D/S Marpesia
Updated Dec. 15-2008

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Misc. WW II:

Marpesia is said to have rescued 19 survivors from the American tanker T. C. McCobb off Surinam, Dutch Guiana on April 10, 1942, sunk by the Italian submarine Pietro Calvi on March 31. According to Page 3 of the archive documents, Marpesia arrived Paramaribo on that date (Apr. 10-1942), having left Trinidad on Apr. 7.

Marpesia reported being attacked by a U-boat at 08:00 GMT on Oct. 2-1942, position 08 53N 60 20W, but reached her destination unharmed. Going back to the archive document referred to above, we learn that she was on a voyage from Trinidad to Paramaribo again on that date, having departed Trinidad the day before. Checking with J. Rohwer, I found a couple of possible candidates, one of them being U-201 (Rosenberg), who was in position 09 03N 60 10W at 08:33 German time on that date (at which time he sank the American Alcoa Transport), but wasn't sure until I had posted a query to the Ubootwaffe.net forum. A response by Roland Berr confirms U-201 as the culprit in this attack, saying Rosenberg reported an unsuccessful attack against an independent vessel at 09:56 that day (U-boat's time in this case = GMT + 2 hrs). He fired a torpedo which missed the target in grid position EO 14, which corresponds to Marpesia's position at the time of her report. Roland suspects Rosenberg would have tried to attack Marpesia again, but his own boat was attacked at 10:58 by US PBY-5A of VP73 with two bombs and damaged, thereby losing track of Marpesia.

Please follow the instructions provided at the last external link below for details on some of her convoy voyages, and compare to the voyages listed on the documents received from the Norwegian archives.

Related external links:
My query w/replies - Ubootwaffe.net forum

Misc. convoys - By clicking on "Ship Search", using "Marpesia" as keyword, several convoys will come up.

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