If it was conceived as a rebellion, it was a flop. But if it was a publicity stunt, it was imbued with idealism and conducted with a flamboyance that forced the world's attention on an issue that the world had long ignored.
The stunt was planned and plotted by Portugal's Henrique Galvão, 65, soldier, playwright, pamphleteer. His object was to dramatize the wrongs wrought by Premier António Salazar, who is unquestionably a dictator, but a man so seemingly mild that even the most fervent libertarians have trouble working up any great indignation against his regime.
Disguised Doctor. Galvão had intimate knowledge of just how oppressive Salazar's rule can be. He served as inspector general of the African colony of Angola and irritated the dictator with a report denouncing Portuguese mistreatment of the Angolans. Jailed in Portugal, Galvão continued to write, and smuggle out, pamphlets attacking Salazar's rule. Sentenced to an additional twelve years' imprisonment, he feigned illness, was sent to a Lisbon hospital and walked out disguised as a doctor. Escaping Portugal, Galvão went first to the Argentine and turned up in Venezuela in November 1959, where he got in touch with other exiled leaders of the Portuguese Liberation Junta, a widespread but ineffectual anti-Salazar group. His plan: to capture at sea the Portuguese liner Santa Maria on one of its regular Caribbean cruises.
Under Galvão's direction, young men of the junta went into training at a "vacation camp" near Caracas and practiced calisthenics and hand-to-hand fighting. A girl sympathizer got a job as telephone operator on the Santa Maria. During several voyages she memorized the ship's communications system and noted the stations taken by the crew during night watches.
Just before Christmas, the junta began buying third-class tickets for the January cruise of the Santa Maria, but after purchasing 30 tickets, the junta ran out of money. It was decided that the ticket holders would carry arms in their hand luggage, while the remaining 40 men in the plot would board ship pretending to be relatives and friends saying goodbye to passengers. Then they would remain as stowaways. With their eye on world-wide publicity, the junta urged a Caracas newspaper editor to send a reporter and photographer with them. Long accustomed to the pipe dreams of anti-Salazar exiles, the editor laughed them out of his office.
Last week, carrying 580 passengers, the trim, 20,906-ton Santa Maria put in at La Guaira, the seaport of Caracas. The conspirators boarded the ship, arousing no particular suspicion, since young, male, single employees of Royal Dutch Shell in Venezuela often use the Portuguese line to travel to the U.S.
Ten Minutes. At 1:30 on Monday morning, armed men appeared in the officers' quarters and on the bridge. The third pilot dashed toward the captain's cabin, but was dropped with four bullets and died. In the wild shooting, an apprentice and a ship's doctor were wounded. Taking charge on the bridge, Henrique Galvão ordered the ship's engines stopped, then he picked up the intercom phone, got the captain and told him casually that he was taking over his ship. It was all over in ten minutes.