Word: julio
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...found your story on "The Julio Incident" [March 8] particularly disheartening. An armed American ship stood by, while three helpless men who sought only freedom were repeatedly overrun by a Cuban vessel in international waters. The result was a defeat, not so much for this nation as for the spirit of common humanity, to which those unfortunate men in the lifeboat were appealing...
That request, recorded in the Pungo radio log, began the small and unhappy saga that official Washington soon called "the Julio incident." Four members of the Julio, determined to escape from Cuba, had taken guns, seized control of the ship and locked the captain and the rest of the crew in the brig. When the four asked for asylum, the Coast Guard consulted the State Department, then advised the Cuban ship to "approach no closer than the three-mile limit." It dispatched two ships-the cutter Point Brown and a seagoing tug-to investigate...
...water about ten miles offshore, with its anchor dragging and the four crewmen on deck. When they sighted the U.S. ships, three of the men immediately jumped into a lifeboat and began rowing toward the cutter. Suddenly, a dozen men burst onto the deck of the 26 de Julio. With the ship's anchor still dragging, they got up power and headed the ship toward the lifeboat. They missed on the first pass, but swung around again and came close enough to dump two of the lifeboat's occupants into...
Late Orders. The U.S. cutter's skipper, Chief Boatswain's Mate P. W. Caviness, radioed Coast Guard headquarters for permission to intervene, was soon told to prevent the Cuban vessel from overrunning the lifeboat. The orders were too late. Before the cutter could move into position, the Julio made its third pass, and Caviness heard a shot fired from its deck. By the time the lifeboat came into sight again, both it and the sea around it were empty...
...Cuba," signaled the Cuban master. Speaking over a bullhorn and through an interpreter, he explained that the three mutineers were now his prisoners. Powerless to stop him, the Coast Guard had no choice but to let him go. Two days later, it even had to intervene to prevent the Julio from being hijacked by an armed yacht dispatched secretly to intercept it by a Cuban exile organization in Miami. The U.S., of course, got no thanks from Havana. Raging against "this new imperialistic Yankee aggression," the Castro government charged that "Yankee warships" had "violated the principles of freedom...