The British in Portugal

George Philips Dart was an Irish merchant who settled in Angra do Heroísmo on Terceira Island in the Azores. Four of his brothers also emigrated to the Portuguese islands, settling in Angra, Horta on Faial, and also in Madeira. Dart became the foremost exporter of oranges from Terceira to London. Growing wealthy, he was a major contributor to the resolution of the financial crisis in the Azores in the 1860s and 1870s, for which he was made a member of the Royal Military Order of Our Lord Jesus Christ in 1873.

Dart was born into a Protestant family in Waterford, Ireland, on 31 May 1811. It is unknown when he arrived on Terceira Island, but he was certainly very young and was quickly making a good living as a wholesaler and as a merchant of agricultural products, with a shop on Rua do Salinas in Angra. By 1831, at the age of just 20, he had already made a loan of 10 contos de réis to the Treasury Board of the Regency of Angra, a sizeable sum.

He owned several farms dedicated to production of oranges and became the foremost exporter of citrus from Terceira. The majority of the citrus produced in the Azores was not sold to mainland Portugal but to Britain. At that time, citrus was a luxury fruit in England, available only from November to May and mainly consumed at Christmas. Initially, British merchants went to the Azores at the start of the season to supervise the purchase and loading of the cargo but, later, many took their families with them and settled permanently on the islands.

Cultivation of oranges flourished in the 18th century. This successful trade benefitted from the suitable growing conditions on the islands and from the geographical location of the archipelago. Additionally, at the end of that century producers obtained a competitive advantage over citrus from Seville as the Anglo-Spanish War had led to a British blockade of Spanish ports. By the mid-1800s over one hundred boats were employed in the trade, with quick schooners being favoured as the fruit was perishable. In 1854, 60 million oranges and 15 million lemons were recorded as going to the UK from the Azores.

However, the accidental import of a leaf-attacking insect from Brazil, and other pests that came later, saw the demise of the industry in face of competition from California and Florida, which ironically had used parent trees from the Azores to establish their industry.

Dart was a supporter of the Liberal cause during Liberal Wars (1828-1834). He was the first consular agent of Brazil in the Azores, being appointed in 1838, and also served as vice-consul on Terceira Island of both Austria (from 1842) and the United States (from 1850). As both a producer and a shipper, he made frequent visits to London, where yet another brother was the importer of his products and those of his brothers. Dart sent his children to school in England.

He was an agent on Terceira Island of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino and, during the severe crisis of currency shortages and devaluation of the currency that affected the Azores during the 1860s and 1870s, he collaborated in the exchange of the old, devalued silver currency for the new one. Before that, much trade had been conducted using old Brazilian, British and other foreign banknotes. Dart contributed to the funds needed to withdraw Brazilian notes from circulation.

Dart married Francisca Elísia de Sampaio e Lemos in 1839. As a Protestant, he had to request permission to marry from the Bishop of Angra, with the couple declaring that neither would renounce their religious convictions. Curiously, some of the children were raised Catholic and others Protestant. He inherited a large farm from his mother-in-law, on the outskirts of Angra, with a mansion, farmhouse, wine cellar, stables, and orchard. He sold this in 1860 after having acquired a plot of land on which he built his own house, a building that today houses the planning department of the Regional Government of the Azores.

He died in Lisbon in 1885, and was buried in the Prazeres Cemetery. In his will, he requested that the funeral be held without pomp and according to Protestant rites. With his wife he had eight children, but only three had descendants. He also had three illegitimate children that he recognised.

Main sources: Portuguese Wikipedia; Jorge Forjaz, Dart - Uma família irlandesa nos Açores e no Mundo. Casa dos Açores, 2017

Book Review

The Bedbug - Klop Ustinov: Britain's Most Ingenious Spy*

by Peter Day

Most people of my generation remember Peter Ustinov – screen actor, playwright, director, TV talk-show personality, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and, above all, raconteur extraordinaire. If you are of a different generation, just take a look at YouTube: you will not regret it. Today, his parents are much less well known. But his mother, Nadia Benois, was a portrait painter and a scenery and costume designer in London for many years. As for his father, his diminutive figure might have been seen at the bar in the Palácio Hotel in Estoril or bumped into somewhere in Lisbon during WWII. Unlike James Bond, 007, he did not have a licence to kill, but he was a spy. Although I am not sure that he saw himself as such. Indeed, on the guided tours on spies in Lisbon and the Estoril Coast he rarely gets a mention.

