Saving Lives from the Sea

This catalogue falls within the responsibilities of the Navy's Cultural Directorate in supporting the activities of its cultural bodies, among which the Naval Museum stands out, particularly in its mission to disseminate and support the preservation of the Navy's historical memory, thus contributing to national cultural and scientific development.

This catalogue is not merely a physical record of an exhibition with opening and closing dates, limits that are not found here. The reader and researcher are the master of time, extending the enjoyment of the exhibition, and it also constitutes a relevant source of consultation for further exploration of some of the themes.

This exhibition, conceived and organized by the Director of the Naval Museum, Commander Alves Salgado, brings together in this catalogue the collaborators who best know how to convey knowledge about this period of the Second World War and some of its disastrous events, but always with a glimmer of hope.

With unparalleled historical and scientific value, this work also contains a complete repository of all rescues carried out by Portugal, through its ships of various types, and by its people, who often confronted shipwrecked sailors arriving on a beach or cove.

(Vice-Admiral Edgar Marcos de Bastos Ribeiro, Cultural Director of the Navy)

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In the midst of a war in which thousands of men and women died every day, saving 1,800 people from the ocean may seem like a trifle, and supporting another 4,000 irrelevant. (...) At the end of the war, the British Ministry of War Transport (...) acknowledged in an internal document that Portugal had "probably done more than any other neutral country for our sailors." (Carlos Guerreiro)