Ninety-nine years
On 25 October 1927 the Principessa Mafalda sank off the coast of Bahia with 1,259 people on board, most of them emigrants on their way to America. To remember that night and the lives it marked.
Terceira
Classe
The Italian crossing to Brazil and the sinking of the Principessa Mafalda.
- On board
- 1,259 people
- Departure
- Genoa, 11.10.1927
- Shipwreck
- Coast of Bahia, 25.10.1927
One family, one ship, one century
Two sisters, five children and not a single grown man walked up the gangway in Genoa.
Rosa Forner and Maria Luigia Forner were on their way to join their husbands, who had gone ahead to the interior of São Paulo.
Fourteen days later, off the coast of Bahia, the Principessa Mafalda’s propeller shaft broke. The ship sank that same night. All seven members of this family survived. This portal tells how, from the documents that remain and from a memory that has crossed a hundred years.
The crossing1,259
people on board on the last voyage, according to the plaque at the Galata Museo del Mare in Genoa.
314
dead, by the figure the shipping company declared. There is no official list of names.
14
days between Genoa and the night of the shipwreck, on a voyage to Buenos Aires that took a little over two weeks.
Timeline
From 1866 to the centenary
- 1908
The Principessa Mafalda
Launched by Lloyd Italiano and named after the second daughter of King Vittorio Emanuele III. In 1909 she begins the Genoa–Buenos Aires run, calling in Brazil.
- 192711 October
Departure from Genoa
Rosa Forner, with one-year-old Enrico, and her sister Maria Luigia, with four children, board in third class. On board: 1,259 people.
- 192725 October
The shipwreck
Off the coast of Bahia, the propeller shaft breaks and water floods in through the stern. The ship sinks that same night. 314 people die.
- 19372 January
Mafalda is born
The seventh child of Rosa Forner and Fausto Miotto, in the interior of São Paulo. She is given the ship’s name. No one ever said why.
Genoa – SantosThe crossing
The third-class hold, the price of a ticket and who was on board.
1908 – 1927The Principessa Mafalda
The ship, the last voyage, the night of the shipwreck and the names of those who never arrived.
Forner · Miotto · Dei AgnoliThe people
Who embarked, who was waiting in Brazil and who stayed behind in the Veneto.
Research journal
From the archive
The Principessa Mafalda in 3D
A reconstruction of the ship to turn, open and walk through, built from a Lloyd Italiano postcard, with the names of the victims drifting in the background.
Tracing your ancestors in the province of Treviso, Italy
Monfumo, Castelcucco, Cavaso del Tomba, Maser, Asolo. What is online, what is not, and how to request records from an Italian comune without losing the details that matter.
The book
Terceira Classe
Why did Rosa Forner name her daughter after the ship that nearly killed her?
Nine years in archives in Brazil and Italy, and the memory of a family that kept that night alive for three generations. In preparation for the centenary of the shipwreck.
About the bookFor descendants
Was someone from your family on board?
Thousands of families in Brazil, Argentina and Italy descend from passengers of the Principessa Mafalda. If you keep a document, a photograph or a story, this work wants to hear from you.
Write to us