SS Quanza was a World War II-era Portuguese passenger-cargo ship,[3] best known for carrying 317 people, many of them refugees, from Nazi-occupied Europe to North America in 1940.

[1][5] In August 1940, Quanza was chartered by a group of passengers seeking to flee Europe, including French actors Marcel Dalio and Madeleine Lebeau.

Because the captain doubted the validity of the visas, he required that many passengers also buy return tickets on the likelihood that no country would admit them.

During the stop, Jacob Morewitz, a Jewish maritime lawyer from Newport News, filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of four of the refugees, suing the Portuguese National Line for $100,000 for breach of contract.

[14] Victoria Redel, whose father and grandmother had been on the voyage, published a novel about the ship's crossing in 2007 titled The Border of Truth.

[15] "Nobody Wants Us" Emmy nominated PBS documentary that chronicles the experiences of three teenagers that were imprisoned on SS Quanza in the port of Hampton Roads, Virginia.