List of protected cruisers of Italy
Many of the early vessels saw action during the Italo-Turkish War, bombarding Ottoman positions in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and blockading ports in the Red Sea.
[1] Equipped with a pair of 10-inch (254 mm) guns, Giovanni Bausan was intended as a "battleship destroyer", since these weapons would be able to defeat the heavy armor of the much larger—and much more expensive—battleships in foreign navies.
[2] Construction of the ship—along with the subsequent Etna class, for which Giovanni Bausan provided the basis—represented the Regia Marina's brief experimentation with the Jeune École doctrine.
[2][5] The Etna class was an improved version of the preceding Giovanni Bausan, being slightly larger but carrying the same armament and armor protection.
Etna served on the North American Station from 1893 to 1895, and in 1899, Ettore Fieramosca, Vesuvio, and Stromboli participated in the suppression of the Boxer Uprising in China.
[5] In 1893 she represented Italy at the World's Columbian Exposition,[12] and was present in Brazil during the Revolta da Armada (Revolt of the Fleet), where she protected Italian interests from the unrest.
[16] She proved to be a revolutionary vessel, as she was the first major warship to be armed entirely with quick-firing, medium-caliber guns; these became the standard for all cruisers from the 1890s onward.
[24] They served in a variety of capacities throughout their careers, including scouts for the main fleet, colonial cruisers, and representatives of Italy at major foreign events.
While on the China Station, Elba observed the Russo-Japanese War, including the Battle of Chemulpo Bay in 1904, where she picked up Russian survivors.
[29] They were relegated to secondary roles during World War I, except for Puglia, which battled the Austro-Hungarian cruiser SMS Novara and later covered the evacuation of the Serbian Army from Durazzo.
[32] The remaining ships were broken up for scrap in the early 1920s,[15] though the bow section of Puglia is preserved at the Vittoriale degli italiani, a museum in Lombardy.
[26] The ship's career spanned the globe, and ranged from a deployment to China to help suppress the Boxer Uprising in 1899–1901,[35] to tours in the Americas throughout the 1900s,[36][37] and a trip to Australia in 1905.
[38] During the Italo-Turkish War, she was transferred to the Red Sea, where she bombarded Ottoman troops and ports and helped to enforce a blockade before returning to Italy in April 1912 for a refit.
[26] Libia marked a major advancement over earlier designs, owing in large part due to the fact that the ship was originally ordered by the Ottoman Navy.
Based on the British-built Hamidiye, the ship was to have been named Drama, but the Ottoman government failed to make payments so construction stopped, and she was seized after the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War and completed for the Regia Marina.
She was significantly larger, faster, and more heavily armored than the other Italian protected cruisers, but she carried a weaker main battery.
Intended to engage only hostile scouts, her armament was significantly weaker than earlier cruisers, mounting a battery of only 4.7-inch guns.
[48] The commando unit Decima Flottiglia MAS tested new SLC human torpedoes and MT explosive motorboats on Quarto in 1940, the latter causing extensive damage and sinking the ship in November.
Nino Bixio and Marsala proved to be a disappointment in service, owing to their unreliable engines and their failure to meet their design speed of 29 knots (54 km/h; 33 mph).
[48] During World War I, the two ships were based at Brindisi with Quarto, where they patrolled the southern end of the Adriatic Sea, though Nino Bixio did not see action in the conflict.
[48] The last pair of protected cruisers built by the Italian Navy were intended for colonial service, and were based on experience from Calabria.
They were given a relatively heavy main battery for their small size and a long cruising range, at the expense of armor protection and speed.
Since they had been launched less than a week before hostilities broke out at the end of July 1914, fitting-out work was delayed by a steel shortage, particularly after Italy entered the war.
