https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12523805/The-Nazi-U-boat-doomed-ship-riddle-body-beach-thats-solved-83-years.html?ico=scotland-section-desktopThe Nazi U-boat, a doomed ship and the riddle of the body on the beach that's been solved after 83 years
Incredible detective story unravels tangled web behind tragedy that claimed 800 lives
Family finally given answers to fate of beloved husband buried in unmarked grave
By Gavin Madeley For The Scottish Daily Mail
Published: 01:44, 16 September 2023 | Updated: 01:44, 16 September 2023
On a warm late August day in 1940, as war raged across Europe, a nine-year-old boy was scavenging the coastline near his Ayrshire home in search of treasure. Newly evacuated to the seaside village of Lendalfoot, the child had quickly learned to head for a rocky spot known as the Loup, where all the flotsam and jetsam of the day washes in from the sea. Lured back by the recent find of a fine fishing rod, his eye was suddenly drawn to an altogether more disturbing shape gently lapping at the shore human remains long since dead, yet fully clothed and strapped into a ship’s life jacket. The shock of that encounter stayed with the boy long after he raced to fetch help and the local bobbies arrived to deal with the matter and take the poor soul to the local mortuary. It bothered the child that he didn’t know anything about this unfortunate stranger, neither his name nor anything about his life. Even the scant detail in the brief newspaper report of the man’s burial two days later in a nearby cemetery, in a plain black coffin in an unmarked plot, would have been unilluminating. It would be another eight decades before some remarkable detective work by a band of determined researchers unlocked this macabre mystery and finally revealed the identity of the drowned man as Francesco D’Inverno. Here, the Scottish Daily Mail can exclusively publish the only photograph known to exist of Francesco. But in this strangest of tales, that name was already in the possession of those researchers as a victim of an infamous wartime tragedy, the sinking of the Arandora Star. Indeed, Francesco D’Inverno is etched onto a memorial plaque in Glasgow to the 94 Scots Italians who lost their lives when the converted cruise liner transporting ‘enemy aliens’ to Canada was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat on July 2, 1940. What nobody knew, until now, was that Francesco and the drowned man buried in an anonymous grave were one and the same. ‘It’s just spine-tingling what we have been able to uncover,’ said genealogist Raffaello Gonnella. ‘But this story just continues to give. We have now managed to locate the exact spot where Francesco was buried and spoken to surviving members of his wider family who had no idea about this story. They thought he had been lost at sea.’
This fascinating tale of how a complex historical jigsaw was pieced together began with a supposedly simple project to produce pictures and biographies of all the men featured on the Arandora Star memorial, which stands in the Italian Garden at St Andrew’s Metropolitan Cathedral in Glasgow. When historian Michael Donnelly, of the Italian Garden Improvement Group, started to research Francesco D’Inverno, he got a surprise. ‘The thing that came up first was his death record, which is extraordinary,’ he said. ‘Given that very few bodies were ever found, I was really puzzled that he was a man with a death record in the Scottish system. And when I called the record up, it revealed that he wasn’t from here at all; he wasn’t Scottish, his last known address was London.’
It is thought the fact his death was recorded in Scotland led to a slip of a bureaucrat’s pen mistakenly adding Francesco’s name to a list of Scots Italian victims of the Arandora Star. ‘Thankfully for us, this was a happy mistake as it cracked the case open,’ said Mr Gonnella.
The death certificate also confirmed Francesco had been found drowned at Lendalfoot. Further research with South Ayrshire Council then discovered details of the burial in an unmarked grave at the Doune cemetery in Girvan. The next problem was trying to pinpoint the location of the burial site. Ritchie and Lorna Conaghan, of the Girvan and District Great War Project, which tends the graves of more than 600 war dead, pored over the council’s lair books which map the graves of every cemetery. They were amazed to discover that, although Francesco was buried on common ground here people are often buried together his was the only body in his plot. ‘They must have realised he was a Roman Catholic because the funeral was carried out by the parish priest from Irvine,’ said Mrs Conaghan. This second stroke of fortune meant the group could push on with plans to mark Francesco’s grave with a headstone. A JustGiving page has been set up to raise the £5,000 they need to cover the costs. They have also been able to contact relatives of Francesco to tell them of his final resting place and flesh out details of his life. Born in Villa Latina in the Lazio region in 1901, Francesco D’Inverno came to London in the 1930s in search of a better life. He found lodgings with an Italian widow, Ginevra Tasselli, and her four children at her home at 57 King’s Cross Road. He worked at a 181-bedroom country house hotel in Croydon, south London, called the Selsdon Park, which still exists. ‘He held various jobs, including head plateman, who was in charge of all the fancy table decorations and serving plates, and worked in the kitchens as a cook,’ said Mr Gonnella.
