Italian cruiser Libia

The design for the new protected cruiser was a copy of the British-built Ottoman cruiser Hamidiye, and was originally intended for sale to the Ottoman Navy.[1] The ship was 103.6 meters (340 ft) long at the waterline and 111.8 m (367 ft) long overall. She had a beam of 14.5 m (48 ft) and a draft of 5.5 m (18 ft). She displaced 3,760 long tons (3,820 t) normally and up to 4,466 long tons (4,538 t) at full load. The ship was fitted with two pole masts. She had an inverted bow and a flush deck. Her superstructure consisted of a tall conning tower foward and a smaller, secondary conning tower aft of the mainmast. Her crew numbered 14 officers and 300 enlisted men.[2]

Libia was powered by two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each of which drove a screw propeller. Steam for the engines was provided by sixteen coal-fired Niclausse water-tube boilers that were trunked into three closely spaced funnels on the centerline. The engines were rated at 12,500 indicated horsepower (9,300 kW), though they only reached 11,530 ihp (8,600 kW) in service. This was sufficient to propel the ship at a top speed of 22.9 knots (42.4 km/h; 26.4 mph). Libia had a cruising radius of 3,150 nautical miles (5,830 km; 3,620 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).[2]

The ship was armed with a main battery of two 152 mm (6 in) L/50 quick-firing guns placed in individual pivot mounts, one forward and one astern.[2] These guns were probably Pattern FF Armstrong guns, which fired a 20-kilogram (44 lb) shell at a muzzle velocity of 780 meters per second (2,600 ft/s).[3] These were augmented by a battery of eight 120 mm (4.7 in) L/45 guns, four mounted individually on each broadside. Close-range defense against torpedo boats was provided by a battery of eight 47 mm (1.9 in) L/50 guns and six 37 mm (1.5 in) L/20 guns. She was also equipped with four 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes.[2]

The ship was protected by a curved armor deck that was 100 mm (4 in) thick. Her conning tower had the same thickness of armor plating on the sides. The main guns were protected by 76 mm (3 in) thick gun shields.[2]

The new cruiser was laid down in 1907 at the Ansaldo shipyard in Genoa for the Ottoman Empire, under the name Drama.[2] But following the rise of the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman government became unwilling to pay its foreign debts, which led Ansaldo to halt construction work. Work on the ship only resumed in late 1911 when Italy seized the ship following its declaration of war against the Ottoman Empire in the Italo-Turkish War.[4] The completed hull was launched on 11 November 1912, and following the completion of fitting-out work, the new ship was commissioned on 25 March 1913.[2]

Postwar career

Libia underway during her world tour

In 1921 the ship went on a world tour under the command of Captain (later Admiral) Ernesto Burzagli. During the cruise, she stopped in San Francisco, United States in November, where she stayed for a month. While there, she was filmed for a short documentary by the then-unknown film director Frank Capra on 6 and 7 November—though it did not generate much attention, it was Capra's first publicly screened film. The ship departed San Francisco on 4 December.[10] In 1922, Libia visited Australia while on her tour.[11]

In 1925, her 150 mm guns were removed.[2] That year, she was sent to China, where she joined the armored cruisers San Marco and San Giorgio and the river gunboats Caboto and Carlotto. These ships contributed men to form the Battaglione Italiano in China (Italian Battalion in China); the contingents from Libia were sent to guard the consulates in Beijing and Shanhaiguan.[12]

On 28 March 1929, Libia collided with the Chinese coastal steamer SS Kangtai off Woosung, China. Kangtai sank with the loss of 30 crew members.[13] Libia remained in Chinese waters for nearly a decade; in the early 1930s, she was replaced by the protected cruiser Quarto.[12] In September 1935 she was drydocked to prepare for her disposal.[14] She was stricken from the naval register on 11 March 1937 and was sold to ship breakers.[2]

• Cresciani, Gianfranco (2003). The Italians in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521537789.
• "Exit Albania? Departure of Prince William of Wied—After the Revolution of July, 1914". The New York Times Current History: The European War. New York: The New York Times Company. 2: 1062–1066. 1917. OCLC 29070938.
• Friedman, Norman (2011). Naval Weapons of World War One. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-84832-100-7.
• Gardiner, Robert & Gray, Randal, eds. (1985). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1906–1921. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-907-3.
• Halpern, Paul G. (1995). A Naval History of World War I. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-352-4.
• Halpern, Paul G. (1987). The Naval War in the Mediterranean. Annapolis, Maryland, USA: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-448-9.
• "Italian Cruiser Libia". The Marine Review. New York: Penton Pub. Co. 43 (2): 67. February 1913. OCLC 9709414.
• Marinelli, Maurizio; Andornino, Giovanni (2013). Italy’s Encounters with Modern China: Imperial Dreams, Strategic Ambitions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137290939.
• McBride, Joseph (1992). Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1604738391.
• Willmott, H. P. (2009). The Last Century of Sea Power (Volume 2, From Washington to Tokyo, 1922–1945). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253004093.