Radetzky (steamship)

The Radetzky (Bulgarian: „Радецки“, „Radetski“) was an Austro-Hungarian passenger steamship built in 1851 in the shipyard in Óbuda, Hungary, and used for regular services on the Danube, mainly between Orşova, Austria-Hungary and Galaţi, Romania.

As for you, Mr. Captain, I have the hard duty to invite you to place the ship at our disposal until our very getting-off, while at the same time I declare that even your smallest resistance will put me in the sorrowful necessity to use force and against my will to revenge for the disgusting incident on board the Germany steamboat in Rousse in 1867.

The Radetzky was decommissioned in 1918 and destroyed in 1924, although most of its relics were preserved, such as the flag with a coat of arms, a seal, the original licence, etc., which were handed by Adolf Engländer, a brother of the captain, to Boris III of Bulgaria.

Between 1964 and 1966, On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Hristo Botev's death, money was collected by 1,200,000 Bulgarian pupils on the initiative of the journalist Lilyana Lozanova, and the steamship was reconstructed based on the original design and technical data given by the ship's dyer Király József.

A village in Sliven Province bears its name, Radetski, and national writer Ivan Vazov wrote a poem based on the events of May 1876, which is today a popular patriotic song called Still White Danube Undulates.