Sea Control - Sea Control 611: Battling Basques

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

Leonard R Heinz worked for many years as a financial services lawyer while pursuing an active interest in military and naval history. He is the co-author with Vincent O’Hara of Clash of Fleets, a battle history of the First World War at sea, and Innovating Victory, an examination of fleets adapting to technological change. He also contributed to Fighting in the Dark, a study of naval night combat. His book The Fleet That Fought Itself, a naval history of the Spanish Civil War, is the result of a decades-long interest in that conflict and more than a dozen years of research in primary and secondary sources.Len's contact information:  [e-mail] use in the SolomonsOn "firsts" in the warBattling Basque

You're listening to Sea Control, posted by the Center for International Maritime Shenzhou. All right, welcome aboard sea control fans. This is Jay. Today's guest is Lynn Hines. He's going to talk about his essay, Battling Basque. As Spain descended into Civil War in July 1936, the Basque had to choose a side and build a navy. and that's from the August 2026 issue of the Naval Institute's Naval History magazine. Lynn, like many of our guests, you've got a varied background.

Could you tell us a little about yourself? Sure. I'm happy too, Jay. I'm a retired lawyer, and I have a lifelong interest in history generally, and naval history particularly. I am a frustrated history major who had to find another way to earn a living. And I thought in retirement I would enjoy being a student of naval history, you know, reading all the books that I didn't have the time to read when I was working.

But things took a surprising turn. And Vince O'Hara, who you may know, a naval historian and an author, was kind enough or foolish enough to ask me to partner with him on a history of First World War naval battles. And since then, Vince and I have written another book. book on naval technology. I've contributed a chapter to a book on Navy's fighting at night and written a solo effort on the Spanish Civil War. And it's that solo effort that the article in naval history fell out of. In addition to that, I've contributed a few other articles to Naval History Magazine and one to the Naval War College Review. Nice. And we will have a, we'll have links to some of those

up on the show notes here too, folks. So good on look at us. All right, before we get into it, a reminder that all views presented here are our own and not necessarily those of any organization we may now or may have been affiliated with in the past. All right. I think our SimSEC, C control audience is pretty historically savvy.

But as you and I discussed before we started, Spanish Civil War, especially naval aspects, not widely known, even amongst us history and naval strategy types. So could you just give us a little bit about the Spanish Civil War, which I think is probably, unfortunately, a conflict incredibly relevant to the modern worldics. Sure.

I'd be happy to do that. So the Spanish Civil War was fought from July 1936 through March 1939. It was with the Sino-Japanese War, one of the wars before the war, the big war. It started when a group of right-wing military officers attempted a coup against the elected left-wing government that was then in power, a coup that went disastrously wrong that was supposed to be over in a matter of weeks, but instead became a civil war fought over years. The rebels eventually became the nationalists. They didn't start out that way. There were really a combination of various different groups. And the other side were generally known as the Republicans. The war was a long one

and a bloody one. There were 200,000 battlefield deaths, perhaps in another 100,000 deaths off the battlefield that were attributed to the war. And, of course, in the end, the Nationalist won, basically by just grinding the Republicans down over this three-year period of time. The war also saw substantial interventions by other countries. So you saw Germany and Italy supporting the Nationalists, and the Soviet Union was the major power that backed the Republicans during the war. Did the, I'll just ask this, did the, we have an international audience, but did the U.S. play much role here?

The U.S. did not. I mean, the U.S. was deep in isolationism at the time and pretty quickly moved to embargo arms sales to both sides in the conflict. To the extent the U.S. was involved in all, probably the most significant involvement was Texaco. which supplied much of the POL that the nationalists needed. And we're quite willing to do that. But in terms of arms or other intervention, not much came from the U.S. I mean, you probably know about the international brigades. There was an American international brigade, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. But those folks that were part of the brigade almost had to be smuggled out of the U.S.

and into Spain in order to participate. Right. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Good. And then from there, would you tell us a little about who the Basques are and where are there from? Sure. The Basques are interesting folks. And they're in ancient people as well, at least since Roman times. And possibly, you know, far before that, they were living in an area of southwestern France and north-central Spain. in an area that straddled the Pyrenees. The Basques maintain their own language and their own culture, despite their lands being absorbed into France and Spain.

And so they had really preserved their own sense of identity as a people. Right. So then when the war begins, what's the political position of the Basque? Are they united? Do they take one side immediately? And do they have many, what are their naval capabilities or maritime capabilities even? Let's talk about the Basques politically. Not every Basque cited with the republics, but a number of Basques did.

