Kategorie: News
Discovery of the so-called "Italian Titanic" Principe Umberto
The wreck of the Italian Titanic has been found. The "Principe Umberto" was found off Cape Linguetta at a depth of 930 meters in the Albanian waters of the Otranto Channel. It is the ship that was torpedoed and sunk by the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Navy on June 8, 1916. With 1926 victims, this is the largest Italian maritime tragedy of all time.
The ship was located a month ago by Guido Gay, the Italian-Swiss engineer who in June 2012 managed to locate in the Gulf of Asinara the wreck of the battleship "Roma" sunk by German planes on September 9, 1943. A few days ago came the certainty: a robot submarine reached the bottom of the remains of the "Principe Umberto" and allowed its exact identification.
A fatal torpedo launch
The sinking killed 110 sailors of the crew, as well as 52 officers and 1764 soldiers of the 55th Infantry Regiment 'Marche' on the passage to Italy.
The Marche Brigade had originally been moved from Karst to Albania to organize the transfer to Italy of Habsburg prisoners who had arrived in Valona with Serbian troops, and to build trenches and defenses. In mid-May 1916, however, Commander-in-Chief Luigi Cadorna ordered the brigade to return to face the Austro-Hungarian offensive on the Asiago plateau. During the night of June 7-8, 1916, the embarkation of the soldiers began, and on June 8 the ship was ready to sail.
However, as fate would have it, at the time of the departure of the "Principe Umberto", the Austro-Hungarian submarine U5 was passing through these waters. Lieutenant Schlosser, the captain, did not know that the Marche Brigade was returning home to help in the defensive, so he decided to act. Troop carriers were not actually attacked according to officer ethics. So he chose his target and ordered the fateful launch of two torpedoes. One missed the target, the other hit the hull and exploded the steamship's boilers. The tragedy was unprecedented: 1926 casualties and only 895 survivors, most of them wounded.
History of the discovery
Guido Gay, a Piedmontese from Pinerolo, graduate of the Polytechnic of Milan, has lived in Switzerland for over thirty years and builds himself both the catamaran in which he sails and the underwater robots with which he searches the depths for wrecks.
"With the sonar," explains Guido Gay, "we already discovered the wreck during the first passage about a month ago. The characteristics of the wreck, with even one side sticking out of the bottom, detected by the sonar, gave us almost the certainty that it was indeed this ship. The visual identification was made last week. A few days after the sonar survey, we returned to the site but encountered strong currents from the Otranto Channel. Twice we failed to bring the submarine robot to depth, once it reached the bottom but landed far from the area where the sonar had detected the metal mass. The fourth attempt was finally the good one: the robot managed to reach and examine the wreck, taking the images that gave us the certainty of identification."
The Principe Umberto, an Italian passenger and fridge cargo ship, was built in 1908 by Cantieri Navali del Tirreno in Palermo for Navigazione Generale Italiana, a company that served ports in the Mediterranean and Black Seas and also operated passenger services to North and South America.
The ship was 145.1 m long and had a beam of 16.3 m. She was powered by two quadruple expansion steam engines that moved her at up to 16 knots (30 km/h).
The routes and early activities of the Principe Umberto are not known, but during World War I the ship was used as an armed merchant cruiser, carrying men and material in support of Italy.