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Sea
Gate
Under Siege
by
Gene H. Hogberg
With stunning swiftness, Argentine military forces overran the British-held
Falkland l slands. As Britai n fights back, concerns
mount over the worldwide impact of this curious struggle.
A
WE GO
to press, a
powerful British nava l
task force continues to
"tighten the noose" around
the Falkland Islands, 8,000
miles from London in the dis–
t ant South Atlantic.
This remote British posses–
sion was seized and occupied
by
Argentine troops in a lightning
raid in the predawn hours of
April 2.
In the most dramatic develop–
ments to date, Argentina's second–
largest warship and only cruiser,
the 13,645 ton
General Be/grano.
sank in the early morn–
ing hours of May 2 in a
storm after being struck
by two torpedoes fired
from a Bri tish subma–
rine.
The majority of the
crew members of the
General Be/grano
were
rescued from the frigid
waters of the South
Atlantic.
Two days later, the
British destroyer H.M.S.
-
June / July 1982
Sheffield
was attacked and de–
stroyed by an Argentine aircraft
missile. The loss of the ship and
about twenty crewmen was a stun–
ning blow to British confidence.
Conflicting Claims
T he task of the British fleet,
which swelled along the way to
more than 60 vessels, was outlined
by Pr ime Mini stc r Margaret
Thatcher in a speech to Parlia–
ment April 14: "We shall perse–
vere until freedom and democracy
are restored to the Falkland
l slands."
Until the Argentine occupation,
successive British governments
had continuously and peacefully
Falkland lslands
~
200mle a•r
and sea blockade
South
Georg.¡¡
lsland
'
ruled over the Falklands since
1833- 149 years.
Argentina, for its part, has
repeatedly put forward a claim to
sovereignt y over the islands,
asserting that she succeeded
to earlier ri ghts put forward
by Spain in the 18th century.
Spanish-culture involvement in
the Wales-sized island chain has
always been minimal. The
population of the Falk-
·'/
Iands numbers about
1,800, nearly all of Brit–
ish descent. More than
1,000 of these people
trace their origins in the territory
to 1850 or earlier.
Life for the Falklanders on the
grassy, virtually treeless moorlands
of the two inhabited islands (out of
200 in the archipelago) has not
been easy. Half of the males are
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