Disputed Territory

Leaders of the Honduran University Students' Federation rallied for a flag-planting voyage into the Caribbean last week. The Tegucigalpa daily, El Cronista, talked darkly of conflict with "American adventurers." At issue were the Swan Islands--three specks of sand and coconut palm 100 miles off the Honduran coast, which constitute the U.S.'s only currently disputed territorial claim. Cause of the new controversy: the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey last month reminded everyone of the U.S. claims by dispatching Captain E. L. Jones aboard the survey ship Explorer to take a thorough census of the islands. The head count, down four from 1950: six civilians, who run a U.S. weather station; 22 natives, all British subjects from the Cayman Islands; not a single Honduran.

The Honduran title dates back to the original Spanish conquest of Central America in the 16th century. Every few years (most recently in 1957), Honduras renews its claim with a polite, formal note to Washington. The State Department as politely rejects it, pointing out that the islands were first settled by a Brooklyn guano firm in 1857. In 1904 a Boston syndicate, grandly titled the Swan Islands Commercial and General Trading Co., bought the place to harvest coconuts and tropical woods, but lost money steadily through the years. Amateur explorers pitted the islands in unsuccessful hunts for buried pirate gold.

Hurricane Hazel leveled most of the coconut palms in 1955. Bostonian Sumner Smith, who got title to the Swans by default in 1950 after his partners in the trading company dropped out. says: "Maybe, some day, somebody will think of something to do with them." Though lined with lovely beaches, the islands are far off the tourist track and have almost no fresh water. In their spare time, the recent U.S. explorers collected butterflies, iguanas and a variety of legless lizards. They found no swans, however; the islands take their name from an English pirate, and swans are as hard to find there as Honduran settlers.

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