Stephen Spender & the Mystery Ship Stephen Spender, celebrated poet and author, visited Gibraltar at the height of the Spanish Civil War. He was on assignment for the socialist newspaper the Daily Worker in search of the crew of a Russian ship believed to have been sunk by the Italian Navy. The Spanish Civil War pitted the fascist Nationalists against the communist-backed Republicans. The Nationalists, led by Francisco Franco, received financial and military aid from Germany and Italy while the Republicans were supported financially and politically by Soviet Russia. There was no doubt where Spender’s loyalties rested. Long a Communist sympathizer, before leaving for Spain, he made it official by joining the party. In his book World Within World, Spender wrote: “Shortly after Jimmy’s departure for Spain, and a few days after my joining the Communist party the Daily Worker telephoned and asked me to report on the case of a Russian ship which had been sunk by the Italians in the Mediterranean. The crew of the Comsomol had disappeared and the Russian Embassy was anxious to know what happened to it.” Jimmy was Jimmy Younger, a young Welshman and Spender’s former secretary and lover. After being jilted by Spender, Younger had joined the Communist Party and travelled to Spain to fight with the International Brigade. Spender was filled with guilt believing that Younger would never have gone off to war if it hadn’t been for him. Spender wrote:“Without my influence he never would have become a Communist, and unless I had decided to live apart from him, and then married, he certainly would not have joined the Brigade.” Younger wrote letters to Spender telling of his experiences including his first battle [*see below], so Spender was in “an agonized state of mind” and welcomed the diversion this “rather absurd trip would provide.” Absurd seems to be the right word for it. I have done extensive research on the internet and in libraries and have been unable to turn up any Russian ship named Comsomol or Komsomol during that period. There have been modern Russian submarines named Komsomol, which is the name for the old Communist Youth Movement, the equivalent of the Nazi’s Hitler Youth. In his book Spender doesn’t mention what type of ship the Comsomol was but in his book British Masculinity and the Spanish Civil War, Kris Rothstein refers to Spender searching for the crew of the Russian ‘battleship’ Comsomol. I checked Jane’s Fighting Ships, the authoritative source for naval shipping of all countries, and there are no battleships, cruisers, destroyers or frigates named Comsomol or Komsomol in the 1936 or 1937 editions. I did find a submarine named Komsolska but it was still there in the 1938 edition and so could not have been sunk. The Comsomol may have been a merchant ship but again I could find no ship with that name in any of the reference books. In reports of shipping casualties of the Spanish Civil War there are no Russian ships listed. In January, 1937, in his quest for the Comsomol crew, Spender first flew to Barcelona and then Alicante. “I strained my eyes for some sign of gunfire or ruins. The outspread map of a country torn by war seems to the imagination like a mutilated corpse, but under the bright sunlight the mountainous landscape had an appearance of incorruptible morning peace. It suggested nothing more war-like than the creaking of a wooden axle, as a wagon moved among the wintry vineyards.“Pursuing our inquiries, we went to Gibraltar, Tangier and Oran, and from Gibraltar we tried to get to Cadiz, but were turned back at the frontier by Franco’s guards.” Frustrated at being barred from Spain, Spender contented himself with interviewing Gibraltarians and Spanish workers in Gibraltar. “I had no idea how to look for a crew of a sunk ship, so I simply interviewed people who seemed likely to be informed, revealing to them the purpose of my mission.” Spender was surprised to find that the Comsomol was a ‘cause celebre’ and everyone seemed to have an opinion about it. One fellow even told him that the Italian Consulate in Cadiz had confirmed the sinking of the Comsomol. And yet Spender never found any survivors of the crew or even anyone who had met survivors. In his book he does comment on the class divide in Gibraltar regarding the Civil War: “The British members of the Calpe Fox Hunt (which continued to function in Franco territory throughout the Civil War) repeated atrocity stories about the Republicans told them by aristocratic Spanish members from over the frontier, but did not mention any stories of Franco atrocities. The refugees who came into Gibraltar for British aid were Francoists, not Republicans. Nevertheless, the Gibraltese, and the Spanish workers who came every day from La Linea into Gibraltar, queued up at the newspaper kiosks to buy the Republican newspapers.” So was the Comsomol story all a hoax; a piece of malicious propaganda in an attempt to influence the neutral powers such as Britain and America to turn against the Italians? Spender might have thought so for he doesn’t seem to have pursued the matter with any great enthusiasm. He only made the one attempt to get into Spain and after Gibraltar travelled to Tangier, Marrakesh and Casablanca but in his book he never mentions the Comsomol or her crew again. Spender was one of the most celebrated poets of his generation. He was also a writer, critic and editor. He was born in London, educated at Oxford and was associated with W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and C.Day Lewis. His volumes of poems include Twenty Poems (1930), The Still Centre (1939), Poems of Dedication (1946) and Collected Poems 1928-1985 (1986). He was knighted in 1983 and died in 1995 aged 86. I will continue my search into the fate of the Comsomol and her crew. If anyone has any information regarding this mysterious Russian battleship I would appreciate it if they wrote to me care of Gibraltar Magazine or via the Gibraltar Magazine message board. *Jimmy Younger saw action at the battle of Jarawa but was later accused of cowardice and of being a Trotskyite and was sent back to England because of a stomach ulcer. by Reg Raynolds

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