He joined Reuters as a journalist 16 October 1933. Sheepshanks died, aged 27, in December 1937 at Caudiel, Teruel, Spain, where he was a Reuters special correspondent at the Battle of Teruel in the Spanish Civil War, covering the war from the pro-Franco side. A shell landed just in front of the press car he was in; Bradish Johnson of "Newsweek" was killed outright, Eddie Neil of Associated Press and Sheepshanks were fatally wounded, but Kim Philby of "The Times", much later exposed as a Soviet spy, suffered only a minor head wound.