suddenly radioed for help. Four hours later, the pride of China's merchant fleet lay on the ocean floor.

The Chinese crew, who took to the lifeboats and were rescued by Japanese fishermen, excitedly insisted in sign language that their ship had been pursued by a submarine and hit by three torpedoes. But to Japanese naval authorities their story seemed as full of holes as the Leap Forward herself. If the ship had really been torpedoed, they pointed out, its 59-man crew could hardly have escaped without the loss of a single life. Besides, who would want to sink an unarmed merchantman? The U.S. announced that it, for one, had no subs in the area. A more logical explanation lay in jagged Scott Rock, an ill-defined group of reefs barely beneath the surface 120 miles southwest of Korea. The head of Japan's Maritime Safety Board was sure the Leap Forward had gone aground. "An error of navigation," he shrugged.

Even Radio Peking seemed unable to swallow the idea of hostile attack, announcing only that the government was "attaching great importance" to the sinking. The tone of the broadcast suggested that whatever face the skipper had saved in Japan with his torpedo tale would be quickly dissipated once he came back to face the music in Tsingtao.

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