The Fateful Voyage of Tanker “Tuapse”: Chronicle of Detention

Abstract

The capture on 23rd June 1954 of the Soviet oil tanker “Tuapse” by the Republic of China (ROC) Navy became one of the most dramatic episodes in Cold War history. The Soviet vessel heading from Odessa to Shanghai was transporting, as indicated in the Bill of Lading, lighting kerosene. In the neutral waters of the Luzon Strait, north of the Philippines, the tanker was shelled, detained, and the crew were arrested, then escorted to the port of Kaohsiung in the south of Taiwan. This event which was developing into an international sensation almost provoked an armed clash between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The aggravated confrontation over-flowed onto the pages of the press, concentrating in diplomatic debates at the United Nations (UN) meetings during which the accusation raised respectively against Taiwan of “violating freedom of navigation on the high seas,” and to the USA of aiding to piracy. The detention of the tanker “Tuapse” in 1954 became a pretext for fierce debates and conflicts between Taiwan and the USSR at the UN. Thirty years later, in the second half of the 1980s, the discussion about the consequences of this incident resumed the fragile political contacts between Taiwan and the USSR, which became a noticeable sign of a thaw in their relations, though no one had yet imagined at that time how far the process of rapprochement could go. Based on recently declassified documents from the archive of the ROC Ministry of Defense, especially the reports of Navy officers who performed the operation to their commanders, this paper reveals the chronology of how the interception of the “Tuapse” Soviet oil tanker was implemented.