Word: freighter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Follett is a master of crafty ploy and credible detail, ranging effortlessly from an Israeli kibbutz to the intricacies of Euratom and the shipping world. In the novel's set piece, Dickstein's men, the fedayeen and the Soviets battle ferociously for the wheezing old freighter with its uranium cargo. At times the reader can only wonder, with Pierre Borg, head of the Mossad, ''You wouldn't think we were the chosen people, with our luck.'' But good luck holds, and so does Follett's sizzling narrative...
Worst hit was Mobile, Ala. For four hours, Frederic pummeled the city with winds of up to 130 m.p.h. and tides 12 ft. above normal. The hurricane swept a freighter onto a pier in Mobile Bay and blew a DC-3 half a mile from a hangar to a road, where it landed upside down with its tail curled around its fuselage. Frederic uprooted century-old oak trees and heavily damaged historic buildings along Government Street. It tore the roofs off houses on the nearby resort of Dauphin Island and carried away most of the eight-mile causeway...
...Hong Kong, and the governments of these nations are getting more and more worried Two weeks ago, Thailand repatriated 42,000 Cambodian refugees at gunpoint, sending them back across the border to face turmoil and perhaps death. In Hong Kong, 2,664 Vietnamese who have been stranded aboard the freighter Skyluck for five months staged a hunger strike to protest the local government's refusal to allow them ashore...
...refugees who landed in Hong Kong reported that they were the only survivors of a boatload of 200. Two who reached Japan late last year said that 139 of their companions had perished. On another vessel, broken down at sea, half a dozen people died before a passing British freighter picked up 295 dehydrated survivors last month and took them to Taiwan. The ship has been tied up in Taiwan's Kaohsiung harbor ever since while the authorities try to make arrangements for Britain to resettle the refugees. Since they have no political power, either in their own country...
...Break for the Taxpayer As a lifelong resident of the Great Lakes area, I was particularly interested in your American Scene article on the Coast Guard icebreaker Mackinaw's ef forts for U.S. Steel [March 19]. Local newspapers frequently carry stories about how this or that Great Lakes freighter got trapped in the ice trying to make "one last run" before the winter freeze set in. Of course, a Coast Guard cutter always rushes to the rescue, fueled by taxpayers' dollars...