AT SEA: Stunning Surprise

When the war broke out, peace-loving Canada had a Navy of six destroyers, five minesweepers and 37 small auxiliary craft. Last week it had 120 vessels (including six ex-U. S. destroyers) and was growing fast. And though its vessels had long been engaged in the humdrum work of convoy and patrol, and distinguished themselves in the hell of Dunkirk, last week for the first time the Royal Canadian Navy gave the world a good, smacking sea brush of its own to show it had no barnacles on its bottoms.

Off Manzanillo, Mexico—on Mexico’s Pacific shore almost due west of Mexico City—the 6,892-ton armed merchant cruiser Prince Robert closed in on the 9,179-ton North German Lloyd freighter Weser and took her prize. Aboard the Weser was a fishy cargo: 19,000 bbl. of fuel oil, 600 bbl. of lubricating oil, 15 live steers, a large stock of fresh vegetables and a “lot of miscellaneous stuff.” Her clearance papers were not in order. Mexican officials, who thought that the vessel was headed either for a supply rendezvous at sea, or for Vladivostok, whence the stocks would travel across Russia to Germany, admitted “stunning surprise” that a Canadian vessel should be operating in the Pacific and so far south.