Originally Posted by
Ivan Cloherty
I sailed on 'Empire Lionel' (PQ16) later on when she was renamed 'Levenpool' three happy trips, then a change of Master, happy became nightmare, and all hands except C/E paid off on return to Burntisland. All part of the learning curve
Ivan,you know me by now,someone has only got to mention a ship name and I'm off to look it up,either in my databases or online.
Well ,apart from her interesting history which I have compiled an INFOLINK for,I recorded a snippet about the same vessel when she was later renamed NEWLANE,in which the CIA (allegedly-I have to say that because they may still be after me !
).were involved in,re the Cuban missile crisis back in 1962.
The NEWLANE ex Levenpool ,was nominally owned by Trafalgar SS Co Ltd,London (Tsavliris Sg.Co.Ltd,London) from 1962. She went on,under the Cyprian (Famagusta) flag until 10/69 when she was scrapped at Chittagong.
1960 Seventy-five people were killed and 200 injured when 76 tonnes of Belgian ordnance exploded in the port area of Havana as the French freighter LA COUBRE was being unloaded. The cargo had possibly been booby-trapped when loaded in Antwerp.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1962 the Cuban exile group Alpha 66, funded by the CIA, claimed responsibility for sending a 40-foot launch into a Cuban sugar port (Caibarian)and firing over 60 machine-gun rounds into the British freighter NEWLANE , a coastal freighter SAN BLAS and the SAN PASCAL,an old ship grounded on a concrete base and used for molasses storage.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1962 CIA agents poisoned 14,135 bags of Cuban sugar bound for the Soviet Union aboard the British ship STREATHAM HILL. The attack was discovered when children in Puerto Rico fell ill after tasting pilfered sugar that had been temporarily stored in a US customs warehouse. President Kennedy, fearing the consequences of adulterated sugar reaching Russian consumers, prevented the cargo leaving Puerto Rico.
1964
The Government of Cuba, accused the United States with having responsibility for the attack on the Cuba-bound Spanish freighter SIERRA DE ARANZAZU.
An Armed Forces Ministry statement said the U.S. “knows perfectly well who carried out this attack since the authors were mercenary elements equipped, paid, and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency.”
The U.S. was “trying to wash its hands” of the incident because of the deaths of three Spaniards in the attack. |
1964 m.v.MAGDEBURG, a communist East German freighter loaded with British buses for Cuba, was sunk in collision with YAMASHIRO MARU, inaccurately described in newspapers and on television as ‘an accident in thick fog’. Lloyd’s List reported: ‘Fifty-six East Germans including three girls were picked up after the motor vessel Magdeburg was badly holed in a collision in thick fog off Broadness Point early today’.1965 Nine months after the collision, NYK Line had still failed to answer any letters from the insurers of the Magdeburg. Representing the British pilots, Trinity House could not say whether they would ever hold an investigation into the collision. 1993, the British television reporter Simon Neave interviewed the British pilot of the Magdeburg a communist East German who revealed for the first time in Britain that there had been no fog at the time of the collision. The pilot of the YAMASHIRO MARU refused to speak to him.
2001 David Osler of Lloyd’s List reported: ‘The only present NYK employee in Britain who was working for the company in 1964 declined to comment on the matter, referring queries to Tokyo.2008 Captain Toshio Nozaki, Deputy Director of the NYK Maritime Museum in Yokohama, said certain NYK Line records of the collision are held at the museum subject to ‘secret handling’.
2008 East German Seekammer marine court files on the collision were found at the University of Greifswald. The Seekammer had concluded that that Yamashiro Maru sounded a misleading whistle signal before the collision.The court had taken written evidence from radar observers on the West German ship Spreestein and the Royal Mail vessel Paraguay and from the two pilots. The court concluded: ‘The command of Yamashiro Maru had, by using the wrong side of the waterway, infringed Article 25 KVR/60 of the River Thames shipping regulations. The vessel was sailing on the wrong side of the river for inward bound ships and was giving the command of Magdeburg the wrong impression by signalling intentions to change course which were then not carried out.’NYK refused to communicate. When the Seekammer files were opened, their pilot Captain Gerald Johnson was found to have limited his description of the collision to the following inaccurate sentence: ‘The YamashiroMaru was entering port on the high tide. Near Broadness the outward bound Magdeburg was crossing the bow of Yamashiro Maru from the left when the latter collided amidships on its starboard side.’
The above Thames incident refers to an actual collision which some sources allege was ‘contrived’ by the CIA, Contrived,due to the secrecy surrounding the subsequent enquiries by the various national authorities. The Americans were known to be annoyed that Britain was ignoring calls to stop trading with Cuba.
1968 Dr Orlando Bosch of the CIA-supported MIRR movement was sentenced to 10 years jail by a US federal court for attacking a Polish freighter in the Port of Miami with an anti-tank M18 57 mm recoilless rifle.
May 1968 MIRR or El Fodor Cubano members was also accused by Cuba of placing a bomb on the British freighter GREENWOOD of France,Fenwick Company, extensively damaged 25 miles from Key West.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
