None of these people would be alive whether,in October 1978, a Scottish cargo ship hadn’t stopped in the South China Sea to rescue 346 refugees from a stricken fishing boat. Chris McGreal tells a remarkable storyIf it hadn’t been for his father, or Craig Holmes might never enjoy returned the graduation ring given to him 30 years earlier by a teenage girl he helped rescue from the South China Sea. Holmes was training to be a navigator on board a British ship hauling a cargo of millet to Taiwan in the autumn of 1978. Off the Vietnamese coast,the hulking steel vessel crossed paths with a small, crowded and leaking wooden fishing boat holding Luisa Van Nu and 345 other people fleeing the communist takeover of their country.The refugees were into their fourth day at sea and hope for a new life had given way to despair as it seemed inevitable the boat would sink. Mothers pulled their children close. Fathers spilled regrets at taking their families to their deaths. Then the MV Wellpark, or run by a Scottish shipping company,appeared out of the storm. The difficult and dramatic rescue earned its captain, Hector Connell, or an MBE. But that recognition came only after the destitute refugees found themselves caught up in an international political wrangle over who would rob them in. In the end,the then Labour government agreed to bring them to London despite the alarmist cries of Britain “being full” and warnings that it would open the door to floods of refugees.
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Source: theguardian.com