Word: flotilla
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...newcomers and ordered fines levied against the boats' skippers. Still they came. Then nature intervened, with 60-m.p.h. winds whipping the Florida Straits into a maelstrom worthy of Melville. Still they came, landing daily at Key West in sturdy shrimp boats, speedy pleasure cruisers, leaky outboards. The flotilla that had begun setting off from Florlida two weeks ago to pick up refugees at the Cuban port of Mariel had more than tripled in size by last week. Declaring the exodus an "unprecedented emergency," President Carter called off a scheduled U.S. Navy exercise near Guantánamo Naval Base...
...embassy refugees with the understanding that the Immigration and Naturalization Service could screen them before allowing them into the U.S. Suddenly thousands were landing illegally in Florida with no entry visas in hand. Washington first implored boat-owners not to head for Mariel. When that failed to deter the flotilla, the Government hinted it might accept only the first 3,500, whether embassy refugees or not, and deport the rest. The threat was correctly seen as an empty one since the U.S. has routinely granted asylum to Cuban refugees since Castro came to power...
...refugees. Then a hulking shrimper named Big Baby made the 110-mile trip, coming back with 200 people; it was quickly followed by Lucy, a creaky lobster boat that carried 70 people huddled on its deck. Suddenly last week, the Straits of Florida were filled with a huge makeshift flotilla, ranging from leaky skiffs to sleek schooners, that sailed from south Florida to the Cuban port of Mariel and returned home crammed with jubilant Cuban exiles. "I never, never thought we'd make it!" exclaimed Pedro Diaz, 25, breaking into a wide grin as he stood with his wife...
...said Gerry Stigen, 36, a Norwegian oil rig worker who managed to jump into the water and swim to another rig near by, where he was hoisted aboard. "Everything happened so fast, so suddenly." Emergency flares lit up the nighttime skies as British, German and Norwegian helicopters and a flotilla of ships rushed to the scene. Fighting heavy seas and winds, they struggled to rescue those who had clambered into lifeboats, clung desperately to heaving dinghies or plunged into the near freezing...
...typical day, each carrier's steam-propelled catapults launch 90 sorties. Some warplanes, such as the Mach 2.4 F-14 Tomcat, make combat runs, dropping practice bombs on targets towed by U.S. ships. Others, like the RF4 Phantom, fly reconnaissance missions. Confronting Task Force 70 is a Soviet flotilla of about ten guided missile cruisers, destroyers and frigates and more than a dozen support ships. At week's end the U.S. Navy was tracking 23 other Soviet ships in the South China Sea, concerned that some or all might be headed for the Indian Ocean. The Soviet ships...