Thursday, August 12,
1999 Dramatic chase on the high
seas
The latest discovery of a
suspicious-looking trawler triggered alarms across the
country
Marina Jimenez, Adrienne Tanner and Drew
Hasselback
National Post, with files from
The Canadian Press
Mystery ship
|
Landfall
|
 Chuck Stoody, The Canadian
Press
Coast guard ships search for
a mystery ship, which carried 150 illegal migrants to
Canada.
| Major Jim
Benninger had just finished toasting a sandwich in the belly of his
long-range Aurora military aircraft when a rusty fishing trawler
turned up on his radar screen.
It was about 3 o'clock Monday afternoon, about 240-km north of
the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the northwest coast of British
Columbia.
Initially, the blip on the screen looked like all the others --
just a dot telling the surveillance team that something was in the
water.
But the pilot of the Aurora reported from the cockpit that the
100-foot-long fishing boat bobbing in international waters looked
suspicious.
"It looked like it had some large water containers on deck, which
is completely unusual," Maj. Benninger said. The ship carried no
flag and no name. There was writing on the ship's bow, but it was
impossible to make out the words through the rust.
Maj. Benninger directed the plane to pass over the ship and
photograph it. Then they turned back to their base at CFB Comox,
hoping they hadn't aroused the suspicions of the vessel's operators.
On the way back, at about 3:15 p.m., the Aurora radioed the
Maritime Pacific Command Centre in Esquimalt, setting in motion a
complicated series of phone calls that went all the way to the
office of Canada's newly-appointed immigration minister.
The fan-out list included calls to the Department of National
Defence, which then alerted the Canadian Coast Guard, Royal Canadian
Mounted Police and Jim Redmond, a Citizenship and Immigration
official in Victoria.
Two coast guard vessels in the area, the Tanu and Arrow Post,
were put on alert and told to be ready to intercept the ship once it
reached Canadian waters.
Maj. Benninger and his nine-member crew from 407 Squadron of the
Canadian air force usually spend their days visually inspecting
traffic in the ocean beneath them. Only six weeks earlier, the same
crew photographed a ship which military and immigration officials
suspect sank after unloading its human cargo somewhere along the
remote northern shoreline. Then, late last month, another
rust-pocked fishing boat with 123 refugee claimants from China
floated into a remote bay on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
As a result the Canadian military recently tailored its coastal
watch program to target boats that might be smuggling ashore
migrants from China. They now focus on the "great circle route" from
Asia to Canada, and look for telltale signs of smuggling vessels:
loitering, stopping, a lack of markings or fishing equipment.
The mystery ship they picked up this week was guilty on all
counts.
From Monday afternoon until Tuesday morning, the ship circled
back and forth in the white-capped waves for 20 hours, finally
moving toward Canadian shores at 11:15 a.m. Tuesday, when it came
within 60 nautical miles of the Queen Charlotte Islands, an
archipelago of picturesque islands known for its rocky cliffs and
isolated, storm-swept beaches.
By then, the ship had adopted an erratic, unsteady path, going
north and then south, approaching Canada in a zig-zag. "It was not
coming at a steady pace, it was kind of odd," said George Varnai,
regional director for Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
The Tanu, a 50-metre vessel with 32 sleeping berths, and the
Arrow Post, were sent to the west coast of the Queen Charlottes.
By mid-afternoon Tuesday, government bureaucrats and enforcement
officials began moving into the area, preparing for the expected
boatload of illegal Asian migrants. Twelve immigration officials,
seven RCMP officers, and physicians flew to the isolated communities
of Sandspit and Queen Charlotte City. The immigration officers
climbed on board the Tanu, and joined in efforts to track the
renegade ship, which was by then heading east and thought to be
carrying human cargo.
The Inkster, the RCMP's white, high-speed aluminum catamaran, was
also on scene, with three RCMP officers and its four-member
emergency response team.
Officials hoped to make contact with the ship Tuesday evening,
and prepared to hail the vessel and warn the captain about the
consequences of entering Canadian jurisdiction with illegal human
cargo. However, heavy cloud, fog and choppy seas stalled their
efforts, and in the end, they decided not to hail the ship's captain
because they didn't want to tip their hand, and let the ship's
officers know they were being monitored.
Yesterday, the crisis came to a sudden and dramatic end. The
rusted trawler somehow evaded the parade of officials who were
monitoring its progress. Although it remained visible on radar, the
fog and high seas prevented officials from boarding the ship before
it dropped its passengers.
Sometime yesterday morning, the vessel arrived on the cold, wet
beaches of remote Gilbert Bay, on Kunghit Island, the southern-most
island in the Queen Charlotte chain. It dumped its load of 150
children, men and children less than 50 metres from the shore, and
then headed back out to sea. The migrants had lifejackets but no
lifeboats, and had to swim through the icy, rough sea. They moved
quickly; more than 20 minutes in the water would have caused
hypothermia.
The Inkster and the two coast guard vessels were close enough to
pursue the ship. At 12:45 p.m., the Aurora aircraft advised the
runaway vessel to turn around. RCMP officers then boarded the ship,
which was by then in international waters, between 70 and 100 km
from the shore.
Canadian authorities were confident they had the legal right to
seize control of the ship and arrest its eight Korean operators, who
are believed to have committed a criminal offence.
The ship's passengers, who are all from the People's Republic of
China, appeared tired and wet, but otherwise in good health.
Immigration officials planned to transport them to Port Hardy and
then onto CFB Esquimalt, where they will housed in the same
gymnasium as the last group of 123 Chinese migrants.
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