Giovanni Visin

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Giovanni (Ivo) Visin

Giovanni Visin (Croatian: Ivo Visin ; * 1806 in Prčanj , Bay of Kotor ; † August 17, 1868 ibid), Habsburg seafarer of Croatian origin. He was the first “Austrian” circumnavigator .

Life

The son of a seafaring family from Istria , who had been trading in the Mediterranean for generations, attended the Nautical Academy in Trieste and then served his way up to the position of first officer, who around 1850 received the patent for “captain on voyage”.

As usual, he lay down soon own ship, namely the "Splendido", a two-masted square rigged brig of 30 meters and 311 tons, which he in Rijeka (Fiume, St. Veit am Pflaum) by Andrea Zanon draw and had built. The brig sailing under the Austrian flag was a merchant ship, intended for a crew of 11 and several paying passengers, and carried two cannons for self-defense.

World Travel

From July 1851 Visin had taken over trading trips to the Black Sea , but also to Northern Europe, with his new ship and accompanied by his first officer Federico Bellavita . In Antwerp the captain found a cargo for Valparaíso . February 11, 1852 marked the beginning of a journey of 101,297 nautical miles. His ship was the first to fly the Austrian flag in Melbourne (December 31, 1853), Honolulu (March 30, 1853), Sydney (December 2, 1854), and also in Surabaya , Samarang and Bangkok (1858). On August 2, 1858, Visin met the Novara in Shanghai . After further trading trips, he started his journey home from Singapore on February 15, 1859, presumably with a load of porcelain . West of South America he crossed his own course, which made him the first “Austrian” circumnavigator. However, before Gibraltar he learned from an American of the war between Austria and France and because of his valuable cargo he changed course to the neutral port of Plymouth . Neither captain could have known that after the Battle of Solferino there would be an armistice from July 8th. Visin arrived in Plymouth on July 9th, and not until August 30th in Trieste, four days after Novara.

Honors

In the Grazer Tagespost of September 1, 1859, the eight and a half year trip was only worth a short note about Visin's “return from distant seas”, which did not mention the circumnavigation of the world: the media event probably had to be the circumnavigation of the imperial Novara.

Merito Navali

Visin immediately became an honorary citizen of the city of Trieste; on June 19, 1860 he was made a knight of the Franz Joseph Order , and on July 4 he was the only captain ever to receive the "White Flag of Honor " donated in 1850, and "Merito Navali" the highest award for merit to merchant shipping, even presented personally by the emperor.

Federico Bellavista was the only one of the outgoing crew who returned home with Visin. The rest of the team had changed several times in the meantime, but the returning crew was also rewarded with cash prizes. Bellavista was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit on August 24, 1860 and was promoted to captain on the journey . He wrote a twelve-page report on the trip of Splendido, entered the service of Lloyd Austriaco and died at the age of 52 in Odessa.

literature

David GL Weiss , Gerd Schilddorfer: Novara - Austria's dream of world power. Amalthea, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-85002-705-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gem. Pierer's Universal-Lexikon, Volume 12. Altenburg 1861, p. 844 at that time more likely called Persagno .
  2. ^ Diploma thesis Weiss p. 20 ff.
  3. ↑ At that time, ships and their names, at least in Austria, were by no means necessarily feminine - as recently as 1858, Wüllerstorf wrote in his Report No. 194 to Archduke Ferdinand Max about the chance encounter with Visin that the brig Splendido had arrived, not the brig. The ship's name is said to go back to Visin's exclamation when the ship was launched, in Italian "È splendido!", "He is magnificent!"
  4. ↑ According to Weiss u. a .; It is said to have been the sixth circumnavigation of the world according to Magellan, whereby this count as the sixth single event of a circumnavigation would have been nonsensical anyway and could possibly have been meant for the list of nations. But even this nation count seems questionable, because more than six nations before Austria were successful for the first time with at least one circumnavigation, as the following list shows: Juan Sebastián Elcano for Spain (1522), Francis Drake for England (1580), Olivier van Noort for Holland (1601), Louis Antoine de Bougainville for France (1769), Robert Gray for the USA (1790), Adam Johann von Krusenstern for Russia (1806), Hipólito Bouchard for Argentina (1819), Johann Andreas Harmssen for Bremen and Prussia (1824), Nils Werngren for Sweden (1841), Hans Thomas Jeschen for Hamburg (1842), Petter Idman for Finland (1847) and Steen Andersen Bille for Denmark (1847)
  5. ↑ Renate Basch-Ritter : The circumnavigation of the Novara 1857-1859: Austria on all seas, Graz 2008. P. 14.
  6. ↑ Mainly pp. 31-35. The book is an extension of Weiss' thesis. The section on Visin quotes Lothar Baumgartner several times.
personal data
SURNAME Visin, Giovanni
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Visin, Ivo (Croatian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Captain and first Austrian circumnavigator
DATE OF BIRTH 1806
PLACE OF BIRTH Prčanj , Bay of Kotor
DATE OF DEATH 17th August 1868
Place of death Prčanj , Bay of Kotor