On April 24, 1913 Italy's newest battleship, Dante Alighieri, sailed across the Gulf of Napoli from Napoli to Castellammare di Stabiato and the Navalmeccanica shipyard, embarked were King Emmanuel III and Queen Elena. They arrived at the in the roadstead off the shipyard around 10:30 a.m. to attend the launch of Italy's newest and what would be Italy's last battleship. Thousands of cheering people and steam whistles from the assembled flotilla greeted the nation's Monarchs when they arrived at the shipyard at 11:00.

The ceremony began shortly thereafter, the Bishop of Castellammare gave the blessing and Queen Elena christened the 557' long hull and named the ship Caio Duilio. On a beautiful day filled with sunshine, at high noon the ship slid down the ways effortlessly and took to the water for the first time. The crowd was quite pleased with the flawless launch, and the applause and cheers was loud and long. Following the launch the King and Queen returned to the awaiting Dante Alighieri and sailed back to Napoli.

At that time there were four other battleships under construction in Italy; Conte di Cavour, Giulio Cesare, Leonardo da Vinci and Duilio's sister ship Andrea Doria. The first three had been launched in 1911, the Andrea Doria had been launched less than a month earlier on Mar. 30. 1913. Duilio was completed almost a full year before Doria and by March of 1916 the Italian's had six modern battleships in their inventory. However all six were built with only 12" (305mm) guns which were quickly outclassed by other navies.

Both Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio were totally rebuilt in the late 1930's and both survived until the mid 1950's when they were scrapped. Only one other battleship was ever launched by the Italians, this was Francesco Caracciolo on May 12, 1920, but she and her three sisters, which had been laid down but not launched, were cancelled and scrapped in 1921.

© 2014 Michael W. Pocock
MaritimeQuest.com