Carvalho Araújo: the deputy who took a trawler against a U-boat

Around six in the morning of 14 October 1918, the passenger steamer São Miguel was on her way from Funchal, in Madeira, to Ponta Delgada, in the Azores. She carried 206 passengers and 54 crew. At about 35°35'N 22°10'W a submarine of enormous size, as the survivors described it, surfaced and opened fire.5 sources5 sources

The steamer's escort was the Augusto de Castilho, a deep-sea fishing trawler that the Navy had requisitioned in 1916 and armed with two small guns. Her commander, First Lieutenant José Botelho de Carvalho Araújo, had taken the watch shortly before. He opened fire with the 47 mm gun on his stern and had smoke boxes thrown out to screen the liner. When they ran out, he turned towards the submarine.3 sources3 sources

The submarine was U-139, commanded by Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, who had sunk more ships than any other submarine captain of the war. The fight lasted nearly two hours by the Navy's accounts, at least two by the Diário de Notícias's. By the end, the São Miguel was out of sight and Carvalho Araújo was dead.5 sources5 sources

Carvalho Araújo was born in the parish of São Nicolau, in central Porto, on 18 May 1881, into a family from Trás-os-Montes, the mountainous north-east. He grew up in Vila Real, the district capital, and studied there. In 1981 a deputy told Parliament that he was born in Porto only by chance and was a man of Trás-os-Montes, since he had spent his childhood and youth in Vila Real.5 sources5 sources

After preparatory courses at the Academia Politécnica in Porto he entered the Escola Naval, the officers' school, in 1899, and was made a midshipman in 1903. He served on the frigate Dom Fernando II e Glória, the cruisers Vasco da Gama, Adamastor and São Rafael and a string of gunboats, with the Indian Ocean naval division and at the naval stations of Cape Verde and Macau.2 sources2 sources

He was a convinced republican. The Museu de Marinha places him close to Admiral Cândido dos Reis, who led the republicans' military committee, and says he took part in some of the key moments that led to the Republic of October 1910. When the new Republic elected a Constituent Assembly to write its constitution, he was proclaimed deputy for Vila Real on 30 June 1911.3 sources3 sources

He also wrote for newspapers: República Portuguesa, the Vilarealense, and the Notícias de Vila Real, where he was an editor. In 1915 he was elected to Congress again for the Democratic Party.2 sources2 sources

He wanted Portugal in the war. In 1914 he joined the Navy's expeditionary battalion in southern Angola and came home months later because of illness. He also commanded the minesweeper Manuel de Azevedo Gomes, and in 1916 he served on the Navy staff.2 sources2 sources

In 1917 he went back to Africa as governor of the district of Inhambane, on the coast of Mozambique, and stayed until June 1918. His report on the district's administration in 1917 was due to be reprinted for the centenary of his death. On his return he was given command of the Augusto de Castilho.3 sources3 sources

Portugal had been at war with Germany since March 1916, when Germany declared war after Lisbon seized the German merchant ships sheltering in its harbours. While Portuguese troops went to Flanders, the Atlantic islands lay open to German submarines. On 3 December 1916 U-38 torpedoed three ships at anchor off Funchal, among them the French gunboat Surprise, and shelled the town. In December 1917 U-156 shelled Funchal again.5 sources5 sources

The historian Mathias Saecker argues that once the Royal Navy withdrew, Portuguese forces could not protect Madeira, partly because the budget could not pay for a proper defence. The Navy made do with what it had, including fishing trawlers: by the Museu de Marinha's count it requisitioned eleven of them.2 sources2 sources

The Augusto de Castilho was one. Built in 1909 by Cochrane & Sons at Selby, in Yorkshire, as the trawler Elite, she belonged to the Lisbon fishing company Parceria Geral de Pescarias, owned by Bensaude & Co. The Navy requisitioned her in June 1916, gave her a 65 mm gun forward and a 47 mm gun aft, and named her after Augusto de Castilho, the naval officer who, during the Brazilian navy's revolt of 1893-94, had given asylum aboard Portuguese warships to rebels in Rio de Janeiro.5 sources5 sources

She saw more of German submarines than most Portuguese ships. On 21 August 1918, under another commander and escorting the same São Miguel from Funchal to Lisbon in thick fog, she opened fire on a large submarine off Cabo Raso, near Lisbon, and claimed three hits before it disappeared. Two days later she chased another. In 20 months of naval service she escorted 22 ships and steamed 7,020 miles.1 source1 source

U-139 was one of Germany's new submarine cruisers, with guns that a senator later compared to a good cruiser's. Arnauld de la Perière had sunk close to 200 ships, almost all of them with U-35, often using its deck gun. He took over U-139 in May 1918. Early in October, on her only patrol, she sank two steamers, damaged a British armed boarding steamer and sank the Portuguese sailing ship Rio Cavado.4 sources4 sources

The submarine's guns outranged the trawler's, and, by Senator Rodrigues Gaspar's account in 1920, it kept its distance where it could not be hit. Carvalho Araújo steered towards it anyway, to keep its fire on him while the São Miguel ran. Shells wrecked the trawler and men began to fall. Over almost two hours, according to the Navy library's account, the Portuguese fired until there was no ammunition left.3 sources3 sources

By then the engines had stopped, the telegraph was gone and the guns were damaged. With no ammunition left and the São Miguel far off, Carvalho Araújo ordered the white flag raised, Rodrigues Gaspar told the Senate, but the Germans kept firing. By the Diário de Notícias's account six men had already died when a last shot from the submarine killed the commander; the Museu de Marinha says he was hit by shell fragments. Command passed to Midshipman Manuel Armando Ferraz, his second in command, who ordered the crew to abandon ship.3 sources3 sources

