Word: gunboat
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...British freighter Nigelock, a converted wartime corvette loaded with fruit and vegetables, steamed through the China Sea one velvet night last week, outward bound from Communist Shanghai to Communist Amoy. At-first light, a gunboat appeared on the port bow and ordered the Britisher to heave to. Not me, said Nigelock's captain, and rang for full steam ahead. His radio crackled an S O S to the British destroyer Cockade, on patrol in the Formosa strait...
...interceptor had pulled within range. She flew the flag of the Chinese Nationalist navy, and her machine-gunners opened fire. Nigelock's crew leaped for cover, but before the gunboat could close, a 4.5-in. shell whistled across her bow. H.M.S. Cockade had come racing to the rescue. The Nationalist gunboat, "suitably rebuked," as Cockade's offhand report put it, turned tail...
...coastal ferryboat Takshing, flying the British flag, put out from Hong Kong one night last week on her regular three-hour run to Portuguese Macao. In the China Sea, a Red Chinese gunboat came up, signaled the ship to stop. But her captain ignored the order until the Communist craft sent a burst of machine-gun fire across the Takshing...
...gunboat was gone by the time a British frigate and destroyer arrived on the scene. To add insult to injury, Chinese Communist shore batteries on a near by island opened fire on Her Majesty's vessels. The best they could do was return the fire, for five minutes...
...dazzling day last week, the 40-year-old gunboat Cuba steamed out of Havana harbor, coasting close under the grey, weathered walls of Morro Castle, and set course northeast through the blue Atlantic. At her foremast flew a pennant the Cuban breezes had not played with for seven years: the blue, white, red, yellow and green personal banner of General Fulgencio Batista. Aboard the Cuba was the general himself. He was headed for an Easter weekend holiday with his family on palm-lined Varadero Beach...