SMS Franz Joseph

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RN San Marco ex SMS Franz Joseph
RN San Marco
ex SMS Franz Joseph
Overview
Shipyard

Escher Wyss AG

Keel laying 1849
Launch 1850
1. Period of service flag
Commissioning 1852 (Austria) / December 2, 1866 (Italy)
Decommissioning 1866 (Austria) / 1880 (Italy)
Whereabouts Sold for demolition in 1894
Technical specifications
displacement

170  ts (standard)

length

42.70 m

width

3.30 m

crew

37 - 42 officers, NCOs and sailors

drive

1 steam boiler with 50 HP (37 kW)

speed

7.5 knots

Armament

(Austria-Hungary) 1 × 18 pounder with drawn barrel, 2 × 18 pounder with smooth barrel, 1 × 7 pounder with smooth barrel, 4 × iron mortar and two hand rifles
(Italy) 2 × 12 pounder

SMS Franz Joseph was originally a civil paddle steamer that was later used as the Aviso 2nd class of the Austrian Navy . From 1866 it belonged to the Italian Navy as RN San Marco and was used again as a civilian ship on Lake Garda after 1880 .

construction

The ship was built in 1849 at the Escher Wyss AG shipyard in Zurich for the Società di Navigazione a Vapore del Lago di Garda (Gardaseedampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft) and transported to Riva del Garda disassembled into individual parts . It was assembled there in January 1850 and then put into service as the steamship Franz Joseph . Designed as a ship for the transport of goods and passengers, it had a steam engine with an output of 50 hp and achieved a speed of 7.5 knots with its two side paddle wheels .

Austria

In 1852 the company sold the ship for 67,300 guilders to the Austrian government of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Veneto . As a result, the ship was equipped as SMS Franz Joseph with three 18-pounder cannons and two 7-pounder cannons and assigned to the Lake Garda flotilla of the Austrian Navy.

In June 1859 the Franz Joseph formed the Lake Garda flotilla with the two other armed Austrian steamers Benaco and Hess and some gunboats. The flotilla took part in the fighting of the war with Piedmont and France. They supported the land operations of their own forces. Here the Benaco was sunk on June 20, 1859 by a Piedmontese battery in Salò .

After the end of the fighting, the Lombard shores of Lake Garda with the area around Brescia had to be ceded to the Kingdom of Sardinia , which almost halved the area of ​​operation of the Lake Garda flotilla.

In June 1866, at the beginning of the war with Italy , the Austrian flotilla , consisting of the ships Franz Joseph , Hess , nine gunboats and eleven smaller boats with a total of 62 cannons and 10 mitrailleuses operated from the naval base in Torri del Benaco . The Italians could only oppose the upscale Benaco , now sailing under the Italian flag , which meant sea supremacy for the Austrians. On 1 July 1866 the shelled Hess with some gunboats to the station of Desenzano and the Franz Joseph the port of the village.

On July 2, 1866, the Franz Joseph , the Hess and two gunboats shot at Gargnano and engaged in a battle with a land battery of the "2nd Reggimento Volontari Italiani" of Garibaldi's troops there .

The shelling of the quayside in Bogliaco and the local Italian land battery followed on July 10th. On 19 and 20 July, the shot at Franz Joseph , the Hess and the gunboats Speiteufel , tomboy and sniper again Gargnano who conquered Benaco back and sank the small steamer Poeta .

Kingdom of Italy

After the end of the war, the Venetian side of the lake was also lost, as a result of which the Austrian portion of Lake Garda was reduced to the northern part with around 20 percent of the total area. Since they were unwilling or unable to maintain cross-border passenger shipping, the ships of the Lake Garda flotilla were sold to Italy. The Franz Joseph went to the Italian Navy for around 40,000 Swiss francs on October 18, 1866 and was renamed by the latter to the name San Marco . As Aviso 2nd class, she remained in the service of the navy until 1880, although she was rented by the Società Strade Ferrate dell'Alta Italia ("Northern Italian Railway Company") and used as a merchant steamer from 1867 . In 1880 the steamer finally became the property of the company that carried out shipping on the northern Italian lakes for the Kingdom of Italy. In 1885 the ship was sold to the Società delle Ferrovie Meridionali ("Southern Railway Company") and finally scrapped in 1894.

literature

  • Francesco Ogliari: La navigazione sui laghi italiani - Lago di Garda , pp. 43, 48, 55, 65, 71, 87, 89, 95, 106, 139, 141 (Italian)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Marina Militare , Oceania and Navyworld
  2. ^ Franco Bargoni, Franco Gay, Valerio Manlio Gay: Navi a vela e navi miste italiane , pp. 425-428
  3. Lake Garda was in the Italian-speaking area of ​​the Habsburg Empire.