How the Bilbao blockade was broken

Graham Davies, author of ‘You Are Legend: The Welsh Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War’ (Welsh Academic Press, 2018), writes…

On 19 April 1937, at 10pm, Capt William Roberts’s Seven Seas Spray, owned by the Veronica Steamship Company in Cardiff, without permission from the harbour master and without navigation lights, slipped out of the French port of St Jean de Luz into the darkness.

The ship carried a cargo of 3,600 tonnes, which included salt, wine, olive oil, hams, honey, flour, beans and peas. As the ship left port, signals from the shore advised Capt Roberts to stop, but he was reported to have said: ‘That signalling was on the shore and a good sailor does not look astern.’

At around 6.30am, the shape of a British destroyer loomed ahead and, in international code, asked: ‘Where bound?’ The shameless reply was ‘Bilbao’. The more intimate whisper of semaphore came back: ‘Enter at your own risk.’

From Roberts came the bold: ‘I accept full responsibility’, followed by the emotive ‘Good luck’ from the destroyer.

The Seven Seas Spray in Bilbao.

Bilbao, cleared of mines, readied itself to meet the Seven Seas Spray with coastal batteries manned and a welcoming flotilla of two destroyers and two armed trawlers.

The Times correspondent George Steer was present at the arrival. Tens of thousands of people were watching from the riverbanks, cheering, shrieking and running out of their houses to stand on waste blocks of stone and cement at the river’s edge. Old handkerchiefs, twice-read papers and thousands of shreds of washing were waved in the air along with the defiant anti-fascist clenched fist.

Capt Roberts stood proudly on the bridge and waved in the more traditional British manner. Steer describes Roberts standing ‘very
erect in a uniform, carefully brushed, with a smart white cover to his cap … a real master.’