Comandante Pessoa

The Comandante Pessoa was launched at the end of 1919 under the name Cliffwood, one of the cargo ships of the Hog Islanders series, and spent 10 years managed by the American company Southern States Lines on Central American routes. The series is named after Hog Island, a river island in Philadelphia where ships were mass-produced because of the needs of the First World War. In 1930 the ship was bought by the American Scantic Line, began sailing the New York–Copenhagen route and to Baltic ports and, at the end of the 1930s, was renamed Mormacsea. In 1940 it was sold to Lloyd Brasileiro and given the name Comandante Pessoa, in honor of captain João Maria Pessoa, of the Brazilian merchant navy and of Lloyd Brasileiro. The ship was wrecked in 1954: the Navy sent the submarine chaser Piranha and the tugboat Triunfo and, with the ship flooding more and more, the last crew members transferred to the support vessels, with no casualties. A shallow reef head, the cabeço amarelo, between this wreck and that of the São Luiz, is pointed to as a possible cause of the damage to the hulls.

Today the wreckage lies in three large parts; from the stern to midship, at the engine room, the hull is capsized to starboard. A section of the port-side hull stands upright on the bottom and forms a wall that separates the bow from the third section of the wreckage. In the engine room, in front of the turbine, there is a circular engine compartment often mistaken for a boiler. Yellow tube sponges cover the entire hull, and schools of spadefish surround the wreck on all sides. Large rays and cobia can also be seen, while barracudas and mackerel patrol the schools of fish that live around the wreck.

The Risca do Zumbi, an offshore reef, is recognized as a possible ancient coastline. In the Risca do Zumbi region, the best time to dive usually runs from October to June, peaking in February, March and April.