Photographs, newspapers and documents
Gallery
104 images from the collection gathered for the book: the ship, the night of the shipwreck, the 1927 press, the family and the papers it left behind.
On board
The first-class saloons, as the company photographed them. No onboard photograph of third class is known.
The grand staircase.Reproduced on the mafaldasinking website; original source not traced The first-class dining saloon.Reproduced on the mafaldasinking website; original source not traced The à la carte restaurant.Reproduced on the mafaldasinking website; original source not traced The winter garden.Reproduced on the mafaldasinking website; original source not traced The smoking room.Reproduced on the mafaldasinking website; original source not traced The ladies’ writing room.Reproduced on the mafaldasinking website; original source not traced A first-class cabin.Reproduced on the mafaldasinking website; original source not traced A company of actors travelling on board, in the mid-1920s.Reproduced on the mafaldasinking website; original source not traced
The shipwreck
From the afternoon of 25 October 1927 to the rescue.
25.10.1927At a quarter past six in the evening on 25 October 1927, photographed from the deck of the Alhena, an hour after the shaft broke. Two boats are already in the water.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 30.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 25.10.1927Fifteen minutes later, at half past six and still in full daylight: the ship listing and beginning to sink by the stern. Three boats are rowing towards the Alhena.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 30.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira IllustrationThe diagram O Malho used to explain the damage to its readers: the shaft tunnel, the coupling and the side propeller that came loose.O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 5.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira The French steamer Mosella, one of the ships that spent the night picking people up. Four of those she pulled from the water died on board before dawn.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo The first survivors to set foot in Rio, at night, at the Customs guard post. In the magazine: “Na guardamoria da Alfandega: os primeiros naufragos que pisaram a terra carioca” (At the Customs guard post: the first survivors to set foot in Rio).Illustrated magazine, Rio de Janeiro, November 1927 (probably Revista da Semana) · Emerson Franco Rocha da Silva collection IllustrationThe sinking in an illustration from the Polish press, made by someone who was not there: “Zatonięcie «Mafaldy», luksusowego włoskiego parowca” (The sinking of the Mafalda, a luxurious Italian steamer).Polish press, 1927; clipping without the newspaper’s name 25.10.2012The plaque in memory of the shipwreck at the Galata Museo del Mare in Genoa, unveiled on 25 October 2012, the 85th anniversary: 1,259 people on board, 314 victims.Galata Museo del Mare, Genoa
The newspapers of 1927
How the news reached Brazil: Recife, Rio, Santos and São Paulo, and the Italian community.
26.10.1927The next day, in Madrid: “Ha naufragado el Principessa Mafalda”. The first version got two things wrong, speaking of a reef and of thirty-four dead, and printed the list of Spaniards who had boarded in Barcelona.Heraldo de Madrid, 26.10.1927 26.10.1927The first report in Santos, in the corner of the page: “Formidavel desastre maritimo” (Tremendous maritime disaster). The day’s headline was still aviation, and the death toll given was 1,150.A Tribuna, Santos, 26.10.1927, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 27.10.1927The first report, two days later: “Uma tragédia em plena noite no oceano” (A tragedy in the dead of night on the ocean).Diário da Manhã, Recife, 27.10.1927, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 28.10.1927“A horrorosa tragedia do Principessa Mafalda” (The horrific tragedy of the Principessa Mafalda): the captain of the Mosella reconstructs the sinking, and the paper puts the dead at 600.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 28.10.1927, p. 2 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 29.10.1927The Rossetti’s arrival in Recife with twenty-seven survivors, and what they told the newspaper.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 29.10.1927, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 29.10.1927“Quem o responsavel pela catastrophe?” (Who is responsible for the catastrophe?): looting on board, crew accused of taking the lifeboats, and the propeller that broke.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 29.10.1927, p. 2 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 28.10.1927“A tragedia maritima do Principessa Mafalda”, with a map of the route, and the headline saying the captain had been saved, which was false.O Paiz, Rio de Janeiro, 28.10.1927 29.10.1927The company’s list, with “Former Miotto, Rosa, Miotto Enrico” and the Deagnelli entries: the two sisters under their husbands’ surnames.Diario Nacional, São Paulo, 29.10.1927, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 31.10.1927The account of the captain of the Formosa, which picked up survivors, and, in the next column, a cable from Rome: “A princesa Mafalda deu á luz um menino” (Princess Mafalda has given birth to a boy).A Tribuna, Santos, 31.10.1927, p. 2 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 31.10.1927Six days later the sinking was already showing: three cinemas in Santos advertise “A catastrophe do Principessa Mafalda” (The Principessa Mafalda catastrophe), “a film describing the horrendous maritime disaster”.A Tribuna, Santos, 31.10.1927, p. 8 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 1.11.1927“Os náufragos do Mafalda” (The Mafalda’s survivors): the report written at the Hospedaria do Brás on the day the family was registered.Diario Nacional, São Paulo, 1.11.1927, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 1.11.1927Forty-three survivors travelled from Rio to São Paulo in a special carriage coupled to the night train.A Tribuna, Santos, 1.11.1927, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 2.11.1927“O naufrágio do Principessa Mafalda” (The wreck of the Principessa Mafalda): the immigration superintendent’s official letter about the survivors landed in Rio.A Tribuna, Santos, 2.11.1927, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 5.11.1927“A tragédia do Principessa Mafalda” (The tragedy of the Principessa Mafalda), across a double page, with the logbook of the captain of the French ship that heard the distress call.O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 5.11.1927, pp. 30–31 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 5.11.1927Illustration“O impressionante naufrágio” (The shocking shipwreck), in O Malho’s illustrated plate.O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 5.