Italian cruiser Giovanni Bausan
Giovanni Bausan
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Operators: | Regia Marina |
| Succeeded by: | Etna class |
| Planned: | 1 |
| Completed: | 1 |
| Scrapped: | 1 |
| History | |
 Italy
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| Name: | Giovanni Bausan |
| Namesake: | Giovanni Bausan |
| Builder: | Elswick |
| Laid down: | 21 August 1882 |
| Launched: | 15 December 1883 |
| Commissioned: | 9 May 1885 |
| Decommissioned: | 15 January 1920 |
| Fate: | Sold for scrap, 1920 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Protected cruiser |
| Displacement: | 3,082 long tons (3,131 t) |
| Length: | 280 ft (85.3 m) |
| Beam: | 42 ft (12.8 m) |
| Draft: | 18 ft 6 in (5.6 m) |
| Installed power: |
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| Propulsion: | 2 × shafts, 2 × compound-expansion steam engines |
| Speed: | 17.4 knots (32.2 km/h; 20.0 mph) |
| Range: | 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km; 4,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Complement: | 13 officers and 254 enlisted men |
| Armament: |
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| Armor: | Deck: .75–1.5-inch (19–38 mm) |
Giovanni Bausan was a protected cruiser of the Regia Marina (Royal Navy) that was designed and built by Sir W G Armstrong Mitchell & Co.'s Elswick Works in England in the mid-1880s. The finished ship entered service in May 1885. She was the first ship of this type to be built for the Italian fleet, and she provided the basis for subsequent designs built in Italy, including the Etna class. Giovanni Bausan was intended to serve as a "battleship destroyer", and was armed with a main battery of two 10-inch (254 mm) guns to give her the ability to defeat heavy armor, but design flaws rendered her unfit for this role.
Giovanni Bausan frequently served abroad. She participated in the conquest of Eritrea in 1887–88 as the flagship of the Italian squadron during the campaign. She took part in the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–03 alongside British and German warships. During the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12, she provided gunfire support to Italian troops ashore in North Africa. By the outbreak of the First World War, Giovanni Bausan had been relegated to secondary duties, first as a distilling ship, and later as a depot ship for seaplanes. The ship was disarmed during the conflict and ultimately was sold to ship-breakers in March 1920.
The design of Giovanni Bausan was based on that of Elswick's earlier Esmeralda, built for Chile and designed by George Rendel, and was the first modern protected cruiser constructed for the Italian Navy. The new ship was ordered in 1882 by Guglielmo Acton, then the Minister for the Navy, and was named for Giovanni Bausan, a Neapolitan naval commander who fought in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Referred to by some as a torpedo ram, she was one of the first ships of her type.Giovanni Bausan was intended for use as a "battleship destroyer", but the low rate of fire of her guns and her lack of steadiness as a gun platform made her ineffective in this role. She nevertheless represented a temporary embrace of the theories of the Jeune École doctrine espoused by French naval architects and strategists.
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Wikipedia