SMS ''Tegetthoff'' was an ironclad warship of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. She was built by the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino shipyard in Trieste, between April 1876 and October 1881. She was armed with a main battery of six guns mounted in a central battery ship, central-battery. The ship had a limited career, and did not see action. In 1897, she was reduced to a guard ship in Pula, Pola, and in 1912 she was renamed ''Mars''. She served as a training ship after 1917, and after the end of World War I, she was surrendered as a war prize to Italy, which sold her for ship breaking, scrapping in 1920.

Design

''Tegetthoff'' was a central battery ship designed by Chief Engineer Josef von Romako. The ship's namesake, Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, victor of the Battle of Lissa (1866), Battle of Lissa, had proposed building four new ironclads. These were to be completed by 1878, but poor economic conditions in the early 1870s forced the Austro-Hungarian government to cut back the naval budget. Admiral Friedrich von Pöck, who succeeded Tegetthoff as the head of naval administration, had attempted to secure funding for two new ships, to be named ''Tegetthoff'' and ''Erzherzog Karl'' from 1871. Pöck finally succeeded in convincing parliament to allocate funds for the first ship in 1875. He continued to try to convince the parliament to build a sister ship for ''Tegetthoff'' until 1880, without success. Austro-Hungarian industry was incapable of supporting the construction of the ship, and significant components had to be ordered from foreign manufacturers, including guns from Germany and armor plating from Britain. Romako made numerous improvements over earlier central battery ships like ''Erzherzog Karl'' and , including refining the hull (watercraft), hull shape to reduce the need for curved armor plate. The arrangement of the main battery was altered considerably; whereas the earlier ships had carried guns on two decks, ''Tegetthoff'' carried hers on a single deck, and the gun ports were arranged in such a way that the guns could be trained side to side without having to move them to another port. The naval historian R. F. Scheltema de Heere considers ''Tegetthoff'' to be "the only sensible casemate ship ever built", which "must be considered a stroke of genius."

General characteristics

''Tegetthoff'' was length at the waterline, long at the waterline and length overall, long overall, and she had a beam (nautical), beam of . The ship displacement (ship), displaced empty, normally, and up to at full load. During stability tests, it was determined that the ship's maximum displacement was . When empty, the ship had a draft (hull), draft of , at normal loading it increased to , and at full load, the ship had a draft of . As was standard for capital ships of the period, ''Tegetthoff'' was fitted with a pronounced naval ram, ram bow. She had short forecastle and sterncastle decks. ''Tegetthoff'' was the first ship in the Austrian Navy to be built with an all-steel hull, which allowed for a considerable savings in weight. Steering was controlled with a single rudder, from an unprotected position atop the conning tower or from a battle conning position below decks, behind the ship's heavy side armor. ''Tegetthoff'' had a transverse metacentric height of . The ship's crew numbered 525 officers and men. As built, the ship was powered by a single 2-cylinder, vertical Marine steam engine, compound steam engine that drove a single two-bladed screw propeller that was in diameter. Steam was provided by nine fire-tube boilers with three fireboxes apiece that were vented through a pair of funnel (ship), funnels on the centerline (nautical), centerline amidships. She was initially fitted with a three-masted sailing rig, though this was removed during the modernization, and two heavy fighting top, fighting masts were installed in its place. The propulsion system was rated to produce 1,200 nominal horsepower, but during her initial trials at around normal displacement in 1881, the engines reached , which gave ''Tegetthoff'' a top speed of . Two years later, another round of trials were carried out with the ship overloaded to , and she nevertheless managed for .

Armament and armor

''Tegetthoff'' was initially equipped with a main battery of six L/18 Breech-loading weapon, breech-loading guns manufactured by Krupp. These guns were mounted in a central battery amidships, and were intended to be used during pursuit and ramming attempts. Each gun had a range of elevation from -5° to +8.25°, and the forward guns could fire directly ahead. The aft guns could be fired directly astern, while the center pair had more limited firing arcs. The ammunition Magazine (artillery), magazine was located directly below the main battery. The ship also carried six L/24 breech-loaders, two L/15 breech-loaders, and four quick-firing gun, quick-firing (QF) guns. All of these guns were carried in individual pivot gun, pivot mounts on the upper deck, and in the case of the 47 mm guns, in fighting tops on the masts. The main armored belt consisted of thick armor plate in the central section, and the end Bulkhead (partition), bulkheads of the armored citadel were thick. On either end of the citadel, the belt tapered slightly to . The armor plate for the main battery casemate ranged in thickness from . The conning tower had sides that were thick. ''Tegetthoff''s armor plate amounted to , more than a quarter of the ship's total displacement.

