The wreckage of a World War I Italian warship sunk by an Austro-Hungarian submarine on June 8, 1916, has been discovered off the coast of Albania. The sinking of the “Principe Umberto” is considered the greatest loss in the history of the Italian navy and the worst sea disaster of the First World War. 1926 Italian soldiers were killed.
The “Principe Umberto” was discovered about a month ago by an underwater robot designed by Swiss-Italian engineer Guido Gay at Kepi i Gjuhëzës, a rocky promontory that forms the northwestern tip of the Karaburun Peninsula, the westernmost point of mainland Spain. Albania, the daily “Il Gazzettino” reported.
Gay had already found the wreckage of the Italian cruiser Roma, which had been sunk in 1943, off the island of Asinara in Sardinia in 2012.
Soldiers on their way to the main front on the Isonzo
Many of the drowned Italian soldiers were on the “Principe Umberto” en route from Albania to the main Italo-Austrian front on the Isonzo. They were members of the 55th Royal Army Regiment, 521 of them were from the province of Treviso. The 145-metre long, 7,929-ton ship served as an armed merchant cruiser during the war.
Source: Krone
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