It also has a lot to say about what is happening in our seas in 2026 in the story of Salvatore Todaro, commander of the submarine Cappellini, who on 15 October 1940, after having sunk a Belgian vessel in the Atlantic Ocean, instead of leaving the survivors to their fate, contrary to the indications not only of the German allies but also of the English Navy, he takes the survivors on board, upholding the law of the sea which requires providing assistance to shipwrecked people
. The connection with the work of today’s ships in the Mediterranean is very evident and is what moved the appearance Sandro Veronesi and Edoardo De Angelis to write in The commander (Bompiani), which then became a film starring Pierfrancesco Favino and directed by De Angelis himself.
«I came across this story», the director tells us «and I immediately shared it with Sandro Veronesi who had gathered around the movement Bodies a series of cultural personalities with the aim of stemming the wave of xenophobia towards the migrants who arrived on boats. My idea was immediately to make a film about it, but in the meantime it also seemed important to turn it into a book. By an extraordinary coincidence we discovered that one of the people who had joined the Corps movement was Jasmin Bahrabadi, a friend from Livorno who works in the promotion of musical groups and Todaro’s nephew. Thanks to her we were able to draw on many unpublished documents in the family home and we wrote the book together.”
Salvatore Todaro was a singular character: having been seriously injured years before, he was forced to wear a cumbersome and painful iron corset in order to stand, but this did not stop him from going on a mission with submarines. He was very cultured and was interested in oriental and esoteric disciplines.
«Todaro represents the man who manages to elevate himself when he enters into connection with cosmic laws, the values he embodied are eternal and immutable. He died in battle two years later, but all the men he saved survived and after the war they went to pay homage to his tomb in Livorno.”
Commander Todaro made headlines again the following year, on January 5, 1941, saving the nineteen survivors of the English steamship Shakespeareafter having sunk it in the waters of the Atlantic, between the Canary Islands and the African coasts. Even then something incredible happened: those men were invited to board the enemy ship that had just attacked them, and taken to safety on a nearby island.
In November 1942 Todaro was assigned to the La Galite base in Tunisia and, in command of the armed trawler Mulletbegan planning and carrying out a series of attacks on the port of Bona, an important enemy base. After returning from a night mission, on December 13, 1942 Mullet was attacked by an English Spitfire. During the machine gunning, Commander Todaro was hit by a splinter in the temple and died instantly. He was then awarded the gold medal for military valor in memory.
It is found among his personal effects the letter that had been written to him two years earlier by a Portuguese woman, wife of a sailor from the crew of an enemy ship. “There is a barbaric heroism and another before which the soul kneels: yours. May you be blessed for your goodness which has made you a hero not only of Italy but of all humanity”.