And the background is this. What a number of the Basque folks were looking for was autonomy and the preservation of their language and their culture. So when the Civil War began, they had to make a real decision as to which side would they align with. And what they decided, not unsurprisingly, was, well, let's align with the side

that looks like it's going to give us the greatest autonomy, the greatest freedom and the ability to be Basques. Neither side was a natural fit for them. they shared their Catholicism with the nationalists, the nationalist being very traditionally oriented, but they really didn't like the nationalist idea of authoritarian rule. That was not attracted to the Basques at all. They were more in tune with the democratic tendencies of the Republicans, although they certainly were not in step with the Republican efforts to destroy the influence of the Catholic Church in Spain.

And on top of all that, they couldn't really pick a winner because it wasn't clear from the outset which of these two sides were going to prevail in the war. In fact, not only could they not pick a winner, but the side that they sided with might, as a result of their support, have a much better chance of winning the Civil War than the other side. So bottom line, the Republic held out the greatest promise of autonomy. So that eventually is the way that the Basques went. Gotcha. And what do they have in the area? So they're not an independent country, but they've been a seagoing peoples for a long time. So what are they, they decide to go this way, then?

How do they go about using? If they have ships, boats, their people, what's that going to look like? Right. As you said, they are a seafaring people or a large chunk of the Basque population with seafaring. And as a result, they've got a number of advantages that they bring to the Republic once they decide to go in that direction. First, Basque ship owners owned a major portion of the Spanish merchant fleet. The Republic needed those ships to move supplies, and the Basques were, were, were quite willing to make those ships available.

So that was a key contribution right off the bat. Secondly, the major port of Bilbao, which is in Spain's northern Atlantic coast, was a Basque town. And it was also a port that was going to become crucially important to the Republic. So now you need to think for a minute about a map of Spain. a big slice of the northern Atlantic coast running from Asturias in the west all the way through the Basque lands in the east that run basically up to the French border had sided with the Republic but that region quickly wound up being surrounded entirely surrounded by nationalist territory so the only way to get supplies in was by sea and the northern region really

needed these supplies. It was not self-sufficient in terms of food. It was not self-sufficient in terms of armament, in terms of weapons. So both were needed. And the result of that was that the Basque ports became, in particular the port of Bilbao, the biggest port on the northern Atlantic coast, were absolutely critical to keeping that northern region going. And then the third thing I'll say about the Basques is that once they decided to side with the Republic, they quickly demonstrated that they had the determination and were able to assemble the resources to keep their ports open and to defend their own sea course, their sea coast. These resources included a fleet of patrol craft and mine sweepers that they improvised from trawlers and other fishing vessels, plus coast defense

batteries that they were able to put in place to protect the ports themselves. All right. Very cool. Of course, despite their efforts, sadly, the fascist nationalist win the war, least sadly in my views. And there's significant, but are there significant contributions of Bass Navy makes to the Republican cause during its brief period? And exactly how long, I guess, do they keep going?

I should ask that first. How long do they keep going? And then what do they manage to, you know, legacy there for the Republicans? They keep going for, you know, it really depends on how you count. Sure. They keep going for more than a year in the sense that the northern enclave remains unconquered by the nationalists until October of 1937. The bill about itself falls in June of 1936. And it doesn't, I'm sorry, June of 1937, and it doesn't fall from the sea.

It falls because the nationalists in their grinding way that I mentioned earlier are gradually moving from east to west across this northern enclave, taking town after town after town, until they eventually extinguished the whole thing. So the Basque managed a amount of defense for a considerable period of time, although, you know, as you said, the Nationalists win the war, and even before they won the war, they've wiped out this northern enclave. But until that happens, the Basques really make a significant, meaningful contribution to the Republican war effort. It really is doubtful whether the northern ports could have remained open without basque support.

The nationalist Navy was quite aggressive in attempting to blockade these ports and shutting them down. And if they had succeeded in effectively blockading the ports, it's quite likely that other ship-owning powers like the British, for example, would have been quite happy to warn their own ships away. And so, you know, no food, no support, and the North would have crumbled that much more quickly. The bass kept the ports free of mines through their improvised mine sweeping fleet. And they actually used a fairly sophisticated combination of shore batteries and patrol vessels to keep their ports open to neutral shipping. The shore batteries kept the largest nationalist vessels away. The nationalists knew that they had a limited ability to repair damage to their ships. So they were really unwilling to risk their major units to the possibility of damage from the shore batteries.

And the patrol craft, these are the ships that were converted from the Basque fishing fleet. They were very aggressive in keeping the smaller nationalist ships, the ones that were not worthwhile targets for the shore batteries. from interfering with the ports. In fact, as I said, the Basques were very aggressive in their approach to this. Not only did they chase away nationalist vessels, the patrol vessels, when they did, but they actually had one successful engagement with a nationalist destroyer, where they managed to land to hit in its engine room and force it away.

At one point, when they were having a dispute with the Germans over having seized, used a German merchant ship carrying supplies for the Nationalists, one of the base captains actually threatened to attack a German Lake Cruiser with his currented trawler. So these are very no-nonsense, folks. So the system that the Basque put in place worked surprisingly well. But the problem was it really couldn't withstand the full force of the Nationalist Navy. that became clear in March of 1937 when the Nationalists committed one of their heavy cruisers to the fight. And this cruiser was able to sink one of the Basques for big patrol craft and significantly damaged another.

It didn't end the Basque Navy, but it demonstrated its limits. And of course, as I said, all this was for naught when the Nationalists made their concerted effort to roll up the North. Southern Zone, they did take Bill Bough in June of 37 and wiped out the whole sally in in October. But I've got to say, you know, despite the conclusion, you know, the Basques were, were no less valued for being engaged in, you know, an ultimately futile effort. Sure. Well, even though it might have been a few effort, do you see, I mean, I'm just thinking of a few things already, I guess.

Do you see any applicable lessons from the Bass Navy for modern naval maritime forces that places that may be under occupation or invasion now. Yeah. You can think of a couple that almost immediately leap in mind. Yeah. I'd say the biggest lesson from the Basque experience in the Spanish Civil War at sea at least is basically this. It's don't expect anyone to respect international.

the law unless you have the ability to enforce it. And what I mean by that is, you know, the British and the French navies escorted their merchant ships to Spanish territorial waters, and then the Basques took them through territorial waters into the Republican ports in the north. But without all that protection, the nationalists would have been happy to nab or even attack any merchant ship that they found that was supplying the Republicans. and to do that wherever they could find it. In fact, they did exactly that to unguarded Russian merchant ships.

The Russians immediately, at the start of the war, used their own ships to run supplies, including arms, to the Basques and also to the Republican ports in the Mediterranean. And the nationalists and their supporters were quick to actually sink one of the Russian ships and seize a number of others because they knew that the Russians had no naval forces in the area that could protect them. So again, in theory, what the nationalists were doing was illegal in practice, they were going to do whatever they thought they needed to do in order to give themselves an advantage in the war. So that's, to me, that's lesson number one. And we see this

being, you know, an act today in the Strait of Ramos and the Bob Mendeb. As I said, you know, those are examples that immediately come to mind. Right. Yeah. I'd also said that the second thing, and this is another thing

that we see today, is that while, you know, it's really difficult to improvise a Navy. You know, navies are one of those things that require you know, deep organization industrially and otherwise. Sometimes in the right circumstances, you can extemporize and affect the maritime force. The basket of that in 1936 with success in the 1937. And you can see

Ukrainians doing it since 2022, basically managing to manufacture a Navy out of not very much. Yeah. Nice. All right. Well, that was, thanks so much. So much to unpack there. Fascinating stuff. I'm going to encourage everybody to look up more of your information on this. And where can we find you online and what else you're working on? Online, you can find me at Len Hines, L-E-I-N-H-E-I-N-Z 2002 at Yahoo.com. That's the extent of my social footprint online. In terms of what I'm working on, I actually just wrapped up some research for an article on Operation Berlin, which is the German battleship foray into the Atlantic in early 1941, not the Bismarck, the one before the Bismarck, that involved the Sharnhorst and the Gnizanau.

Hopefully, that will be another article for a naval history magazine. we'll see how they feel about that. But my main focus right now is on a book that's exploring how the Royal Navy first developed and then lost its air service in the First World War, you know, a look at a Navy grappling with a new technology. And a story that hasn't often been told. You know, a lot has been written about the Royal Navy's efforts to win back its air arm, you know, starting in the 1920s.

and right up through and into World War II, not that much has been done about how they lost their air arm in the first place because they had one and they had a fairly advanced one, which they then lost when the Royal Air Force was created out of both the Army and Navy Air Services. So that's what I'm working on at the moment. Fantastic. Well, I look forward to talking to you again once those come out. We can come back on the show. Always good stuff.

I look forward to it as well. Thanks, thanks again for joining us, Lynn, and thanks to all the listeners out there, and we will turn it over to Kimber's men right now. See you next time. Goodbye.