The Long, Sad History of Migrant Ships Being Turned Away From Ports

4 minute read

This year has seen a crisis of devastating proportions for seafaring migrants around the world. The total number of smuggled migrants who have arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean in 2015 has just topped 101,000, and Southeast Asia has seen its own crisis, with thousands of Burmese and Bangladeshi refugees attempting to reach Indonesia, Thailand or Malaysia. The news is filled with horror stories about the fates those migrants have met, from death by drowning to starvation while desperately seeking a harbor that wouldn’t turn them away. The U.S., the U.N. and the Pope have all urged the world to help the desperate refugees.

But, as news of 2015’s migrant crisis continues to evolve, it’s worth remembering that the turning away of ships full of hopeful immigrants has been occurring for decades, with catastrophic results.

In 1914, for example, a ship called the Komagata Maru, carrying hundreds of Indian immigrants to Canada who were subject to restrictive and confusing immigration policies, was turned away from Vancouver and forced to sail back to India, where many of the passengers faced imprisonment or death. Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper has offered an apology for the events of nearly 100 years earlier, and in April, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi tweeted a photograph from his visit to Canada, remembering the incident.

Another historical example of a ship of refugees being denied entry to a port—one of the more famous such incidents, thanks to the 1976 movie Voyage of the Damned—was the 1939 story of the MS St. Louis. In May of that year, as TIME reported as the incident was underway, the St. Louis left Hamburg, Germany, laden with nearly 1,000 German-Jewish refugees. The destination was Cuba, as a way station for eventual immigration to the United States. Upon reaching Havana, however, only a few dozen people were permitted to disembark.

As the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum explains in an investigation of the incident, the St. Louis left Cuba bound for Miami, but a cable to President Roosevelt went unanswered. The State Department responded that all immigrants must take their turns on a waiting list and acquire visas in advance before being allowed into the U.S., even though at that point the waiting list for immigrants from that region was several years long. In general, anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. at the time—this was before official American involvement in WWII, and before many Americans understood the scope of Nazi ambition and ruthlessness—was stronger than sympathy for the Jews of Europe.

The ship returned to Europe, arranging with Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and France to avoid returning directly to Germany. Even so, about half of the people who were on board in 1939 did not survive the Holocaust. And, as TIME reported in 1939, the St. Louis incident was not isolated:

Meanwhile, in half-a-dozen harbors in the Western Hemisphere, off ports in the Mediterranean, the St. Louis drama was repeated. At Veracruz 327 refugees from Loyalist Spain were landed from the Flandre, 104 German Jews turned back. On the Taurus at Veracruz an exiled Jewish chemist, learning that he could not land, took poison, told the captain he would be dead in two minutes, died. In Buenos Aires, 200 Jewish refugees on the Caporte, the Monte Olivia, the Mendoza, were sent back to Germany.

Off the coast of Palestine the weirdest and most wretched drama of the homeless was taking place. There, outside the three-mile limit, a collection of jampacked, unseaworthy little tubs lay waiting for a chance to run cargoes of permitless refugees ashore. There were Greek sailing schooners like the Panagiya Correstrio, usually carrying three fishermen, with 180 below decks; tramps like the grimy, 320-ton Assimi, flying the flag of Panama, which hauled 270 German and Central European Jews for 36 days before British officials arrested its captain; cargo boats like those which, unable to run refugees into Palestine, abandoned 424 Danzig Jews on the Island of Crete, tried unsuccessfully to dump 1,100 on the small Greek Island of Dia.

The individual cases are unique in their details. But in general, each situation was sparked by the need to flee one place—for reasons such as poverty or persecution—and the unwillingness of another place to accept new people.

See Images of the Mediterranean's Migrant Crisis

migrants rescue mediterranean italy
A ship belonging to Italian authorities approaches one of three migrant rafts some 120 miles off the Italian coast, about 40 miles from Libya, on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli
migrants rescue mediterranean italy
Italian authorities are seen during an operation some 120 miles off the Italian coast that rescued more than 100 migrants coming from Libya on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli
migrants rescue mediterranean italy
A boat of migrants that set off from Libya, as seen from a ship belonging to Italian authorities, during a rescue operation on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli
migrants rescue mediterranean italy
A member of Italy's Guardia di Finanza brings a migrant aboard after they were rescued from an inflatable boat, which originated in Libya and was found some 120 miles off the Italian coast in the Mediterranean, on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli
migrants rescue mediterranean italy
Immigrants from Bangladesh on a ship belonging to Italy's financial police after being rescued some 120 miles off the Italian coast on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli
migrants rescue mediterranean italy
An officer with Italy's financial police speaks to colleagues on a radio from the command cabin during a migrant rescue operation—which also involved the Italian and Irish navies—some 120 miles off the Italian coast on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli
migrants rescue mediterranean italy
Smoke billows from a migrant boat, set ablaze by Italian authorities so other smugglers don't use it, after they rescued more than 100 people some 120 miles off the Italian coast on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli
migrants rescue mediterranean italy
Rescued immigrants are covered with thermal sheets in Lampedusa after being rescued some 120 miles off the Italian coast on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli
migrants rescue mediterranean italy
An African man disembarks a ship belonging to Italy's financial police after being rescued with about 100 other people in an operation some 120 miles off the Italian coast on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli
migrants rescue mediterranean italy
An African boy stands covered with a thermal sheet in Lampedusa after being rescued some 120 miles off the Italian coast on June 6, 2015.Giulio Piscitelli

More Must-Reads from TIME

Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com