Men at the Helm

Two of the busiest men in West Germany last week were Egyptians. It was their job, in a desperate response to calls for help from Cairo, to comb the Kiel Canal and other German waterways in search of pilots skillful and experienced enough to guide a ship through the Suez. For the one thing Colonel Nasser cannot do without, if he is to run the canal successfully, is pilots. Any day now all but a handful of the pilots needed to keep boats moving may leave their jobs. If they do, and traffic piles up, a new and crucial phase of the Suez crisis may be at hand.

Few maritime jobs are more exacting or, under the right conditions, more rewarding, than that of a Suez pilot. The shifting, sandy banks and uncertain currents of the narrow (500 ft. at water level), man-made ditch are a constant menace to the free passage of the 40 or more ships that go through each day. To guide the ships safely through, the man at the helm must be familiar with every foot of bottom and bank, know every temperament of the current. In some parts of the Suez channel, a pilot may even have to turn his ship to the right in order to make it go left because of the strange effect of current and bottom on the vessel's own hull curvature. In addition, the Suez pilot must be familiar with the workings of virtually every type of vessel and must be able to issue orders in a babel ranging from Greek and Arabic to French and Norwegian. Under the canal's pre-Nasser bosses, a master's certificate backed by ten years' experience at sea were minimum requirements for a Suez pilot, and even then it took two years of apprenticeship on the canal to teach a new pilot the ropes and another ten to fit him for handling the biggest ships.

Full Pay. To keep the necessary roster of 250 pilots filled the company pays salaries of up to $18,000 a year, offers generous bonuses for overtime, shares of the profits, liberal family allowances, special housing and schools and long paid vacations. Only about 40 of the 200-odd pilots now on the Suez roll are native Egyptians, and these were laid on only because Nasser refused to grant visas to any more foreign pilots unless some of his own countrymen were put on the roster.

Inexperienced by comparison with their mates, the 40-odd Egyptians are far too few to keep the canal traffic moving. When Nasser took over six weeks ago. many of the other pilots (mostly French or English) were home on vacation. On the company's promise to continue them on full pay as long as the crisis lasted, many of them refused to report back for duty. Exhausted and disgusted at the extra work thrust upon them under Egyptian management, those that were still on duty seemed ready to quit at the drop of the company's hat. To keep the roster full Nasser has offered the pilots fantastic salaries, had his emissaries in a score of countries place ads in newspapers, proselyte in person among canal and rivermen.

Down Tools. By this week applications had begun to flow in: 15 from Greece, 20 from France, 100 from the U.S., 20 from Red China, an unspecified number from Russia--but it was likely that many would not meet the requirements of the job, and the Egyptians could not be sure whether there will be jobs for them.

For the most part, the pilots still on duty at Suez are content to wait and see what the diplomats accomplish. "But," said one of them last week, "one thing is certain. If any of us are arrested for political reasons, we will all down tools."

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