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 5.11.1927Photographs of the French ship Formose and of the survivors on Ilha das Flores, in Rio.O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 5.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 5.11.1927Survivors photographed before landing.O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 5.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 5.11.1927The Mattiogi family, eight people from the same hold, all of them saved.O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 5.11.1927, p. 39 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 6.11.1927“La Prensa, em editorial, pede a punição dos officiaes e tripulantes do Principessa Mafalda com as mais severas penas da lei” (La Prensa, in an editorial, calls for the officers and crew of the Principessa Mafalda to be punished with the full severity of the law).Diario Nacional, São Paulo, 6.11.1927, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 6.11.1927The sinking becomes an advertisement: “Um naufrago do Mafalda e os cheques Sudan” (A Mafalda survivor and the Sudan cheques), publicity for a cigarette brand, in the same issue.Diario Nacional, São Paulo, 6.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 6.11.1927“Como um transatlantico afunda” (How a liner sinks): a portrait of Captain Gulì and, below it, a scene of the Titanic sinking, which the paper itself calls “similar to that of the Principessa Mafalda”. Without photographs, the press illustrated with another ship.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 6.11.1927, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 9.11.1927“Os commentarios tendenciosos sobre o naufragio do Mafalda” (The biased comments on the sinking of the Mafalda): two weeks later, the dispute was already over how to tell the story of the disaster.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 9.11.1927, p. 2 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 12.11.1927The steamer Mosella, photographed for the magazine the following week.O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 12.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 12.11.1927“Nos destroços do Principessa Mafalda” (Among the wreckage of the Principessa Mafalda): a ship sights the wreckage north-east of the Abrolhos.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 12.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 30.11.1927“Duas photographias inéditas para o público brasileiro” (Two photographs never before seen by the Brazilian public): the ship sinking, seen from the Alhena.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 30.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 1927Lutto Italiano: the cover of the São Paulo Italian community’s magazine after the shipwreck. Dated by its content to between 29 October and 12 November 1927.Il Pasquino Coloniale, São Paulo, 1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 1920Seven years before the sinking, a rumour: in 1920 word spread in São Paulo that the Mafalda had gone down. “La catastrofe del Mafalda, ossia l’affondamento dell’Agenzia Americana” (The Mafalda catastrophe, or the sinking of the Agenzia Americana), mocks the Pasquino, with a cartoon of the editor who “had the vision” of the tragedy.Il Pasquino Coloniale, São Paulo, 1920, p. 12 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira An advertisement for Navigazione Generale Italiana: third class to Genoa and Naples on the Principessa Mafalda cost 225 gold francs, and the company described it with a dining room, washrooms with mirrors and electric light. Before June 1916.Il Pasquino Coloniale, São Paulo, before 6.1916 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 1920A 1920 advertisement for Navigazione Generale Italiana: third class to Europe on the Principessa Mafalda cost 420 gold lire, more than on the other ships advertised.Il Pasquino Coloniale, São Paulo, January 1920, p. 24 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 1.3.1928“Sobre o Principessa Mafalda: as conclusões do inquerito official, procedido em Roma” (On the Principessa Mafalda: the conclusions of the official inquiry held in Rome), four months after the sinking.Diário da Manhã, Recife, 1.3.1928 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 24.11.1928A year later, another sinking, the Vestris, and the editorial opens with the Mafalda: “Quando o Principessa Mafalda foi ao fundo…” (When the Principessa Mafalda went down…).O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 24.11.1928, p. 21 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 5.1.1929Fifteen months later, a column was already calling the shipwreck “um assumpto que naufragou para sempre”, a subject that had sunk for ever.Diario Nacional, São Paulo, 5.1.1929 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira 1.5.1929“Procuraram desertar da vida” (They sought to desert life): among the cases in the report, that of Ernesto Lovato, a survivor of the Mafalda, who took his own life in São Paulo a year and a half later.Diario Nacional, São Paulo, 1.5.1929, p. 1 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira
The family
The Forners, the Miottos and the Dei Agnolis: those who crossed and those who stayed in the Veneto.
