Swan Sinks: SS Cygnet Sunk by Italian Submarine Enrico Tazzoli, San Salvador, Bahamas in World War II

By Eric Wiberg

The human element of a relatively small incident like the loss of the relatively small, 3530-ton Cygnet, is both compelling and illustrative of the larger, global struggle. The ship itself had served the US government in World War I, and run between Europe and South America for decades. Built Dutch, she was owned and crewed mostly Greek, flagged

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Books
• Release date: May 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9780999437803

Eric Wiberg

Eric Wiberg's career since he began sailing professionally in 1989 has been in the maritime sector, lately as a lecturer and author. He grew up in the Bahamas as part of a large Swedish-American family with half a dozen lawyers. After boarding schools in Massachusetts and Newport, RI, he enrolled at Boston College in 1989. He began racing and delivering sailboats on long voyages, including sailing from the Caribbean to Belgium to attend Harris Manchester College, Oxford for the BC Honors Program. He backpacked in Europe and East Africa and published travel writing in over 20 periodicals. By graduation in 1993 he had bound five collections of prose, poetry, and drawings, then set off on a voyage to New Zealand as mate of the 68-foot wooden sailing ketch, Stornoway, over which he was promoted Captain in the Galapagos at age 23. A year of travel was the basis of his 450-page memoir Round the World in the Wrong Season. On his return to the US a year later, Eric obtained a 100-ton Captain's license from the US Coast Guard then sought work in commercial shipping. He was assigned to the operations desk of a fleet of tanker and bulk ships operated for public company BHO (B&H Oceans). After three years in Singapore and numerous crisis-control situations (including two ship casualties and four deaths), he returned to Newport to work in the Armchair Sailor bookstore and on his round-the-world memoir. Necessity drove him to utilize the captain's license to deliver sailboats to and from New England and the Caribbean, on the back of which he founded Echo Yacht Deliveries in 1999. In 2001 he completed his fourth round-world trip before enrolling at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, on half scholarship. Under the joint-degree masters/Juris Doctorate program with the University of Rhode Island, he was able to study marine policy and present papers on man overboard rescues, tanker spill legislation, and salvage law, culminating in a 200-page final paper. During school he started a real estate company buying and selling roughly a dozen small lots in the Bahamas. He recruited over 100 sailors for voyages then sold Echo Yacht Deliveries in 2005. Eric has performed more than 30 Bermuda voyages and several trans-ocean deliveries, roughly half as captain. On passing the bar in Massachusetts and marrying Alexandra Gray (they had son Felix in 2007), he was recruited by executive search legend Russell Reynolds to join what became RSR Partners in Greenwich, CT. In late 2007 he left RSR to found Ketch Recruiting, still focusing on the shipping sector. He sold Ketch in 2008 to join Boyden global executive search in Baltimore, then joined the Connecticut Maritime Association in Stamford. After a stint with Titan Salvage in 2009, he spent three months helping salvage an oil platform from the seafloor off Freeport, Bahamas, for Overseas Salvage. In early 2010 he joined TradeWinds, a Norwegian shipping publication until October, 2013. Since then he has been Marketing Manager at McAllister Towing & Transportation in Lower Manhattan for 70 tugs in a dozen ports from San Juan to Portland for a roster of over 1,400 ship owners. In his spare time he is a widely published author, historian and lecturer on non-fiction maritime and naval history as well as memoir and travel. He is on boards or committees of the Steamship Historical Society of America (board), the New York Yacht Club (library), and Lyford Cay International School (editorial) in Bahamas.

Book preview

Chapter 1

CARLO FECIADI COSSATO & R.SMG. ENRICO TAZZOLI

The Enrico Tazzoli was one of three submarines of the Calvi class, so named after the first submarine in the series, the Pietro Calvi. Launched on October 14th, 1935, the submarine was named after a martyr of the Italian wars of independence. The other Calvi class boats were the Giuseppe Finzi and Tazzoli. All three were built by the Oderno-Terni-Orlando shipyard in Genoa, were initially deployed in the Mediterranean and then patrolled to the greater Bahamas area during the war the Finzi twice. The design of the submarine was of civilian origin. Submarines after this were designed by the naval draftsmen in the Regia Marina, or the Royal Navy of Italy. They were designed for blue-water, or ocean-going operations in the open sea, and the salient feature was double hull throughout.

Royal Italian Navy submarine, R.Smg. Enrico Tazzoli, being launched at Genoa on 14 October 1935.

Source: www.regiamarina.net

As Christiano d’Adamo of Regiamarina.net writes:

"Typical of this class was an increased range and an improved habitability, thus making the vessels very suitable for long cruises. Unfortunately, these units, slow in maneuvring, were better suited for isolated attacks against slow merchant ships than for group actions. Overall, they should be considered successful since the Calvi sunk 29,603 tons, the Finzi 26,222 and the Tazzoli 96,553."

The dimensions of these three submarines were 276.57 feet in the overall length, 25.3 feet wide, and 17.06 feet deep. Their displacement tonnage was 1,550 tons on the surface and 2,060 tons when submerged. They were propelled by twin 4,400 horsepower diesel engines that were backed up by a 1,800 horsepower secondary motor. These turned two propeller shafts and provided the vessel with 17.1 knots of speed on the surface and eight knots when submerged.

D’Adamo continues, "The standard propulsion system consisted of diesel engines for surface navigation and electric motors for submerged one. The Ammiragli and Balilla class had a third diesel engine attached to a Dynamo used to produce electricity for surface navigation, thus providing for low-speedlong-range capabilities." He notes that Italian submarines never fully researched or installed the Dutch-designed schnorchel device, which enabled the submarines to recharge their batteries and motor under diesel power while submerged.

The range of a Calvi class submarine was 11,400 nautical miles at eight knots on the surface, and was based on a carrying capacity of an impressive 75 tons of diesel. The primary armament consisted of eight torpedoes, each of 533 millimeter, fired from both fore and aft, as well as two 120 by 45-milimetre canons, located just forward and aft of the conning tower. There were an additional four anti-aircraft guns mounted on deck, each of 13.2 millimetres.

The caption for this photo from an Italian naval periodical reads: Betasom officers discussing the modalities for the attack on the western Atlantic, and names Caridi (out of picture), Anfossi, and Polacchini (right). The chart is very interesting as it shows the Italian and German intent to penetrate the Caribbean, cut off the Windward Passage, place a boat at the mouth of the Northeast Providence Channel, and attack Florida. Per the chart below, they achieved most of these objectives, barring an attack on Florida that was forestalled by damage to the Tazzoli and never resumed. Later on, the Caribbean was also entered from the east.

Source: Francesco Mattesini, The Attack of the Betasom Submarines from the Bahama Islands to the Coast of Venezuela (February-March, 1942), from The Bulletin, the Archive of Naval History, Rome, 2014.

One of the unusual features of the submarine was that it was capable of carrying 72 men, versus the 48 to 55 required for a typical German Type VII or Type IX submarine. On her long patrol to the Bahamas, the Tazzoli would carry a complement of 60 men. The crew breakdown was typically seven officers and 65 crew-members. Since one of the most outcome-determinative persons on the submarine was the commander, it will be worth devoting several paragraphs to Carlo Fecia di Cossato, one of the most successful submarine commanders both in the Bahamas region and worldwide during World War