Itapagé

On 26 September 1943, at 1:50 pm, the passenger ship Itapagé was passing off Lagoa Azeda when she was hit on the starboard side by two torpedoes from the German submarine U-161, commanded by Captain Achilles, and sank in four minutes. She was a Brazilian coastal ship of the Companhia Nacional de Navegação Costeira, one of the 'Itas', built at the Chantier de Normandie shipyard in Rouen, France. Under the command of master mariner Antônio da Barra, she was sailing alone from Rio de Janeiro to the north, because she made too much smoke and was too slow to keep up with a convoy. Besides passengers, she carried drums of muriatic acid and diesel oil, 2,000 cases of beer, two trucks and 30,000 small cups used in rubber tapping, and the acid on deck caught fire during the attack. After the sinking, the submarine surfaced and German sailors photographed the survivors and the site before moving on.

The master, crew and passengers abandoned ship in lifeboats, many were rescued by jangada fishermen, and the survivors reached the beaches of Jequiá and Lagoa Azeda, where they were taken in by local residents; Army doctors came from São Miguel dos Campos. In Maceió, 22 injured people were taken to a hospital, and crew member Domingos Silva Santos, who had already survived the sinking of the Arabutan, died of his wounds on 27 September. In all, 22 people died as a result of the attack. Objects from the Itapagé are displayed in a Second World War museum in Maceió, organised by Major Elza.

Today the forecastle lies broken off at the first hold, where the first torpedo struck, and further along the hull breaks up again, in the area of the second impact. At the stern the keel, the end of the shaft and the rudder are exposed, but the propeller has been removed. Amidships stand two diesel engines more than 5 m tall and, beside them, boilers and triple-expansion steam engines. Barracudas and turtles move through the corridor between the two engines, and among the species that frequent the wreck barracudas, some up to 2 m long, and rays predominate. The wreck gathers a great many fish, and there are also corals, reef fish and moray eels; sharks sometimes appear. Beer and perfume bottles, many tyres and, under the first mast, the wheels and axle of one of the trucks are still scattered across the sand, and the horn trumpet, one of the last parts of the ship to work, was found in 2008 and left on the bottom. In the Maceió area, the best season usually runs from September to March, with clearer water and calmer seas.