Rosa Forner Miotto, 1903–1986. She survived the sinking at twenty-four, with her one-year-old son. The portrait is the photograph from her 1976 foreign-resident card, enlarged and digitally restored by the author.Miotto family collection Fausto Miotto, born in Castelcucco in 1904. He married Rosa Forner in 1926 and left for Brazil alone.Miotto family collection Maria Luigia Forner, 1896–1992, Rosa Forner’s sister.Dei Agnoli family collection Maria Luigia Forner and Angelo Dei Agnoli with three children, in the 1940s; by their ages, they are not the children of the shipwreck but ones born later. Colourised photograph.Dei Agnoli family collection Maria Luigia Forner and Angelo Dei Agnoli. He had crossed on the same ship six months before her.Dei Agnoli family collection Maria Luigia Forner and Angelo Dei Agnoli in old age, in a studio portrait.Dei Agnoli family collection Pulcheria Pasqua Dei Agnoli, 1921–2013. She was six on the night of the shipwreck. Identity-document photograph, 1980.Dei Agnoli family collection Gina Oliva Dei Agnoli, Maria Luigia’s daughter. She was seven on the night of the sinking; on the Alhena list she is “Ginneta”.Dei Agnoli family collection 1979Rino Dei Agnoli, Maria Luigia’s son, in a 1979 identity photograph. He was four on the night of the sinking.Dei Agnoli family collection Enrico Miotto, 1926–1998. He was one year and fifteen days old on the night of the shipwreck.Miotto family collection Sante Forner, 1893–1947, Rosa Forner’s brother, in uniform.Forner family collection, Veneto Sante Forner and Maria Luigia Miotto. He was Rosa Forner’s brother; she was Fausto’s sister. The two marriages in this story joined the same two families.Forner family collection, Veneto Maria Luigia Miotto and Sante Forner as a young couple, in the oval portrait the family keeps in its frame. She was Fausto’s sister; he was Rosa’s brother.Forner family collection, Veneto Sante Forner in the centre, with his wife, Maria Luigia Miotto. Behind them, their son Leo; bottom left, their son Galliano.Forner family collection, Veneto Three of Fausto Miotto’s siblings: Maria Luigia in the centre, Veronica on the right, and Vittorio.Forner family collection, Veneto Amabile Veronica Miotto, Fausto’s sister, with her husband, Lucindo Parisotto, and their family.Forner family collection, Veneto Martino Forner, brother of Sante and of Rosa Forner.Forner family collection, Veneto Galliano Forner, Sante’s son, in uniform. A framed portrait kept by the family in the Veneto.Forner family collection, Veneto A photograph from the family collection, undated and unidentified. In the background, the hillside planted in terraces.Forner family collection, Veneto 1903Nanaimo’s No. 1 Mine, British Columbia, in 1903. Pietro Forner, Rosa’s brother, worked in the Nanaimo coal mines and died in an accident in 1916.Nanaimo Community Archives, 491a
The documents
The papers that tell this story where memory falls short.
