Participation in Spanish Civil War

In March 1939, the port of Alicante was blockaded by General Franco’s navy and Nazi Germany's air force, which made it nearly impossible for the boats contracted by the Republican government to reach the thousands of refugees crammed into the port to evacuate them. The threat of sinking caused most shipowners to rescind their previously paid-for agreements, and they refused to approach Spanish waters.

On 28 March 1939, the SS Stanbrook found itself anchored in the port of Alicante waiting to load onboard a cargo of oranges and saffron. Upon seeing the thousands of refugees at the port, Welsh ship captain Archibald Dickson defied the ship owner Jack Billmeir's order to not evacuate any civilians, taking as many people on board as possible. One of the passengers, Antonio Vilanova, a customs officer who would go on to write his book Los Olvidados on Republican refugees while in Mexico, described in a letter to a friend what happened during boarding:^[4]

"In everyone’s mind there was a feeling that we were fleeing, of defeat, of moral collapse. When we got to the boat, we were received among the protests of the passengers who were already there. As we boarded, some sat on the deck, others in the hold or in the bilge. There was no space, but people continued to board."

Helia González, at the time a 4 year old girl whose Republican family had travelled to Alicante from Elche, said of her experience:^[4]

"We arrived at the port by train from Elche. Once we arrived, an extremely long queue separated us from a boat that to me seemed enormous. It had a strange name and was full of people. Just like everyone else, we feared not being able to reach the gangway that would lead us onto the ship." "Finally, we arrived at the boat. A pair of strong arms lifted me up. I saw a smiling face, a sailor’s cap and he gave me a kiss on the cheek. He didn’t say a word, but that embrace, that look, they promised something good... It was him, Dickson, and we weren’t in danger any more."

Captain Dickson spoke of the reasons why he had taken the decision to come to the refugees’ aid and what he saw at the port in a letter to the Sunday Dispatch, published on the 4 April 1939^[7]:

"Amongst the refugees were all classes of people, some of them appearing very poor indeed and looking half starved and ill clad and attired in a variety of clothes ranging from boiler suits to old and ragged pieces of uniform and even blankets and other odd pieces of clothing. There were also some people, both women and men, who appeared very well to do and whom I assumed to be the wives and relatives of officials. A few of the refugees appeared to have all their worldly possessions with them carried in suitcases; bags of all descriptions, some tied up in large handkerchiefs and a few with suitcases."

Exiled Republicans crowded together on the deck of the SS Stanbrook.

The SS Stanbrook set sail at sunset on 28 March with 2,638 people on board (leaving no one on the dock, as promised by the captain)^[8] and avoiding the projectiles launched by the Francoist cruiser Canarias, which was blockading the port of Alicante. To escape this, Dickson initially set course towards the Balearic Islands, but Franco's fleet continued to intimidate the ship, forcing it to continue heading in that direction with the end goal of leading it to a Spanish port and taking the refugees on board into captivity. The Welsh captain tried to force his way out of the blockade through the night while continuing to ask for assistance. Eventually, a British cruiser volunteered, and its bold intervention saved the Stanbrook, allowing a change of course to the South towards Oran on the Algerian coast.^[4][9]

With the number of passengers on board significantly exceeding the ship’s capacity, it listed underneath the float line as it sailed.

Helia González, four years old at the time of boarding and from Elche, recalls the journey:^[10]

"I remember a crowded deck, with the dark sky above our heads. It was raining that night, not much, but it was cold. Dad told me to look after my little sister. Mum shared a Spanish omelette, made from one egg, two potatoes and a bit of fat, with a family from Malaga: a married couple with a son the same age as me."

The SS Stanbrook docked in Oran, packed with Spanish refugees from the port of Alicante.

After a 22 hour journey, during which Captain Dickson, according to his own recollection, gave “a little coffee and food to the weakest of the refugees”,^[4] the SS Stanbrook arrived at the port of Mers El Kébir, near Oran.

When they became aware of the ship’s arrival, Spanish residents in Oran brought them food and medicine in small boats. Two days later, thanks to the efforts of Captain Dickson, the French colonial authorities allowed women, children, the injured and the infirm to disembark, who were taken into the old used previously by Cardenal Cisneros:

“They took us to a place where we could shower and disinfect ourselves; it was not a pleasant memory, it was dark, damp and cold, and there were some men watching us, even the naked women,” recalled Helia González.^[10] The men, some 1500,^[10] would not disembark for another month on the decision of the French administration, as Franco demanded their return. After several rounds of negotiation, a turn in public opinion in France and intervention from the international community, who had begun to become aware of the terrible repression and extermination that the Republican prisoners were suffering at the hands of the winning side, the agreement to return the passengers to Fascist Spain was eventually thwarted. This enabled the ship to approach Oran's dock and for its occupants to claim asylum.^[11] Antonio Vilanova recalled: “We disembarked covered in vermin. It was there that I saw trimotores for the first time – lice of a monstrous size.” They were directed to an accommodation centre where they were showered, vaccinated and given food provided by Quakers.^[4] As they disembarked from the boat, they were registered, for fear that they had firearms in their possession.

The majority of Stanbrook refugees were taken to Camp Morand concentration camp in Ksar Boukhari in inland Sahara, under the custody of Senegalese riflemen, where they were treated poorly. One of the refugees, who was able to flee to France with his brother and later to Mexico, wrote in his diary:

"A Spaniard who is in the latrine is abused by a guard who hits him with his rifle for no reason. Others come and kick him around. The poor man asks for help. Various Spaniards arrive who are met with bayonets and forced to flee. There he remained.”

One of the punishments subjected by guards was el tombeau, where a prisoner would dig his own grave and lie down in it. They were only allowed to leave twice a day to relieve themselves. “You don’t shoot much, but you kill slowly!”, wrote another refugee, a Republican fighter pilot.^[4]

As remembered by then four-year-old Helia González, “the Spanish were not freed from the labour camps, where they were treated like free labour for constructing the Trans-Saharan Railway until almost the end of the war; nobody was interested, not the French, nor the allies, in setting those unwanted Spaniards free.”^[10]

Legacy

The heroic feat of the SS Stanbrook has been immortalised in Alicante with the naming of a street dedicated to the English vessel.

In March 2014, professor and composer Miguel Brotóns composed a piece of music in the form of a symphonic poem entitled Stanbrook, as a way of paying homage to the British boat. This was one of the activities organised during the 2nd International Conference presented by the University of Valencia’s Faculty of Language Studies, Translation and Communication, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War at the port of Alicante and the loss of democracy in Spain. The composition Elegía, belonging to the symphonic poem Stanbrook, was performed for the first time by members of the sextet of the University of Alicante Philharmonic Orchestra.^[12][13]

The Generalitat Valenciana, by virtue of law 14/2017 of 10 November for Democratic Heritage, saw 28 March become a day of remembrance and homage for victims of the civil war and the dictatorship, commemorating the departure of the SS Stanbrook from the port of Alicante in 1939.^[14]

Archibald Dickson, hero of WWII