At some point, his relationship with his landlady changed and despite the age gap she was 50 and he was 37 they married in April, 1939, at St Peter’s Italian Church in Clerkenwell Road, London. It was just months before the outbreak of war when, in an atmosphere of public paranoia about ‘fifth columnists’, all refugees were classified as ‘enemy aliens’. After Mussolini declared war against Britain in June 1940, Churchill famously declared ‘collar the lot,’ and Italian shop, café and restaurant owners were arrested, including Francesco their only crime was their heritage. Hundreds were herded, along with some German prisoners of war, onto the Arandora Star liner painted battleship grey with barbed wire and no Red Cross logo to signal they were not soldiers to take them to prison camps in Canada. Off the coast of Ireland, she was attacked by the U-47 commanded by the ultra-Nazi Gunter Prien who had previously sunk the Royal Oak at Scapa Flow. It took just one torpedo to send the Arandora Star to the seabed with the loss of 805 lives. Only 22 bodies were ever identified from the disaster, while Francesco’s is thought to be the only one that carried as far as the Scottish mainland. ‘What is amazing is we thought we were researching the 94 men who came from Scotland and yet this story was of a man who never set foot in Scotland alive,’ noted Mr Gonnella. ‘He is a London Italian, but he is our London Italian.’
Francesco’s story carries added poignancy for Mr Gonnella, who lost his own maternal grandfather Quinto Santini from Paisley on the Arandora Star. ‘That’s where my passion for researching this tragedy stems from,’ he said. ‘My family don’t have a body, we don’t even have a death certificate because they died as enemy aliens. This chap washed up as an unknown on the beach and was given full details because of what they found on the body and were able to identify him.’
Mr Gonnella added: ‘My grand-father’s story was no different from many others; he came over here almost 30 years before he was arrested. Five of his seven children were born here and he ran his own business here, he had Scottish friends. Every town and village, it seemed, had Italians and they were welcomed. But when Italy declared war, he was arrested because he held an Italian passport. Ironically, his two eldest sons served in the British Army. My uncle Raffaello, after whom I’m named, served in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and died at Caen in northern France in 1944. My mum’s other brother, Ardero, was in the British Medical Corps for four years.’
Mr Gonnella’s own father spent four years in a Canadian internment camp having sailed on another ship, the Ettrick, three days after the Arandora Star. This is a tale that is repeated through the Italian community and what makes Francesco’s story important is that this is a forgotten tragedy. In war, there are hundreds of such tragedies, he said. ‘To get somebody like Francesco found after 80 years, you just couldn’t make up. That could have been my grandfather that was washed up. Now we know this story, we want to tell it, so others are also remembered.’
For Francesco’s surviving family, the story has been a revelation. In the ebb and flow of life, Ginevra, his widow, and all four of her children have died, but one daughter-in-law, Doris Tasselli, is still fighting fit at 93 years old. Her granddaughter Charlotte Tasselli Arnold said: ‘I had no idea about this story at all, but my nan Doris knew all about Frank, as they called him. She said Ginevra always talked about Frank and said all she got was a letter from the War Office saying that he went down with the ship and was lost presumed drowned at sea. We didn’t know there was a death certificate. Doris said it was lovely that they had found Frank and she said that if Ginevra knew he had been buried in a Catholic funeral, she would have been very touched. And she would have been up to Scotland like a shot to visit his grave. It’s just a shame that she never got that news; the family were never notified that the body was found.’
She added: ‘It’s a strange feeling to know the full story happiness, but also quite sad that Ginevra and the people who really knew and loved him never knew the truth. She told the story for years that he went down with the boat.’
Mrs Arnold said Ginevra was married before and widowed quite young with four small children: ‘She couldn’t work as she didn’t know much English, so to make ends meet she would take in lodgers, one of whom was Frank. He came to her from the church and later they had this relationship. There was a 20-year age gap and she would call him “the boy”. My nan said she wondered if they got married when they did because Ginevra wanted to keep Frank safe with the war sparking off.’
The family now hope to make a journey north to see Francesco’s grave and pay their respects. ‘It’s just so important to have somewhere to go to,’ said Mrs Arnold. ‘It is an amazing story and the fact that he has been there all these years and people have worked so hard to track us down. They have made so many people happy by solving this mystery.’
The final piece of the puzzle slotted into place last week when Mrs Arnold’s relatives located the only known photograph of Francesco among family albums – standing next to Ginevra on a trip to Italy soon after they were married. ‘We are so happy to have put a face to the name,’ she said.
But this story has one final incredible twist – after researchers tracked down the boy who found Francesco’s body 83 years ago. ‘He is 92 and not in good health but we were able to visit him briefly and tell him what we had discovered,’ said Mr Gonnella. ‘He replied, “Since I was nine years old, I have often wondered what happened to that man I found on the beach all those years ago”. He said he had tried but never managed to find out. We were able to tell him the full story up to that point and his face just lit up at the news we had found him; he was humbly grateful that we could fill in the story for him. It’s amazing; he could tell us the exact spot where the body was found. That was one of the most touching points of the story. Until then, this felt almost like a research project, but that really brought him alive as a person.’
For now, a wooden cross marks Francesco D’Inverno’s grave and flowers were placed there for the first time on July 2, the anniversary of the Arandora Star disaster. Soon, Mr Gonnella hopes, something more permanent will replace it. ‘This was a forgotten story,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve traced who he is and where he is, we need the public’s help to provide Francesco with a fitting headstone. It will be symbolic for all the victims’ families a place to mourn and remember.’
To donate to the headstone appeal, visit
www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/michael-donnelly-4