8.3.1940Carta d’identità of Sante Forner, Comune di Asolo, 8 March 1940. Parentage: di Vincenzo, fu Pandolfo Domenica Santa, meaning his father was alive and his mother already dead.Forner family collection, Veneto The frame holding Sante Forner’s three war medals, on the wall of the family home in the Veneto. On the certificate, handwritten: Forner Sante di Vincenzo.Forner family collection, Veneto 1945–1946The frame the family keeps under glass: a letter from INAIL, the Italian workplace-accident institute, to the Ricerca Mineraria di Asolo about an accident Sante Forner had on 4 April 1945, and his 1946 CGIL union card. Sante would die in the mine in 1947.Forner family collection, Veneto Angelo Dei Agnoli’s Italian passport, Regno d’Italia, with the visa of the Brazilian Consulate General. Certified photocopy made in 1992.Dei Agnoli family collection Angelo Dei Agnoli’s Foreigners’ Registry certificate no. 61: landed at Santos on 30 April 1927 from the steamer Principessa Mafalda. Certified photocopy made in 1992.Dei Agnoli family collection 14.6.1913The manifest of the steamer Chicago, Le Havre to New York, June 1913, sheet 39. On line 18, Pietro Forner, 24, of Castelcucco, Rosa’s brother; his next of kin in Italy, his father, Vincenzo Forner.National Archives (USA), Ellis Island manifests, via FamilySearch 1916Pietro Forner’s death in the official mines report for British Columbia: Nanaimo, 25 November, “Left lung crushed by fall of rock; fatal”.Annual Report of the Minister of Mines, British Columbia, 1916, p. K 510 28.10.1927The list of survivors the Alhena landed in Rio, 28 October 1927, sheet 3. At numbers 26 and 27, Forner Rosa, 24, and Enrico, 1; from 44 to 48, Forner Maria, 31, Ginneta, 7, Pulgheria, 6, Arino, 4, and Danilo, 2. On the same sheet, the Lovatto family. All in third class.Arquivo Nacional, BR RJANRIO OL.0.RPV.PRJ.22463 28.10.1927The note that closes the list: fifty third-class passengers, landed at Ilha das Flores, brought by the Alhena. Below, by hand: passengers number 24 and 25 “perderam seus maridos” (lost their husbands) and asked to be sent back to Italy.Arquivo Nacional, BR RJANRIO OL.0.RPV.PRJ.22463 29.12.1949Enrico Miotto’s Foreigners’ Registry card, 29 December 1949. Twenty-two years after arriving, still Italian.Miotto family collection 1977Enrico Miotto’s foreign-resident identity card, with photograph, São Paulo, 1977. Son of Fausto Miotto and Rosina Forner, landed at Santos, born 10 October 1926.Miotto family collection 12.1976Rosa Forner Miotto’s foreign-resident card (Form 18-A), São Paulo Public Security Department, with a photograph from December 1976: born in Monfumo on 24.06.1903, landed at Santos.Miotto family collection
The arrival
The Hospedaria dos Imigrantes do Brás in São Paulo, where the family was registered on 31 October 1927.
5.11.1927Women survivors on Ilha das Flores, in Rio: about a hundred people, almost all women and children, around the Italian ambassador’s wife, the one in the light dress, marked with an X on the ground. The magazine wrote: “A senhora embaixatriz da Italia — assignalada — entre senhoras que se salvaram no naufragio do Principessa Mafalda” (The wife of the Italian ambassador — marked — among ladies who survived the sinking of the Principessa Mafalda). Rosa Forner, her sister Maria Luigia and the five children were on the island from 28 to 30 October and may be in the photograph; no one has been recognised.Revista da Semana, Rio de Janeiro, 5.11.1927, p. 20 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira The Hospedaria dos Imigrantes do Brás from above, with the tracks running into the grounds: immigrants stepped off the train already inside the wall.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo Immigrants in the Hospedaria’s covered courtyard, around the palm tree.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo The roll-call hall: long benches in rows. Here people waited until their name was called out.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo An empty room in the Hospedaria, with benches along the walls and light coming in through the windows.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo The registration hall, where every immigrant was entered in the Hospedaria’s book.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo A Hospedaria dormitory, with iron bunks in rows.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo Another Hospedaria dormitory, with two-tier iron bunk beds.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo The dining hall: long tables, backless benches, attendants in white between the rows.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo 31.10.1927Cornelio Lovato, his wife and their two children, survivors of the Mafalda, photographed at the Hospedaria. They are Rosa Forner’s neighbours in the arrivals register.Diario Nacional, São Paulo, 1.11.1927 · Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira Trunks, bundles and suitcases on the quay, beside a ship’s hull. The port is not identified.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo Immigrants with their luggage on a platform, beside a locomotive. The place is not identified.Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo / Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo