• Italian pride in British-built steam tug

by Mr. John Robinson 

Only one steam vessel now survives on the Italian shipping register. She is the old Naples harbour tug “Pietro Micca”, lovingly restored over the past three years by a team of volunteers based at Fiumicino near Rome and now looking as bright and smart as she did when launched on the River Tyne in England as the river tug »Dilwara« in 1895. 

After only a few years service in England, this 31 m. coal-fired vessel was transferred to Genoa in 1903 and moved to Naples two years later, having been renamed »Pietro Micca«.During World War 1 she served as an auxiliary minesweeper, before reverting to towage and salvage duties in and around Naples. She was again requisitioned for minesweeping during World War 2, and in 1952 her boilers were converted for oil-firing. Motor tugs eventually took over her towing duties, but American warships refitting in Naples were grateful to take steam from her when their own boilers were under repair. 

By 1993 cuts in military spending reduced the US presence in Naples, and »Pietro Micca« was due for disposal. Alerted by the team of engineers who had tended her machinery so carefully for decades, a group led by Pierpaolo Giua and his family campaigned to have her preserved. The Italian Government declined to assist, arguing that it is already responsible for 70% of cultural monuments in Europe, and cannot undertake to add moveable monuments to that list. A proposal to display her at the Naval Museum in Venice was also rejected. Determined not to let his compatriots scrap this vessel that had served Italy faithfully for nearly a century, Signor Giua begged and borrowed the 60 million lira scrap price, and formed a team to look after the veteran. They took their name from G L Spinelli, a young volunteer supporter and son of a previous engineer, whose active and lively contribution was prematurely terminated by a fatal road accident. 

To date an estimated 3 million lira have been expended on restoration. The rotten wheelhouse has been completely and authentically rebuilt, but the original triple expansion Tyne-built engine survives. Despite her very long career under the Italian flag, her engine-room telegraphs still carry instructions in English, and her bell still carries the name »Dilwara«. In 1997, and again in 1999, the »Pietro Micca« made an extended passage to Monte Carlo for classic boat festivals, and is chartered for water sampling surveys off Italy’s Mediterranean coast each year. But most of the costs of her upkeep fall on private benefactors, and her proprietors are keen to see this distinctive and immaculately-restored steamship used more widely for educational and philanthropic purposes. Her spacious deck could easily accommodate a recompression chamber to support diving operations; equally she is very suitable as a prestigious and distinctive Committee boat for regattas, and can accommodate meeting and small conferences afloat, while remaining certificated and well-equipped for the towage and rescue duties that prompted her construction at South Shields 105 years ago. 

For further details of ”Pietro Micca” , contact:

Tecnomar

Via Monte Cadria 77

00054 Fiumicino-Roma

Italy

Tel/Fax: +39 6 65 80 691

E-mail:

• Maritime Heritage 2000

in the coastal region of the European Union 10-13 July  

An international conference in Brest, 10-13 July just before the international event Brest 2000.

The objectives of these conference are to contextualise processes by which the maritime past has been re-evaluated over the last twenty years, to focus on the opportunities now offered by a properly designed strategy, to reflect on the economic dimensions of maritime heritage in different European countries and to propose specific measures in support of development of maritime heritage policies.  

More information: Laboratoire Géolittomer-Brest UMR 6554 – CNRS, Françoise Péron, Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer, Place Nicolas Copernic, 29280 Plouzané, France

Tel: + 33 2 98 49 86 21 Fax: + 33 2 98 49 87 03

E-mail: francoise.peron@univ-brest.fr

• IL Nuovo Trionfo

a working horse of the Adriatic Sea  

by Mr. Ole Vistrup 

Through 600 years the “Trabakel” was one of the most common ships to be seen in the Adriatic Sea, and also on Crete, Cyprus, along the Turkish coast, in the Black Sea, and on the North African coast the trabakel’s would appear regularly.

They were built in Istria, Veneto, Romagna and Dalmatia, and the shape of the hull would vary from region to region. In common they all had the carved “eyes” on their “Dutch-like” round bow. The crew would typically consist of five men, who would be manoeuvring two lug sails and a small jib on a long boom, which in the ports also would be used as a derrick. Around 1900 most trabakel’s changed into a gaff rig which were eaiser to handle and demanded less crew. In the 1950’s the few still existing trabakel’s were equipped with engines.

»Il Nuovo Trionfo« has the shape of a typical Romagna-trabakel. She was built in Cesenatico in 1926, and until World War II she was owned by the shipyard in which she was built.

During WWII she was operated by the Italian Navy, and she was used for carrying cargo and supplies to Albania - under sail only!

After the war she was sold to new owners in Grado, and she had her first 12 HP engine installed. She was then used in estuaries for digging up sand for building materials.

In 1970 her present owner - Mr. Hugo Herrmann from Vienna - bought her, and she is now flying the Austrian flag.

In 1973 - after three years of restoration during which »Il Nuovo Trionfo« was given back the appearance of a trabakel from around 1900 - Mr. Herrmann started up a charter business which up until today has taken him and his ship thousands of miles along the Adriatic, Greek and Turkish coasts.

In this way »Il Nuovo Trionfo« is still ploughing the traditional waters of the trabakel’s.

More information:

Österreichischer Seefahrtsverein, Herr Hugo Herrmann, Seilerstätte 1, A-1010 Wien, Austria.

Tel & Fax: +43 1 512 8296

Mobil: +39 338 393 0877 or +43 664 254 7212

• Classic fruit schooner returned to Spain

by Mr. John Robinson 

The building of new coastal sailing cargo-carriers diminished rapidly in Northern Europe after the introduction of marine oil-engines early in the 20th century. Engineers in Denmark, Germany and Sweden worked to improve the reliability and performance of such motors, and as their prices and weights were progressively reduced, many were installed as auxiliaries in what were previously pure sailing vessels, permitting crew numbers to be reduced. 

