Nazario Sauro (ship)
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Nazario Sauro was an Italian cargo and passenger ship, the wreck of which has been lying off the Eritrean island of Dahlak Kebir since it scuttled on April 6, 1941 .
history
The Nazario Sauro , named after Nazario Sauro , was initially designed as a freighter, but was redesigned during the ship's construction and when it was put into operation had 80 cabins in first class, 48 in second class and space for 1109 passengers the third class. It was initially powered by two steam engines, but later received four diesel engines, which were also manufactured by G. Ansaldo & Comp. were built. With that she reached a speed of 16 knots. On February 1, 1924, it was put into operation by the Società Transatlantica Italiana. At that time, their two chimneys were still red and black and decorated with white stars.
As early as 1927, the Nazario Sauro could no longer compete with the faster ships on the transatlantic lines. It was launched for seven years.
In 1935 the ship became the property of the Tirrenia shipping company; the chimneys were now painted black and white and the ship served as a troop transport between Italy and its colonies in what is now Somalia and Eritrea. For this purpose, the places in the third class were reduced. Two years later, on January 1, 1937, Lloyd Triestino took over the Nazario Sauro and changed the appearance of the ship again; the chimneys have now been painted yellow throughout. The Nazario Sauro continued to operate between Italy and East Africa.
Italy entered World War II in 1940 . At that time there were numerous Italian ships in the ports and bays of Italian East Africa , including the Nazario Sauro . It was intercepted in the Red Sea and laid up in Massawa until April 1941 .
As the British conquest became apparent, the order was given to sink all ships yourself so as not to let them fall into the hands of the enemy. 25 freighters, troop carriers and tankers as well as 33 smaller supply ships were affected.
The Nazario Sauro was one of these victims of self-immersion. It was moved to the Dahlak Archipelago and sunk there. Unlike many other Italian ships in this area, it was not lifted and used by the British. She shared this fate with the Giove , which has not yet been found, and with the Urania , whose hull partially protrudes from the water. The fact that the Nazario Sauro was neither searched nor found for a relatively long time was probably due to the misinformation from Italy that the ship had been taken over by the British. The fact that a few days before the Nazario Sauro sank, an Italian destroyer bearing the same name was bombed by the British and sunk on the day of the conquest of Asmara , which may have contributed to the confusion about the whereabouts of the wreck .
It was not until the 1950s that Jacques-Yves Cousteau discovered the wreck of the Nazario Sauro near the Dahlak archipelago at 10 ° 39 ′ 46 ″ N , 40 ° 0 ′ 29 ″ E, . However, the crew of the Calypso could not identify the ship at the time. She gave the wreck overgrown by white whip corals the name "the white-haired wreck". In 1995 an Italian research team, including Andrea Ghisotti , went on an expedition to the wreck.
The remains of the Nazario Sauro stand upright on the seabed at a depth of 39 meters; the top of the rear mast is about 5 meters below the surface of the water. The ship's propellers are no longer in place, otherwise the wreck is largely intact and not plundered.
literature
- Egidio Trainito, Nazario Sauro , in: Egidio Trainito (ed.), Adventure wreck diving. On the traces of sunken worlds , White Star Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86726-120-3 , pp. 186-189
Footnotes
- ↑ a b c d Touregypt.net
- ↑ a b Vincenzo Meleca, I relitti delle Dahlak (PDF; 4.6 MB)