Modifications

In the mid-1890s, ''Tegetthoff'' was extensively modernized. Her boilers were replaced with eight new Scotch marine boilers. After her reconstruction in the early 1890s, her propulsion system was replaced with a pair of 3-cylinder triple expansion engines built by the German firm Schichau-Werke. These were rated at , for a top speed of on trials. Her crew was increased to between 568 and 575. Also during the modernization, the main battery was replaced with L/35 C/86 guns from Krupp. The secondary guns now consisted of five L/35 QF guns, two Škoda 7 cm guns, L/18 guns, nine 47 mm L/44 QF guns, six 47 mm L/33 machine guns, and a pair of machine guns. ''Tegetthoff'' was also equipped with two torpedo tubes, one in the bow and one in the stern.

Service history

''Tegetthoff'' was keel laying, laid down on 1 April 1876 at the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino shipyard in Trieste. The ship was ship launching, launched on 15 October 1878, and completed in 1881. Supervision of the ship's construction was entrusted to the engineer Carl Tullinger, who had previously been sent to Amsterdam to observe the ship model basin that had been built there, the second example to be built in the world. According to Lawrence Sondhaus, ''Tegetthoff'' began her sea trials in October 1881, but Scheltema de Heere, citing records from the Austrian archives, provides a date of 5 August 1882 as the beginning of her trials. The ship was ready for ship commissioning, commissioning in September 1882; Kaiser Franz Joseph attended the commissioning of the ship in Pula, Pola. Financial difficulties had again delayed the ship's completion; the parliament finally voted to allocate funds to finish the ship in November 1881. At the time, she was the largest and most powerful ship in the Austro-Hungarian fleet, and she would keep that distinction until after the turn of the century. She was, nevertheless, a political compromise, and was much smaller than foreign casemate ships, particularly British and French vessels. ''Tegetthoff''s career was rather limited, in large part due to significant problems with her engines. For the first decade of her career, she was assigned to the Active Squadron, and her crew could only keep her engines fully operational in the years 1883, 1887, and 1888. ''Tegetthoff'' and an Austro-Hungarian squadron that included the ironclads ''Custoza'', , , and and the torpedo cruisers and travelled to Barcelona, Spain, in 1888 to take part in the opening ceremonies for the 1888 Barcelona Universal Exposition, Barcelona Universal Exposition. This was the largest squadron of the Austro-Hungarian Navy that had operated outside the Adriatic Sea, Adriatic. In June and July 1889, ''Tegetthoff'' participated in fleet training exercises, which also included the ironclads ''Custoza'', , ''Kaiser Max'', ''Prinz Eugen'', and ''Don Juan d'Austria''. In 1893–1894, she was modernized and had her propulsion system updated and her armament was replaced with newer guns. Her engines were replaced with more reliable models manufactured by the German firm Schichau-Werke. By this time, she was the only remotely modern ironclad in the Austrian fleet, apart from the two newly built barbette ships and . Admiral Maximilian Daublebsky von Sterneck had replaced Pöck, and unable to secure funding for capital ships, instead tried to modernize the Austro-Hungarian fleet by embracing the ''Jeune École'' doctrine. After 1897 she was used as a guard ship in Pola. During the summer maneuvers of June 1901, she served in the reserve squadron. The other major ships in the squadron included the new armored cruiser and the protected cruiser . In 1912 ''Tegetthoff'' was renamed ''Mars'', so that her original name could be used on SMS Tegetthoff (1912), a new battleship launched that year. She remained in service as a guard ship after the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. In 1917, she was used as a school ship for midshipmen, and the following year she was reduced to a Hulk (ship), hulk. Following the end of World War I, the ship was surrendered to Italy, where she was ship breaking, broken up by 1920.

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* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tegetthoff Ships built in Trieste 1878 ships Ironclad warships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy