By admin
Hey Biafran-War-Reports.com readers, we’re back once again, after a bit of a technical break to sort out some niggling stuff and keep an eye on the site – without posting, so a big thanks to you all for your patience and hopefully we can crack on with more pace to bring you more brilliant and not so brilliant stuff about the Biafran war.
A puzzling headline above for you then, I guess ? What does a defiant British ship captain have to do with the Biafran war ? Well it all kicked off when a Russian Missile Destroyer, sailed into the Lagos harbour on a goodwill visit in March 1969, remember that Russia had been a stunch ally of the Nigerian government in its brutal war to crush the emergent new nation of Biafra, and had been supplying it with some its best hardware in terms of jet fighters and heavy artillery pieces, and worthy of note that the Russians, never really querried or condenmed the Nigerians for indiscriminate bombing and killing of civillians or its starvation policy against the Biafran.
The Destroyer named Boiky having berted in Lagos, and a sizable crowd of Nigerian onlookers gathering, something extraordinary happened. A young Russian sailor dived overboard and started swimming vigoriously towards another ship in the harbour – chased by other Russian sailors in a small boat totting machine guns, but he managed to make it to the other ship, where he was helped up its gangway.
This other ship it turns out was a British cargo ship, skippered by its 50 year old WW2 veteran; Captain John Reed and the ship’s name is the Tweedlebank. The Russians demanded the British hand back the young sailor, but the British seaman bluntly refused and diplomatic row started to unfold, with it being said that the young sailor Mr Safranov had applied for political asylum, which captain Reed duly passed on to the British High Commision – they did not deny or confirm the story, other sources said the Russian only had a quarrel with his superior and went overboard.
After hours of standoff between the two super-power allies of Nigeria, the Nigerian police took Mr Safranov into custody and later on handed him back to the Russian navy – it was claimed that he had voluntarily asked to be reunited with his ship and crew.
It is quite interesting that the two powers, who were actually at war then – called the COLD WAR, because there weren’t direct conflicts between them but rather proxy wars around the globe, found it convienient to rally together to heavily support Nigeria in its quest to subdue Biafra. It remains the only war till date where both countries were on the same side, since WW2, do you know any other war where they’ve been on the same side ? please let us know.
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