Josef Ritter von Romako (1828 – 5 June 1882) was an Austro-Hungarian

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in the 19th century. He was responsible for designing most of the

ironclad warship An ironclad is a steam-propelled warship protected by iron or steel armor plates, constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. Th ...

s of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, from the first vessels of the in the early 1860s to , built in the late 1870s and early 1880s. He was also responsible for designing the s.

Career

He was born in 1828 in

Atzgersdorf Atzgersdorf (; Central Bavarian: ''Atzgasduaf'') is a former municipality in Lower Austria that is now a part of the 23rd Viennese district Liesing. A small part of the former municipality today is part of the 12th Viennese district Meidling. ...

Lower Austria Lower Austria (german: Niederösterreich; Austro-Bavarian: ''Niedaöstareich'', ''Niedaestareich'') is one of the nine states of Austria, located in the northeastern corner of the country. Since 1986, the capital of Lower Austria has been Sankt P ...

and studied at the ''Technische Universität'' (Technical University) in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. He joined the Austrian Navy and was appointed a provisional cadet on 25 September 1849. On 1 November 1859, he became the ''Schiffbau Oberingeniuer'' (main shipbuilding engineer), and it was during this period that he designed the Austrian ships that saw action at the Battle of Lissa on 20 July 1866. Romako's designs tended to emphasize stronger armor than foreign contemporaries. On 1 November 1866, was promoted to the position of ''Schiffbau-Inspektor'' (Shipbuilding Inspector), and on 28 February 1870, he became the ''Obersten-Schiffbau-Ingeniuer''. In the early 1870s, he designed the casemate ship ''Tegetthoff'' and later in the decade, he prepared the design for the first Austro-Hungarian

torpedo cruiser A torpedo cruiser is a type of warship that is armed primarily with torpedoes. The major navies began building torpedo cruisers shortly after the invention of the locomotive Whitehead torpedo in the 1860s. The development of the torpedo gave rise ...

s of the and the follow-on vessel, .Bilzer, p. 164 The cruisers were the first steel

hulled Husk (or hull) in botany is the outer shell or coating of a seed. In the United States, the term husk often refers to the leafy outer covering of an ear of maize (corn) as it grows on the plant. Literally, a husk or hull includes the protective ...

vessels of the Austro-Hungarian fleet, and they represented a transition from the wooden sailing cruisers of the 1860s to the more modern steel cruisers of the 1880s. Romako based his design on the German

aviso An ''aviso'' was originally a kind of dispatch boat or "advice boat", carrying orders before the development of effective remote communication. The term, derived from the Portuguese and Spanish word for "advice", "notice" or "warning", an ...

.Sondhaus, p. 73 During the course of his career, he was awarded the

Order of the Iron Crown The Order of the Iron Crown ( it, link=no, Ordine della Corona Ferrea) was an order of merit that was established on 5 June 1805 in the Kingdom of Italy by Napoleon Bonaparte under his title of Napoleon I, King of Italy. The order took its name ...

, and he was ennobled in 1869. He also received the Danish Order of the Dannebrog and the Mexican

Order of Guadalupe There were three Imperial Orders of the Mexican Empire, which were Orders of chivalry created to reward Heads of state and prominent people during the two periods of the Mexican Empire—the ' ( es, Orden Imperial de Guadalupe), the ''Imperial Orde ...

. After a career spanning 33 years, he died on 5 June 1882.Bilzer, p. 164

Family

His brother, Anton Romako, was a painter.

Notes

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Romako, Josef Austro-Hungarian naval architects Austro-Hungarian Navy officers 1828 births 1882 deaths People from Liesing