In 1936 the short lived Basque Government created a small naval force to protect its lengthy Biscayan coastline. Indeed , there was no option but to do so, for early on the Nationalists took the naval bases of El Ferrol and Vigo, and the port of La Coruna. Nationalist naval units including the battleship "ESPANA", awaiting reconstruction at El Ferrol ,were less than a days sailing from Gijon and Santander.
An attempt to enforce blockade was inevitable, and as a consequence the small Basque Navy' was created. Independent of the main Spanish Republican fleet ,which had its own serious problems especially of command ,co-ordination and combat efficiency ,the Basque fleet consisted of small merchantmen converted as armed auxiliaries ,useful as gunboats and certainly for minesweeping and minelaying purposes. They saw some lively action in the first year of the Spanish Civil War,and one of them almost certainly accounted for the Battleship "ESPANA " sunk by a mine in April 1937.
A few of the Basque vessels were of a fair size. Two big auxiliary gunboats of a little less than 4,000 tons , the "Galdemes'' and 'Guernica' the latter named long before the event);four substantial deep- sea trawlers, each around 1,200 tons, "G'uipozcoa': "Araba': "Vizkaya" and the well known "Navarra", all saw a great deal of action against significantly greater,but frequently less vigorously and effectively handled opposition . One of the armed trawlers, 'Donosstia" taken from her peacetime identity of "Virgin del Carmen" was in her second war . She was one of 300 "Castle" Class trawlers built for the Royal Navy in WWI.In her previous existence, "Donositia" bore the name "HMS George Darhy".The name had a Spanish connection in itself, since the trawlers of this class were named after seamen whose names appeared on the muster roll of the "Victory" at Trafalgar.
The numbers of men who served aboard the Basque fleet were small, "Donostia" for example was only intended to carry a wartime crew of 18 in her original service,and all told there were less than 40 ships under the Basque flag, of which perhaps ten were lost, or captured by the Nationalists.
These small actions, repeated day after day,and month after month while the struggle of the Basque provinces continued, the blockade running , mine laying,and minesweeping work, was as difficult a job as any volunteer maritime force could face.
Over the next year or two , I intend to research the Basque Fleet and its struggle against the attempts at blockade.If any member of the Society should come across material relating to this, one of the twentieth centuries shortest lived navies , particularly any photographic evidence of Basque ships (or blockade runners), I would be very pleased to hear from them.
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© Copyright 1997 by Rolfe Hedges
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