Hot Cargoes

The hottest cargo that any ship can carry these days is oil bound for Rhodesia. Two tankers that tried to make that run became lost last week on the chartless sea of international diplomacy. Under the shadow of a United Nations resolution permitting the British to use "force" to preserve their oil embargo of Rhodesia (TIME, April 15), the Ioanna V finally docked in the Portuguese port of Beira, terminus of an oil pipeline to Rhodesia. There, separated from the end of the pipeline by only 30 ft., it waited. Several hundred miles to the south its sister ship Manuela set a course out of the South African port of Durban--destination unknown.

Slowly, the British were making their point that shipping oil to Rhodesia is a risky operation. Serving notice that Britain meant to use its U.N.-granted powers, the British frigate Berwick had intercepted the Manuela 150 miles from Beira and diverted it to Durban. Though Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd has repeatedly vowed that he would not honor the British embargo, he had some second thoughts about permitting the Manuela to unload its oil for transshipment overland to Rhodesia--a highly expensive method for the Rhodesians but better than nothing. South Africa finally promised Britain that it would ban the Manuela shipment and all other "abnormal" oil consignments to Rhodesia, but not necessarily break off trade completely.

Back in Beira the Ioanna V, which had switched from Greek to Panamanian registration in mid-voyage, was boarded by the Panamanian consul, who informed the captain that the ship's Panamanian registration had been withdrawn, leaving the Ioanna V a ship without a country. Later, the Beira port captain placed the tanker and its 18,000 tons of oil under Portuguese control, which could mean that either Portugal was honoring the embargo by impounding the ship or simply making it easier to unload the oil. Whichever the case, the British intend to see to it that the Ioanna V is the last ship to go into Beira with oil for Rhodesia.

At week's end, Rhodesia's Ian Smith announced that he no longer even wanted the Ioanna V's oil, since it would only aggravate the already messy diplomatic problems. In the next breath, he severed all remaining diplomatic ties with Britain by closing the British mission in Salisbury and Rhodesia House in London. He blasted Harold Wilson's government as "hypocritical," and--in a sly bit of one-upmanship--claimed that the U.N. resolution itself "unwittingly acknowledged Rhodesia's independence."

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