Embarked Italians

The flawed FO Embarkation List, revised several times shortly after the sinking and accessible through the Brazilian Embassy, was eventually produced as a printed version indicating 486 Italians lost and 226 saved, a total of 712 men on board. Illustrating the degree of government disorder, other FO documents give a total of 734 Italians (FO 916/2581), while the HO and War Office recorded 717 Italians aboard (HO 213/1722; WO 361/4). The generally accepted figure from the HO Missing Persons List, first published in 1991 when access became available at the National Archives, is that 446 Italians perished (Colpi Reference Colpi1991, 271–278). Revised and corrected data, as presented here, amends these figures to 442 drowned and 265 rescued, giving a new and definitive total of 707 Italians embarked onto the ship. Although the reworked 707 figure appears close to the FO total of 712, the latter total conceals the extensive errors and anomalies that the FO Embarkation List contained.

Victims – 442

The HO Missing List total (446) contains four erroneous entries, three of which are listed as ‘unconfirmed’. Investigation revealed that two of these unconfirmed entries did not board the AS: A Olivelli, who was interned in Canada, having been deported on the MV Ettrick (HO 396/115); and A Massari, who was interned on the Isle of Man (HO 396/290). The third unconfirmed man, G Felloni, did board, but was an AS survivor subsequently interned in Australia (MP 1103/1). No trace or record of the fourth discounted name (S Santi) could be found across multiple data sources. Extensive modifications, especially with regard to places of birth, were, however, required to correct the Missing List, and a few spellings of names were also amended.

Survivors – 265

There has never been a conclusive, validated list detailing those who survived the sinking. Misspellings and inconsistent alphabetical order as well as transposition errors and other errors of omission, duplication and wrongful inclusion in the FO Embarkation List meant that using this list as the starting place for compiling a new survivors’ list was not feasible.Footnote ³ To highlight this point, analysis exposed that 36 men were incorrectly recorded as lost, nine entries were duplicated, seven men listed as survivors did not in fact board the AS, one man recorded as a survivor perished and six others, recorded elsewhere as survivors, are not recorded at all in the FO list. Accordingly, to achieve both an accurate total of those embarked and a reconstructed survivors’ listing, the FO document was only used as a base-list of names for cross-checking. A combination of significantly more reliable data from two other sources formed the foundation upon which the new listing of survivors could be built.

The first of these two sources comprises the embarkation list of HMT Dunera (FO 371/25210; HO 215/1), the ship that subsequently transported AS survivors to internment in Australia. This is considered exact in its listing of the 200 Italians on board, with only some misspellings of names, and has been cross-corroborated with internment records for Australia (MP 1103/1). Nonetheless, to reconstruct the new and complete ‘Embarkation Listing’, as presented below, giving survivor data comparable to the amended and originally more detailed HO Missing List, research across wide-ranging sources was required (see Note 1). Secondly, by accessing and retrieving the data from the Admissions Register of Mearnskirk Hospital in Glasgow for the first time, an irrefutable level of evidence concerning those survivors who were hospitalised after rescue is provided (HB 64/4/1). This comprehensive primary source forms the missing link in the overall data analysis of survivors, listing 63 Italians admitted to the hospital on 3 July 1940 (Figure 1). Taking the total to 265, two further confirmed survivors were Cesare Bianchi,Footnote ⁴ one of the men not recorded at all on the FO list, and one of two men called Paolo Treves. The Paolo Treves who embarked the AS and survived the sinking was not Paolo Treves of anti-fascist and literary fame, but the other man with the same name (Lo Biundo Reference Lo Biundo2022, 85). Both Bianchi and Treves the AS survivor were subsequently interned on the Isle of Man (HO 396/210; HO 396/294). Paolo Treves the anti-fascist was released directly from the transit internment camp at Warth Mills (FO 371/25210). It remains unknown, given their lack of requirement for hospital treatment, why Bianchi and survivor Treves were not rerouted to Australia amongst ‘i due cento’.

Figure 1.

Page from Mearnskirk Hospital Admission Register 1940

Survivors interned in Australia

After the Canadian destroyer HMCS St Laurent completed its rescue mission in the Atlantic, the survivors were disembarked at Greenock, Scotland (DeWolf 1960). Those internees deemed fit to travel were taken back to Liverpool for shipment to Australia. Of these 200 internees, five men died while in captivity, and their remains are today interred at the Italian National Ossario in Murchison, Victoria.Footnote ⁵ Six internees were drowned when being transported back to the UK in 1942 for tribunals to assess whether they could be released. Their ship, MV Abosso, was torpedoed by U-575 and sunk off the Azores (ADM 358/2980). Between 1941 and 1946 the majority of internees were repatriated to the UK (HO 396/159), two of whom brought back Italian-Australian wives. Eight men remained in Australia after release, becoming Australian citizens (MP 1103/1).

Survivors interned on the Isle of Man

As mentioned, the sick and wounded survivors were hospitalised at Mearnskirk, appropriated as an Emergency Medical Service Hospital. Of the 63 Italian patients, 59 were discharged from hospital on 11 July 1940, the remaining four followed during the second half of August (HB 64/4/1). All were initially taken to an internment camp at Donaldson's School, Edinburgh. One internee, Uberto Limentani, an anti-fascist employed by the BBC, was released from Donaldson's on 31 July 1940 (Limentani Reference Limentani1980). The others were subsequently sent to internment camps on the Isle of Man in October 1940. Two of these internees died while in captivity, Osvaldo Girolami who is buried at Douglas Cemetery, and Giustino Notorianni, buried at Mount Vernon Cemetery, Edinburgh (CWGC).

Epilogue

The Italian internees comprised part of the total embarked onto the Arandora Star at Liverpool. Published figures range from 1,564 to 1,673 men aboard (Rumble this issue). In addition to the 707 Italians, there were approximately 478 Germans and Austrians (FO 371/25210) and 430 Military Guard and Crew (ADM 199/2133) on the ship, giving a total of 1,615 on board. A total of 861 men were rescued (DeWolf 1960, 21).