The class was a pair of ironclad warships built for the Italian (Royal Navy) in the 1870s and 1880s. They were the culmination of a major naval construction program designed to give Italy a powerful fleet of ironclads. The two ships, and , were the last Italian ironclads to feature sailing rigs and wooden hulls. They were armed with a battery of six guns and were capable of a speed in excess of . The ships had uneventful careers, spending much of it in Italy's colonial empire. By the late 1880s, they were withdrawn from service and employed in secondary roles, first as headquarters ships for harbor defenses. was converted into a depot ship in 1895 and was discarded in 1910, while was used as a training ship from 1894 to 1900 before being scrapped between 1902 and 1904.

Design In 1862, the Italian government under Prime Minister Urbano Rattazzi and his naval minister Carlo Pellion di Persano made the decision to build a fleet of ironclad warships, which sparked the Austro-Italian ironclad arms race. The Italian fleet had already acquired a pair of small, French-built armored frigates of the , and two more vessels of the had been ordered from the United States. Five more ironclads were ordered from foreign shipyards, three wooden steam frigates already under construction were converted into armored ships, and four more ironclads were ordered from Italian shipyards. The two -class ships were the last two of this first generation of Italian ironclads. The design for was prepared by Inspector Engineer Giuseppe De Luca. He had initially planned on using entirely wooden hulls for the ships, but had changed to composite wood and iron construction by the time the ships were laid down. The design for the new ships was based on the preceding , but they were obsolete by the time they entered service.

General characteristics and machinery

The two ships differed slightly in size. was long between perpendiculars, while was long. had a beam of and a draft of ; s beam measured , and she had a draft of . Both ships displaced normally, but displaced at full load and reached . The ships had an inverted bow with a naval ram below the waterline. Their superstructure was minimal, consisting primarily of a small conning tower forward. They had a crew of 548 officers and men.

The ships' propulsion system consisted of one single-expansion steam engine that drove a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by six coal-fired, cylindrical fire-tube boilers. The boilers were trunked into a single funnel. The lead ship's engine produced a top speed of at , while made at the same horsepower. Both ships had a capacity for of coal for the boilers, allowing them to steam for at a cruising speed of .

The ships were barque-rigged to supplement the steam engine; two masts were fitted with square sails and the third was gaff rigged. and her sister were the last rigged ironclad to be built by Italy. The ships' sail area were for and for .

Armament and armor and were both armed with a main battery of six guns, though they were mounted differently in each ship. carried hers in a single armored casemate located amidships, while s guns were mounted in three armored casemates. The first was located forward, toward the bow, the second and third were placed close to the stern on each side of the ship. Both ships also carried an gun that was mounted forward as a bow chaser. Later in her career, received a secondary battery of six guns and six machine guns, along with two torpedo tubes.

The two ships were protected by iron belt armor that was thick and extended for the entire length of the hull. The casemates were protected with of iron plating, and the small conning tower had thick iron plates.

Ships

+ Construction data Name Builder Laid down Launched Completed August 1865 15 January 1872 15 December 1874 30 September or 2 October 1871 11 July 1875

Service history Neither ship had a particularly eventful career. They were completed too late to take part in the final stages of the wars of Italian unification. Instead, they were assigned to the Italian colonial empire, with occasional stints in the main Italian fleet. In 1880, took part in a naval demonstration off Ragusa in an attempt to force the Ottoman Empire to comply with the terms of the Treaty of Berlin and turn over the town of Ulcinj to Montenegro. The following year, was involved in a collision with the ironclad during a hurricane, though neither ship was damaged.

In the late 1880s, both ships were withdrawn from frontline service and employed as headquarters ships for the defense of Taranto——and La Maddalena—. was stricken from the naval register in 1895 and used as an ammunition depot ship in Taranto until 1910, when she was sold for scrap. was employed as a training ship between 1894 and 1900, when she too was stricken from the register. She was broken up between 1902 and 1904.

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External links

Principe Amedeo Marina Militare website