24 August 1958

It was a day like any other for Demetrios Papadopoulos, Captain of the oil tanker MARAN HERCULES. He woke up with the sun at 0030 Zulu Time, broke his fast with a hot cup of coffee and an omelette, and watched as the traffic of the Persian Gulf buzzed around his ship. A peaceful day on a peaceful route.

See, he had been running this route for about five years now. His ship docked at Abadan, loading up to the gills with precious Iranian crude, before steaming east into the Arabian Sea, where he continued eastwards until reaching the bustling port city of Bombay. There, he deposited his cargo of black gold--which was quickly shipped off to Indian refineries to fuel their growing economy--before turning right back around and making the trip again. This trip, just a few weeks long, earned him good money. Much of it went back to the Venizelos family, whose VENIZELOS SA owned the MARAN HERCULES, among a half dozen other merchant ships, but his salary and commission were enough that he never complained much about that. Some day, he thought, he would tire of the ocean and retire to spend his days with his family on Crete. He would never leave the sea entirely, of course--he planned to buy a small fishing boat for his retirement--but he wouldn't stray far from home, either.

His idle daydreams were interrupted by the morning sun glinting off of the hull of a ship a few miles off the bow. Its silhouette--larger than that of the typical merchant ship, and without its characteristic shape, either--intrigued him, and he lifted the binoculars dangling around his neck up to his dark eyes.

A small smile crossed his lips. He was right about one thing: this was no merchant ship. Before him sat the HMS Ark Royal and her escorts, Union Jack billowing in the breeze. Demetrios had no love for the British--few Greeks did after their antics on Cyprus--but he had to love a beautiful ship all the same.

Curiously, though, one of the ships was heading directly towards him. Against the water's glare, he could just make out her name: HMS Zambesi. Odd, he thought, for a warship like that to be steaming so quickly towards his ship, but the Persian Gulf was small as far as bodies of water go, and there was plenty of time for their ship to steer away.

Only, it never did. Imagine Demetrios's surprise when the ship pulled up alongside his and a group of Royal Navy sailors boarded his vessel, guns in hand, demanding to see his manifests. Imagine how that surprise grew when, upon seeing his cargo and his origin, they deemed his ship to be handling "stolen property" and took it into the custody of the British Government. Nice British men with guns took Demetrios and his ship to Aden, where his oil was promptly offloaded into the refinery there (without compensation), his ship was impounded, and he and his crew were put on the next flight back to Athens. An ignominious end for the MARAN HERCULES and her crew.

Nevertheless, the British capture of the MARAN HERCULES, followed soon after by the capture of the Indian-flagged DESH SHAKTI, had the intended effect. With news spreading fast that the British were impounding any ship found carrying oil from Iran, no captains or ship owners were brave (or stupid) enough to risk stopping in Abadan. Iranian oil exports dried up by the end of September, leaving Iran's finances in a dreary state. British media assures the public that after a few months of Royal Navy blockade and British embargo, the screaming of Iran's economy and her people will force Mossadegh to yield. For his part, Mossadegh shows no signs of surrendering.