Re d'Italia

Type

Ironclad

Period

19th Century

Nation

Italy

Overview: Re d'Italia was the lead ship of the two-vessel Re d'Italia class, ironclad armored frigates built for Italy's Regia Marina in the early 1860s. She and her sister Re di Portogallo were the only Italian ironclads ever built in the United States, constructed at William H. Webb's New York shipyard because Italian yards could not meet wartime demand. Specifications: The ship measured 99.61 m (326 ft 10 in) overall with a beam of 16.76 m (55 ft) and average draft of 6.17 m (20 ft 3 in), displacing around 5,610 long tons normally. She was a broadside ironclad armed with six 72-pounder 203 mm guns and thirty-two 164 mm rifled muzzle-loaders, protected by wrought iron plating of roughly 114-121 mm over a wooden hull, and fitted with a spur-shaped ram bow; she was barque-rigged with a single screw propeller for about 10.6-10.8 knots. Service History: Re d'Italia served as flagship of the Italian fleet during the Third Italian War of Independence but was replaced in that role by the turret ship Affondatore just before the Battle of Lissa on 20 July 1866. During the chaotic melee, her rudder was disabled and the Austrian flagship SMS Erzherzog Ferdinand Max rammed her, tearing open her hull; she rolled over and sank quickly, taking roughly 400 of her crew down with her, including her captain, Emilio Faà di Bruno. Notable Facts: Her wooden hull, built from unseasoned green timber under wartime urgency, deteriorated badly and could not be divided into watertight compartments, a design weakness that proved fatal at Lissa. The wreck lies off the island of Vis (Croatia) and its ownership has been the subject of legal debate regarding sunken warship title under international law. The featured image is a 19th-century painting of the ramming and sinking (after Gustav Kappler), reproduced in the 1908 Austrian jubilee publication "Österreichs Hort" and earlier in H.W. Wilson's 1896 "Ironclads in Action" and The Graphic; it is in the public domain as a faithful reproduction of a pre-1931 work of art.