By Keith Allen
DOŅA AURORA was a motorship of the De La Rama Steamship
Company. She was built in Italy in 1939 at the Cantieri Riuniti Dell Adriatico
Yard in Trieste. Two sisters were built in Italy at the same time, rather
unusual I believe for American ships, which were generally built in U.S. yards
under subsidy programs. She was a U.S.-flag ship registered at Iloilo in the
Philippines. I am not familiar with the company but imagine that it was a
small-time inter-island shipper. DOŅA AURORA was of 5011 tons gross and 413
feet long.
DOŅA AURORA was sunk on Christmas Day, 1942, about 200 miles off Brazil, while
en route from Cape Town to Baltimore with a cargo of hides, manganese ore,
coffee, and wool. At 0730 a torpedo from the Italian submarine ENRICO
TAZZOLI struck the engine room, and she sank in fifteen minutes. The freighter
had a complement of seven officers, forty men, twelve Naval Armed Guard sailors,
and twelve passengers. Most of the men got off in a boat and three rafts. The
sub surfaced and picked up two passengers and an armed guard. A patrol plane
spotted a boat with fifty survivors, and on 27
December the British ship TESTBANK rescued them. On 3 January the U.S. seaplane
tender HUMBOLT rescued ten men. Five other survivors spent thirty days on a raft
before reaching the mouth of the Pacatuba River in Brazil; one of them drowned
trying to swim to shore. In all three merchant seamen and one armed guard died
in the affair.
Sources: Ship's particulars from Lloyd's Register, 1942-1943
edition;
details of the sinking from Robert M. Browning, Jr., "U.S. Merchant Vessel
War Casualties of World War II."