June 1, 2015

Finest Hour 108, Autumn 2000

Page 29


(1) Cuban Connections

Maurice Baird-Smith DFC

Iwas the last President of The Royal Dutch Shell Group in Cuba, leaving when the company was nationalized by Fidel Castro. It so happened that at around this time, Sir Winston Churchill was cruising the Caribbean aboard Aristotle Onassis’s yacht Christina with Onassis and Anthony and Nonie (his first wife) Montague Browne.

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Over sixty years before, Churchill had gone to Cuba as an observer and reporter covering the Cuban revolt against Spain. He naturally expressed an interest in Castro’s revolution, and Onassis agreed to divert Christina to Havana so that Churchill could talk to “El Jefe.” Unfortunately, the British Foreign Office persuaded Sir Winston not to go to Cuba—in my opinion, a silly mistake. He might have had some positive influence. Who knows?

One day a very agitated Cuban—I’ve forgotten his name—came to see me in the Shell Office. He had never met Churchill but was a great admirer, to the point that he kept him supplied with the finest Cuban cigars, along with gift bottles of the very best Cognac. Churchill had sent him some of his paintings, which the Cuban treasured greatly.

The Cuban was frightened that his property might be confiscated in Castro’s rapid communization process and that he might lose his paintings in the process. Could I help him? I was convinced that Shell itself was going to be confiscated, but felt I might not be the best person to do what he asked— namely to ship the paintings out of Cuba to a safe haven. I told him I would speak to the Dutch or British Ambassador. I can’t remember which agreed to help, but in any case, all went well. I have often wondered where those paintings are today.

A related story told to me by Sir Winston’s son-in-law, Christopher Soames (later Lord Soames) was that, though Sir Winston was a connoisseur of cigars, he wasn’t so of Cognac. So, Christopher used to decant the Cuban’s good Cognac and replace it with a run-of-the-mill product! This may well be an apocryphal story but is worth recording as Christopher and Winston Churchill enjoyed a very warm and close relationship.

(2) Reminiscences from the Rock

John Crookshank

Having been lucky enough to see and hear Winston Churchill in the House of Commons during his last period in power after the 1951 Conservative victory, I was even luckier to meet him, albeit in a menial capacity, when he visited Gibraltar in the late 1950s, aboard Aristotle Onassis’s sleek, converted Canadian corvette Christina. I was ADC to the Governor.

By 1958, when the graceful, all-white Christina first called at Gibraltar with her somewhat special passenger, he was elderly and infirm. Nevertheless, these visits to the Rock were memorable for Gibraltar. For Churchill, they probably comprised the last direct impressions he ever received of the Empire which had meant so much to him, and for which he had striven for so long and so hard.

Christina would pick up a mooring in the naval base near what is now the entrance to Queensway Marina. On one such visit in September 1958, when the Governor was returning to Gibraltar from a day at sea in the new fleet carrier HMS Eagle, we passed quite close to the stern of Christina. The crew, their faces aglow with excitement, manned every vantage point to look down at the diminutive figure on the yacht’s quarterdeck. Sir Winston looked up with obvious pride as the long grey wall of the carrier slid past.

Once when we collected Sir Winston from Christina for a drive to the airport, Gibraltarians thronged the narrow streets to catch a glimpse of him. Another time, when he dined at “The Convent” (the Governor’s residence), huge crowds packed Convent Square. At dinner he waxed eloquent about Eden and Suez with the Governor, Sir Charles Keightley, who had commanded the aborted British military operation there.

That same year Lady Churchill passed through Gibraltar on her way to stay at Tangier with the British Consul General, Bryce Nairn, and his wife, Margaret—old friends from 1944 in Marrakech where Bryce Nairn had been British Consul. During the stopover at Gibraltar, Lady Churchill had coffee with John Revell, the RAF Group Captain commanding the station, who asked rather earnestly: “May we be permitted to ask how Sir Winston is?” Lady Churchill responded quick as a flash: “I think he must be very well because I read in my Daily Mail this morning that he was having lunch two days ago with Miss Greta Garbo and wearing a new white alpaca suit—when he left London he did not have a new white alpaca suit!”


Mr. Baird-Smith ([email protected]) is retired from the Shell International Oil Company, and divides his time between Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and the south of France. He first related these experiences to Charles Plan of the CC Board of Governors.

Mr. Crookshank, a member of ICS UK,was aide-de-camp to the Governor of Gibraltar. His story was brought to our attention by Paul Courtenay, Hon. Secretary of ICS UK.

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