António Amaral was on board the neutral freighter Stureborg, from Sweden but traveling under the flag of the International Red Cross, when - on 14 June 1942 off the island of Cyprus - the ship was attacked and sunk by Italian torpedo boats.

The Portuguese was awakened by the explosion and he almost did not managed to reach the deck, where he jumped into the sea. Swimming among the wreckage, and hit by some of it, he managed to get on a raft whit nine other men on board, between them the Portuguese Alfredo da Silva Martins.

Eleven crew members had died during the sinking, among them Francisco Teodoro, another Portuguese crew member.

For the nine survivors, who managed to save only a few canned fish and a small amount of water, an ordeal began that would lead to the death of all with the exception of António Amaral. Nineteen days after the disaster he finally ran aground on a Palestinian beach where he was helped by fishermen who took him to a hospital in Haifa.

After circulating between several cities, he was taken by a British ship to Lourenço Marques, in Mozambique, where he caught the João Belo, a Portuguese  steamer that brought him to Lisbon, where he arrived on February 11, 1943.

The Stureborg was one of several neutral ships in service of the Red Cross carrying supplies, mail and parcels for prisoners, and other humanitarian operations. In this case, the ship was coming from the port of Piraeus, in Greece, where it had left supplies to help the population.

C. G.