How Free is the Sea?
The world seems to be an unconscionably long time waking up to the fact that the dispute between Mr. Onassis and the Peruvian Government is about the freedom of the seas. No generous nautical tempers rise, no cruisers ostentatiously show the non-Peruvian flag just outside the three-mile limit, the name of Drake is not mentioned. Has Mr. Onassis with his colourful personality, his Panamanian ships, his German crews and his cast-iron British insurance policies confuted the issue ? At first there was a tendency to commend the defiant spirit of the whaling fleet, though that began to wear off when Mr. Onassis said that it was not he but his agent in Amsterdam who, as it were, flew the broom from the masthead. Then there was some indignation about the violent action of Peruvian aircraft against merchant ships, but that too begins to fade when it is revealed that negotiations for the release of impounded whalers are going smoothly with the cordial co-operation of a Peruvian admiral. In fact everybody seems to be happy except the underwriters. But what have we to be happy about, when three South American governments are drawing the limit of territorial waters 200 nautical miles from their coasts 7 This is outdoing the Russians with their twelve- mile limit, and the Arab exponents of the continental-shelf theory of territorial 'waters. It is not to be borne. The matter must be settled, if possible by the Organisation of American States, but otherwise by the combined pressure of all countries who think that the doctrine of the freedom of the seas is still worth preserving in a world whose land surface is already too much under the dominance of opposed groups.
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