The Germans boarded the trawler, reportedly looted her, and sank her with demolition charges. The dead were still aboard. The Museu de Marinha records his last words as “I die as a Portuguese”; in the Senate in 1920 Rodrigues Gaspar put it as a saying of his, that he would die as a Portuguese.3 sources3 sources

The survivors, several of them wounded, got away in the ship's lifeboat and a smaller boat, about 200 miles from São Miguel. Rodrigues Gaspar told the Senate that the Germans refused them water and even a compass, answering only “c'est la guerre”, it is war.2 sources2 sources

The lifeboat reached the island of Santa Maria after about 48 hours, by the Diário de Notícias's account, and one wounded sailor died on the way and was put over the side. The paper puts 36 men in it; a Museu de Marinha photograph of it is captioned as showing 29 survivors. The smaller boat, with 12 men, was rowed to Ponta do Arnel, on São Miguel, and landed on 20 October.3 sources3 sources

The São Miguel, meanwhile, met the gunboat Ibo about 30 miles from Ponta Delgada; alerted by radio, the Ibo had put to sea towards the fight. The steamer came into port with her passengers unharmed. Her master was the merchant officer Caetano Moniz de Vasconcelos. In 1920 the deputy Jacinto de Freitas proposed him for the Order of the Tower and Sword for keeping the islands' link with Lisbon open through the war, but a member of the naval committee asked for the bill to be withdrawn and left to the order's own council, and the Chamber agreed.2 sources2 sources

Sources agree on the outcome but not on the toll. The Navy names six dead, Carvalho Araújo included: Cadet Carlos Eloy da Mota Freitas, the telegraphist Elísio Martins da Nova, the seaman Manuel da Cruz Branco, the stoker Manuel Joaquim Oliveira and the coal trimmer Manuel Tomé. The Museu de Marinha counts seven, and the Revista da Armada's seven include a civilian who was travelling aboard. The Diário de Notícias counts seven killed in the fight and a sailor who died later in the lifeboat.4 sources4 sources

News came slowly. On 17 October the Diário de Notícias ran his photograph on its front page with a confused report of two submarines with 16 cm guns, and the article ended in a blank space where the censor had cut it. Sidónio Pais, who had taken power in a coup in December 1917, was then president.2 sources2 sources

Carvalho Araújo was promoted posthumously to captain-lieutenant for distinguished conduct and given the Military Order of the Tower and Sword and the War Cross, 1st class. In June 1920 the Senate took up a bill to raise the pension already granted to his widow, which would pass to their children. Rodrigues Gaspar pointed out that there were three sons and three daughters, and moved an amendment so that the daughters would not be left without it. In August the Chamber took up a government bill, based on the second in command's report, to promote the surviving ratings.5 sources5 sources

Part of the push came from the other side. In the Senate, Rodrigues Gaspar cited the reports of U-139's commander and second officer, who wrote that they had never met such courage in an enemy. Fifty years on, a deputy in the Assembleia Nacional, the parliament of the Estado Novo dictatorship, quoted Arnauld de la Perière.3 sources3 sources

The Augusto de Castilho was U-139's last victim. The submarine was surrendered on 24 November 1918, handed to France and served as the French submarine Halbronn until 1935. Arnauld de la Perière served on in the German navy after the war and with the Turkish navy in the 1930s, returned to German service in 1939 and was a vice-admiral when he died in an air crash at Le Bourget, outside Paris, in February 1941.2 sources2 sources

In 1920 the Navy bought a British Flower-class sloop, HMS Jonquil, and named it Carvalho Araújo, as a former navy minister, Rocha e Cunha, had planned. Called a cruiser at the time, it carried the seaplane that let Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral finish the first flight across the South Atlantic in 1922. On 31 January 1923 its visit to Ponta Delgada was the occasion of a public homage to the commander, with schools, traders and the district's leading citizens taking part. It served until 1959, from 1937 as a survey ship.4 sources4 sources

A passenger steamer also carried his name. In September 1939, days into the Second World War, that Carvalho Araújo picked up 16 survivors of the British freighter Manaar, sunk by the German submarine U-38, and landed them in Lisbon.1 source1 source

The dictatorship that replaced the Republic in 1926 kept his memory alive. In Vila Real a bronze statue by the sculptor Anjos Teixeira stands on the Avenida Carvalho Araújo. On the fiftieth anniversary in 1968 the minister of the Navy came for a parade, and eight air force jets flew over. In 1981 the town marked the centenary of his birth and fifty years since the monument was unveiled.3 sources3 sources

Democracy kept him too. For the centenary in 2018, Socialist deputies, joined by a Social Democrat, put a vote of tribute to the crew before the Assembleia da República. It called him one of the least disputed heroes of the twentieth century and noted that 45 localities in 34 municipalities had named streets or places after him. It also said his act had in some way made up for the trauma of La Lys, the rout of the Portuguese 2nd Division in Flanders on 9 April 1918.3 sources3 sources

The centenary also brought the crew back into view. Plaques went up at Vila do Porto, on Santa Maria, and at Ponta do Arnel, where the boats landed. Póvoa de Varzim restored its 1963 monument to the telegraphist Elísio da Nova, one of the dead. Exhibitions opened in Lisbon, Ponta Delgada and Vila Real.2 sources2 sources