But in the Mediterranean countries, where sailors’ rates of pay were often lower, pure sailing vessels continued to be economic to build and operate. Spanish fruit schooners remained a familiar sight in ports and harbours all over Europe up to the middle years of the 20th century, when they were eventually ousted by motor coasters and road transport.

Because such vessels were frequently built of soft-wood, few have survived into old age. Many hundreds of them were built at Torrevieja, on Spain’s Costa Blanca, and one of them, built for the Flores family of shipowners  and  named »Carmen Flores«, was acquired about three years ago by the Maritime Museum at Barcelona, where her restoration to sailing condition is already well-advanced. It is planned to use the »Carmen Flores« to promote its parent museum at traditional ship events all over Mediterranean Spain and beyond.

Her sister-ship, built for the same owners on the beach at Torrevieja by Antonio Mari and floated off in 1917, was christened »Pascual Flores«. In the 1920’s she made several trips to the Caribbean, and in 1929 was featured in the Spanish film “La Ultima Luna”. When fruit cargoes were no longer available, »Pascual Flores« carried cement, salt and other commodities all over the Mediterranean. Following World War II service as a German ammunition barge, she received her first engine, a Thorneycroft, and her rig was altered. In 1975 she was purchased and brought to England for commercial charter work by the entrepreneur Peter Gregson, who rigged her to appear in various episodes of the popular BBC television series “The Onedin Line”.

In 1979 ownership of »Pascual Flores« passed to a charitable trust created in Bristol to provide sail training among that city’s young people. Her new owners decided to revert to a three-masted rig (she then had two). But fund-raising for their venture proved difficult, particularly when the loss at sea of the barque »Marques« in 1984 raised the minimum safety requirements for sail training vessels.

When the British Government terminated a job-creation scheme that had funded the costs of employing workless people on schemes of public benefit, work on refitting the »Pascual Flores« slowed down and her condition began to deteriorate. In 1991 she was towed from Bristol to Milford Haven, where a berth was available on preferential terms and a nearby training college offered technical help. But the grants sought by her parent trust were not forthcoming, and with the prospect of increasing costs to comply with the changing safety regulations, her owners offered her back to the municipality of Torrevieja where she had been built.

In August 1999 the French heavy-lift ship »Clipper Cheyenne« positioned herself above an underwater ledge off Milford Haven and deliberately submerged her  freight  deck  so  that »Pascual Flores«, her masts and spars lifted out and stowed on deck, could be floated over and lifted clear of the water for delivery to Torrevieja, where her restoration will be completed.

The municipality there also proposes to build a fleet of replicas of the lateen-rigged sailing lighters that conveyed sun-dried salt prepared in the vicinity of Torrevieja to the waiting schooners anchored off-shore. These replicas will be maintained by pupils of the local schools, who will also sail them and recreate the region’s historic salt traffic.

• Luxury steam yacht repatriated

by Mr. John Robinson 

One of the last and most luxurious steam yachts ever built was repatriated to Britain in October 1999 after more than fifty years of compatative obscurity in Roumania. She is the 91 m. »Nahlin«, built at John Brown´s shipyard at Clydebank in 1930 (where the Cunard  White  Star  liner »Queen Mary« was under construction at the same time). Her clipper bow bore a figurehead representing an Indian warrior, recalling the extensive business interests in India of the millionaire jute merchant whose wealth paid for »Nahlin«’s construction. His widow, Lady Annie Yule, used the yacht intensively for four years, her cruises covering more than 200,000 miles, equivalent to several circumnavigations. A professional crew of 58 looked after the guests occupying her six palatial guest cabins, decorated in Louis XIV style, while four geared steam turbines totalling 4,000 hp. propelled them at up to 17kts.

»Nahlin« was the last, and arguably the most beautiful, of all the yachts designed by G. L. Watson in Glasgow. Her facilities included a swimming pool, gymnasium and dance floor, and invitations to join her were highly prized among European and American socialites. When Britain´s King Edward VIII was courting the American divorcée Mrs Wallis Simpson in the face of public disapproval in Britain, he chartered the »Nahlin« for an Adriatic cruise in 1936 rather than risk any disagreement over using the Royal Yacht »Victoria & Albert«. Later that year he abdicated rather than give up Mrs Simpson. Lady Yule had by then evidently grown tired of »Nahlin«, and when Helen Lupescu, mistress of King Carol II of Roumania, suggested using the elegant yacht for amorous pursuits, her lover agreed and bought the vessel in 1938, changing her name to »Luceafärul«. After Carol was deposed by the Iron Guard in 1940, various uses were found for the yacht, and under Communism her name was changed to »Libertatea«, while she served as a school-ship.

By 1966, prolonged neglect had reduced her glamour, and her engines had long ceased to turn, but the yacht continued in use as a floating hotel at Galatz on the lower Danube. Happily this role did not require extensive alterations to her superstructure. In 1996 Nicholas Edmiston, a successful British yacht-broker, commenced negotiations to save the old »Nahlin« from further decline in Roumania. Eventually she was towed to Istanbul and loaded onto a heavy-lift ship for delivery to Falmouth, where she was unloaded in October 1999.Most of her opulent fittings had sadly been pilfered during more than half a century in Roumania, but her principal structure remains sound and intact, and a full restoration is currently being costed at Devonport dockyard, under the direction of Dr. William Collier, who specialises in such projects for Fairlie Restorations Ltd, a small and highly specialised yacht restorer based at Port Hamble near Southampton.

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EMH Newsletter nr 4