About the Book
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 to Panama, and trading for Canadians to and from South America and the Caribbean. Though the owners had a contract (charter party) stating no deck cargo was to be carried, a young Bahamian boy and his family retrieved bales of rubber which floated free after the sinking. The Cygnet men were the only Allied sailors rescued by the Monarch of Nassau, though on another Bahamian vessel, the Ena K., they shared space with survivors of other shipwrecks, and missed sailing with Sydney Poitier by mere weeks.
The attack itself was recorded for posterity live by the Italians, so that we can watch it online - even whilst on the move ourselves. The crew, mostly from small islands in the Greek archipelago (only two out of 28 Greeks were from Athens, and most were from Andros or Chios), were also from Romania and Spain. They were able to interact with their Italian attackers for roughly an hour, then encounter a one-legged white man in a rowboat who guided them between the reefs at 4 am, then accept a ride from Captain Roland Roberts aboard his British-built freighter, before meeting the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in the colony's capital, Nassau. Overall the men would travel by lifeboat, lorry, passenger ship, a motor sailor and train over two weeks before they reached a base, albeit in exile.
In Nassau the sailors were given an open-armed welcome from fellow Greeks from Kalymnos, living industriously in the Bahamas since the late 1800s when they had arrived for the prosperous sponge fishing trade, which had recently collapsed. They shared the island - and no doubt the pubs - with over 100 other cast-up sailors from other vessels. From there Captain Charles A. Pettee, master of a wooden freighter built in Harbour Island that was overcrowded with castaways and farmers, were cleared outwards by two American consuls from Minnesota, and interviewed by US Navy intelligence officers before being reunited with their employers in New York. They too had been forced by the war to move from Andros to Athens, London, then to New York. For most of the sailors, it would take years, until war's end, before they were able to reunite with friends and family in Greece. Some of them would opt to stay in America, because of the Cygnet.
The loss of the Cygnet gave the men on both sides of the steel vessels involved plenty to photograph and film, talk and write about, and remember. There is a certain irony in the Cygnet skipper's letter of protest, filed in Nassau, when men on both sides admit that interactions between Italians and Greek were jocular and relaxed. Interestingly, it was the Greek, and not the Italian sailors, who lived to tell the tale. Within a year the Tazzoli, too, was at the sea floor, her commander dead by his own hand, his legacy only resurrected, with an Italian submarine named after him, long after the war.
About the Author :
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.
Review :
"Your work is quite impressive and excellent." Gaylord Kelshall, author U-Boats in the Caribean.
Eric Wiberg "...builds a character both attractive and intriguing to the reader. I ended genuinely curious about what might come next, and confident that I was in the hands of an expert story-teller." William F. Buckley Jr.
"You have produced an excellent historical combination of these events which have not been detailed in publications. I wish you luck and success." Herbert A. Werner, author of Iron Coffins
"Eric Wiberg has made a significant contribution to the bibliography of World War II history," J. Revell Carr, author of All Brave Sailors
"Eric Wiberg's ability to unearth obscure historical facts keeps me in a constant state of surprise. I commend his relentless determination to verify every detail with local sources in Nassau's historical community, for corroboration of his findings." Capt. Paul C. Aranha, author of The Island Airman and his Bahama Islands Home
"Eric Wiberg's detailed work is the first comprehensive elucidation of U-boat activity in the Bermuda region and follows his substantial volume on similar movements around the Bahamas. Thanks to his scholarship, the subject has now been forced to the surface." Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PhD, FSA, Executive Director, National Museum of Bermuda
"You skillfully move the story along. This is great. I get a sense of journey and moving forward with every page. ...You have a great writing voice - very gentlemanly. I can absolutely imagine sitting down with you in a cozy library, sipping cognac, and listening to these stories. Establishing a writing voice is really critical, and I am impressed by your clear, personal sound." Rachel Middagh, Hong Kong
