the last book I ever read (The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell, excerpt three)

from The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal's Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes:

Setting their ambitions even higher, the DRIL committee in Venezuela concoct what becomes known as Operation Dulcinea. The name is Galvão’s idea–a reference to a 1943 play Dulcinea, or D. Quixote’s Last Adventure. The plan is based around the fact that the Portuguese cruise liner Santa Maria is soon to make port in nearby La Guaira. The ship, a large luxury vessel making a leisurely journey to Miami, carries over 350 crew and 1,000 passengers. In January of 1961, in the ports of La Guaira and Curaçao, DRIL arranges for twenty-five Portuguese and Spanish rebels to secretly board the Santa Maria, including Pepe Velo, Henrique Galvão and his second in command Camilo Mortágua. They also manage to smuggle aboard fourteen weapons. The plan is to commandeer the Santa Maria and sail the ship to the island of Fernando Po, from where the rebels can coordinate an invasion of Angola and establish a government dedicated to overthrowing the Iberian fascisms. The hijacking doesn’t go to plan–the rebels are twitchy, operating in the dark, and in the commotion four people are shot, including the ship’s third pilot Nascimento Costa, who ultimately succumbs to his wounds. The remaining crew are gathered together and told the ship is under the command of a revolutionary force led by General Humberto Delgado, and cautioned not to resist. The Santa Maria is renamed Santa Liberdade by the rebels, but its lofty goals are swiftly put aside. In order to save one of the wounded crew, the revolutionaries are forced to change course for the island of Saint Lucia. This isn’t done for entirely humanitarian reasons–Galvão’s time on the ship leads him to conclude that it is inadequate for launching a military attack, and the mission is better off reverting to a propaganda campaign. In any case, landing at Saint Lucia removes the element of surprise. Within hours of the landing, the world knows of the hijacking. On board the ship, the rebels’ radios are tuned to the world’s news stations as the navigator plots an unpredictable trajectory, making their journey more difficult to track by anyone giving chase. For the passengers, apart from the initial shock of the piracy, life on the ship goes on very much as before–only a few days after the hijacking, the orchestra is back to doing its evening performance, and the pool is once again full.