The Stanbrook is small coal fired ship just 70 metres long, 1400 tons and 11 knots top speed. Archibald Dickson is from Cardiff, 47, British Merchant Navy. His ship owners have told him to leave Marseilles and pick up a cargo in Alicante. A Spanish Navy destroyer, controlled by the rebellious forces, which are just about to crush the remnants of the legitimate government, tell Archie not to enter Alicante. He hoists the Red Ensign just a bit higher, grits his teeth, crosses his fingers and takes his ship into Alicante. He doesn't like being told what he can and can't do.
The quayside is heaving with people. They are the routed, the losing side, hoping, desperately hoping, to escape Spain before the fascists come and wreak vengeance. Archibald is supposed to pick up a cargo. Just as he ignored the destroyer's commands he now ignores his fleet operator too. He knows his ship can save lives. At first the loading of the people from the quayside is reasonably ordered; passports are shown, letters of recommendation are checked, International Brigade stragglers are welcomed then it becomes the people at the head of the queue until they can simply squeeze no more people aboard. Alicante is in total blackout. Madrid has fallen to Franco's rebels this morning. The stretch of coast from Alicante to Cartagena and Almería is all that's left of Republican Spain.
About 10.30 in the late evening of 28 March 1939 the Stanbrook casts off. There are 2,638 people on board bound for Oran in French controlled Algeria. The intended cargo of oranges and saffron left on the quayside in Alicante. As they sail away the Italian air force lays into Alicante with a will. Archie wrote in the ship's log that in his 33 years at sea he had never seen anything like it. People were everywhere on his ship: in the holds, on the deck, on the mess table, in the stairways. Low in the water, terribly overloaded the ship took some steering. The overcrowding kept the doctor busy as people fainted and puked. People crowded around the warmth of the funnel. They got to Oran the evening of the 30th but it took several weeks before the French authorities let everyone off the Stanbrook. Lots of the men were sent to Concentration camps in and ended up working on the Trans-Saharan Railway as forced labour. Many later joined the Free French Forces fighting in Africa and some of them, La Nueve, were the first allied troops to liberate Paris alongside General Leclerc.
Seven months later and there's another war. This time the SS Stanbrook, as part of the British Merchant Navy, is not a neutral vessel. Klaus Korth in command of the submarine U-57, built by the Krupp factory, has ordered the firing of a torpedo packed with 300 kilos of explosive at a small, British ship. The ship has parted in half and all the crew have gone to the bottom. Not a single survivor. The crew will never hear the minute of silence held for them in the camps in Oran.
