At about 11.15pm on August 4th 1916, the darkened waters of the Mar Grande in Taranto, home port to the Italian navy, or Regia Marina, were ‘suddenly made brilliantly light by tongues of flame coming from seaward.’ Portside, ‘awe-stricken spectators beheld a huge fire raging’ in the center of a large warship, and a succession of ‘terrific explosions that shook houses to their foundations and smashed windows.’ On board the warship, one of Italy’s newest dreadnoughts, captain and crew fought vainly to save the ship from total destruction by flooding her main magazines. With ‘hundreds of searchlights converging upon her‘ from neighboring warships, keen witnesses saw the 23,000 ton battleship rise slowly by the stern ‘snapping her anchors one by one’, before finally capsizing in the shallow waters of the bay, entombing more than 250 sailors. The Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most powerful ships in the Italian fleet, was definitively hors de combat at a time when the country was locked in bloody conflict with the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the other side of the Adriatic (Halsey, 2010 pp312-13).
Nor was this the first time an Italian battleship had suddenly combusted in a home port. The previous September, barely three months into hostilities, the 13,000 ton pre-dreadnought battleship Benedetto Brin had exploded in Brindisi harbor.[1] ‘The whole forward part of the ship’, which had been in service for ten years, ‘was blown into the air and a hail of splintered steel fell on the houses and streets’ of the town, covering it with a mist of smoke and fumes, and ‘causing a feeling of terror’ among the inhabitants. More than half of the ship’s complement of 800 including her commanding officer perished.
Eager perhaps to allay public fears, the Italian naval authorities had swiftly ruled out foul play, describing the loss of the Brin as ‘an unfortunate accident’ (British Admiralty, 1919). After the second incident, the Duke of the Abruzzi, Commander-in-Chief of the Regia Marina’s Adriatic Fleet, was instructed by his government to immediately ascertain the cause of the disaster; not officially acknowledged until more than a month later; ‘seeking those responsible without regard to persons, and thus reassure the country regarding the Navy, which welcomes the enemy’s blows but not the immense dangers arising, perhaps from negligence and slackness, which must be revealed and punished’ (The Press, 1916). Once again, the authorities seemed reluctant, publicly at least, to consider the possibility of sabotage.
The spontaneous combustion of large warships was not unheard of at this time. HMS Bulwark, a battleship of similar vintage to the Brin had blown up at anchor in the River Medway in November 1914, and several more British ships would suffer the same fate before the end of the war. The Japanese navy too suffered a pair of losses in the same sudden and mysterious circumstances. In all of these cases, the faulty storage or mismanagement of cordite was indicated to be the primary cause. However, according to a technical study published by the British Admiralty in 1919, the two Italian ships were not lost directly as a result of cordite ignition. The Brin was believed destroyed by a fire of ‘unknown cause’, possibly an electrical short circuit, while the Leonardo’s destruction was blamed on a fire started by a leaking store of benzene; a highly flammable liquid used in the maintenance of ships’ engines. Neither of these explanations necessarily ruled out the possibility of sabotage.
In fact, after the war several men were tried and convicted by Italian courts for the sinkings. An Austro-Hungarian conspiracy to sink the Brin was first uncovered in May 1916. Around forty alleged conspirators were rounded up and four men, three of whom were crew members, eventually charged with planting a time bomb aboard the ship. The trial took place in July 1918, with two men sentenced to death (later commuted) and one to life imprisonment (Pocock, 2010). The New York Times reported on another trial of men accused of sabotaging the Leonardo in January 1919. The plot was said to have originated with the Austro-Hungarian Consul in Naples, and was uncovered after a break-in at the Austrian espionage offices in Zurich had brought to light compromising documents and photographic snapshots. The reward for success reportedly amounted to half a million pounds in ‘blood money’.
Sabotage was just one unusual feature of the naval war that took place in the Adriatic during World War One. Unlike the naval conflict in the North Sea, which included several clashes between British and German dreadnoughts, actions in the Adriatic tended to be small-boat operations undertaken by vessels ranging in size from light-cruisers down to human torpedoes. Also, while the Battle of Jutland was a big-gun brawl in the tradition of Nelson, activities in the Adriatic often involved subterfuge and technological ingenuity. This article outlines some of the reasons for this, and describes some of the more unorthodox operations.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 