Commanded by long-distance captain Pedro Veloso da Silveira, she was attacked and disappeared without a trace - with 54 crew members on board - between February 14[Note 1] and 25, 1942, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean east of the Lesser Antilles.

Despite the war in Europe, at the time neither the convoys nor the voyages of the merchant ships sailing off the east coast of the United States, known as the Pan-American Security Zone, were controlled.

European researchers - among them Alberto Santoni, from the Faculty of Political Science in Rome, and Jürgen Rohwer, from the Library of Contemporary Studies in Stuttgart - claim that the Cabedelo's executioner was the Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci, and they also define February 25 as the day of the attack.

The other factor is that, if one considers the date (February 25), the ship had already sailed for 11 days and covered at least 2,000 miles, which put her outside the region reserved for the Leonardo Da Vinci's actions.

In addition, an internal memorandum from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated June 22 - four months after the disappearance - considered the possibility that the ship's crew had been kidnapped and sent to a concentration camp, which further added to the controversy.