Brazilian cargo ship Cabedelo

After the vessel was completed on June 14, 1912, at the Flensburger Schiffsbau-Gesellschaft shipyard in Flensburg, Germany, it was launched under the name Prussia, operated by Hamburg Amerika Linie (Hapag) of Hamburg.[1]

The ship was 111 meters (364 ft 2 in) long, 15.5 meters (50 ft 10 in) wide, had a draft of 6.7 meters (22 ft 0 in) and a tonnage of 3,557 tons. Made with a steel hull, she was propelled by steam, with a triple-expansion engine allowing her to reach a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph).[2]

She was in the service of the Imperial German Navy, as a logistical support ship for the cruiser SMS Dresden and the armed merchant ships SMS Cap Trafalgar and SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm. On June 1, 1917, with Brazil's entry into the First World War against Germany, the ship was confiscated by the Brazilian government in the port of Santos, where she had been held since September 1915.[1] She was renamed Dresden and then Cabedelo, being now operated by Lloyd Brasileiro and registered in the port of Rio de Janeiro under the number 270.[3]

On February 14, 1942, the ship set sail from Philadelphia for the Antilles, bound for Rio de Janeiro, carrying a cargo of coal. Despite the war in Europe, at the time neither the convoys nor the voyages of the merchant ships sailing off the east coast of the United States, known as the Pan-American Security Zone, were controlled.[4] The Cabedelo sailed to Rio de Janeiro on February 14, 1942.

After that day, the Cabedelo disappeared without a trace, as did her crew of 13 officers, 3 non-commissioned officers, and 37 sailors, stokers and deckhands, totaling 54 men. She was commanded by Captain Pedro Veloso da Silveira.[3]

Although the ship disappeared without a trace, the authorities considered her to have been lost by enemy action, since the weather was good in the region. European researchers - among them Alberto Santoni, from the Faculty of Political Science in Rome, and Jürgen Rohwer, from the Library of Contemporary Studies in Stuttgart - claim that the Cabedelo's executioner was the Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci, and they also define February 25 as the day of the attack.[3]

However, these statements were not (and still are not) unanimously accepted, as two factors contribute to fueling the controversy: The Naval Historical Branch has stated that the sinking of the ship is not included in Italian records, an important factor since all the activity of a submarine was meticulously recorded in the logbooks and communicated to the central commands in Europe. The other factor is that, if one considers the date (February 25), the ship had already sailed for 11 days and covered at least 2,000 miles, which put her outside the region reserved for the Leonardo Da Vinci's actions. In addition, an internal memorandum from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated June 22 - four months after the disappearance - considered the possibility that the ship's crew had been kidnapped and sent to a concentration camp, which further added to the controversy.[3]

Another hypothesis suggests that the ship was attacked by another Italian submarine, the Luigi Torelli, which had attacked two merchant ships off the Guianas on February 19.[3] The Comandante Cappellini - another Italian submarine - is also mentioned.[5]

In any case, there was no categorical proof that any of such Italian submarines had caused the attack. It was also thought that the crew might have been machine-gunned when they were already on board the launches, but as no launch, not even an empty one, was found, the mystery remains to this day.[3]

Despite the uncertainty about the perpetrator, the crew of the Cabedelo were considered victims of the war and therefore had their names inscribed on the Monument to the Dead of World War II in Rio de Janeiro.

• Cinquini, José Carlos Viana (2008). Abrindo Caminho para a Vitória: A Defesa do Brasil na Ação Anti-Submarino na Segunda Guerra Mundial (1942-1945) (in Brazilian Portuguese). Universidade Católica de Santos.
• Sander, Roberto (2007). O Brasil na mira de Hitler: a história do afundamento de navios brasileiros pelos nazistas (in Brazilian Portuguese). Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva.