Reference Material

Passengers on the 'Habana'

Gerald Hoare and 'the lists'

It is fitting that as part of our commemoration of the arrival 80 years ago of the 'SS Habana' to Southampton docks, we present on our website the lists of the 4000 passengers: children, teachers, assistants and priests. This major contribution to our web resources was carried out by Gerald Hoare.

Gerald Hoare is the son of maestra (teacher) Rita Gómez Mateo, who came on the 'Habana' with the niños and stayed with the colony at Moorhill House, Southampton until 1939.

Gerald has a long history of supporting the association: first as Membership Secretary, and later as proofreader for the website.

The first list he produced was last year, of those niños who still remained in Britain in 1948. Click to view this list.

This has been on the web for some time now and has proved to be a very valuable resource to many interested in their family history as well as to researchers in the field.

Some time ago after completing the first list, Gerald expressed an interest in transcribing onto a spreadsheet the full list of the niños de la guerra who came to England on the 'SS Habana' as given in Gregorio Arrien's encyclopaedic book "¡ Salvad a Los Niños! Historia del Exilio Vasco en Gran Bretaña 1937-1940". He felt a list in both alphabetical and also numerical order would be an asset to researchers: and so they are presented here in both forms.

We hope that any researchers or individuals who use the lists will both find them useful and also appreciate the enormous task that Gerald took on and completed so successfully!

We welcome any feedback and would ask that you please acknowledge Gregorio Arrien and the Association BCA'37 UK in any use you may make of the information.

Carmen Kilner