Jona Ustinov was Russian by birth, Ethiopian and Jewish by ancestry, and German by passport, which meant that he fought most valiantly on the German side during WWI, the recipient of several Iron Crosses.  He lived in the British Mandated Territory of Palestine for a while, was a great traveller in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, an incredible bon viveur and an outstanding chef, always invited to social gatherings. He was such a consummate performer that he turned himself into … an invisible decoy, for want of a better phrase. 

His fascinating story, told by Peter Day, is based on first-hand accounts in archives relatively recently released in Russia, Germany, the UK, and the US, along with fascinating anecdotes that touch on the lives of countless men and women, some later to become famous, others to remain shadowy figures on the world stage, is a resounding tribute to those who, in times of great danger for the Free World as we still know it today, were prepared to sacrifice their lives, their families, their all.

Jona Ustinov, of Russian, Ethiopian and Jewish ancestry, went by the aliases of Mr Johnson or Mr Jonson, or U35. For family, friends, and enemies alike, he became known as Klop, the bedbug. Why a bedbug? Because he was very much a ladies’ man; “bedbug” speaking of clandestine affairs in seedy hotels, as his son was prone to believe for most of his adult life. A bedbug because, as his wife of some fifty years of unblissful matrimony knew, he needed to compensate for his diminutive stature and lack of good looks. 

Anybody who loved John Le Carré's books, or who is interested in the history of the Cold War, in the lives of real-life secret agents, of defectors, of double and triple intelligence operatives will be quite taken with Day's wonderfully researched book that runs from the Russian Revolution through two World Wars to the Cold War, under the very astute eye of the albeit little-known spy, the Bedbug. Ustinov was a scavenger of people's most innermost secrets, with a rare ability to see the big picture and to slot the pieces of information that he picked up into the right pigeon holes.

In 1943, when in Lisbon, he had become a KGB agent, quite unwittingly, by acting under the orders of Kim Philby, MI6's counterespionage Head in the Iberian Peninsula; the would-be traitor of later years. What was at stake at the time was to make sure that all knew that the war was to be fought to the bitter end, namely until Germany's unconditional surrender, with no separate peace enabling the Allies to turn against the Communist regime. Along with the Spanish double agent, Juan Pujol Garcia, code-name Garbo, Klop would be pitting his wits against General Canaris and his men. This was with the help of the German spy, Otto John, who was to become, after the war, the first director of a West German equivalent of MI5.  

Ustinov's success cannot be put down to good luck: wherever he went he used all his tradecraft. A little incident in Estoril shows this most adequately. Under surveillance by four German detectives, after enjoying a lobster and Vinho Verde lunch at the Tamaris Restaurant with a fellow British spy, Klop rose to relieve himself and, minutes later, unbeknown to the German surveillance team outside, was sitting on the 1.15 train to Lisbon, the restaurant being endowed with a small door leading directly onto the station platform, later used, until recently, for discreet getaways after some lovers' rendezvous. 

Lisbon, along with the refugee camps in Caldas da Rainha, was deemed in 1944 to be a happy hunting ground for refugees, racketeers, double agents, double-crossers, smugglers, the stateless, the homeless, the arrivistes, local government officials, poverty-stricken peasants and the political police, all open to corruption and bribery. After WWII, a number of key names from all sides of the spy world, including the active Czechs in Lisbon, would end up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, forced into playing a part in the rebuilding of their country under Communist rule or forced into betraying their former employers, who they had already betrayed more than once during the war years. Day names them all in his book. 

Klop was determined to steer clear of all the post-war wheeling and dealing that still offer a hazy, wacky picture of the Intelligence Services worldwide today. He never became rich and died a poor man. The ultimate enabler of Secret Service deception operations was himself never caught, never interrogated, never betrayed, never imprisoned. He died in his bed, having lived his last years under the guise of an English country squire, in a dilapidated grace-and-favour farmhouse in Gloucestershire, befriending the local gentry, sharing drinks in the village pub, and intent on enjoying his new hobby of bird watching. 

Ninna Taylor

*Biteback. 2015. ISBN: 9781849549097