Italian cruiser Marsala

Marsala was a protected cruiser built by the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) in the 1910s. She was the second and final member of the, which were built as scouts for the main Italian fleet. She was equipped with a main battery of six 120 mm guns and had a top speed in excess of 26 kn, but her engines proved to be troublesome in service. Marsala spent World War I based at Brindisi; she was involved in the Battle of the Otranto Straits in May 1917, where she briefly engaged Austro-Hungarian cruisers. Marsala's career was cut short in November 1927 when she was stricken from the naval register and sold for scrap, the result of her unreliable engines and drastic cuts to the naval budget.

Design
Marsala was 140.3 m long at the waterline, with a beam of 13 m and a draft of 4.1 m. She displaced up to 4141 MT at full load. Her crew consisted 13 officers and 283 enlisted men. The ship's propulsion system consisted of three steam turbines, each driving a screw propeller. Steam was provided by fourteen mixed coal and oil firing Blechynden boilers. The engines were rated at 23000 shp for a top speed of 27.66 kn. She had a range of 1400 nmi at a cruising speed of 13 kn.

Marsala was armed with a main battery of six 120 mm L/50 guns mounted singly. She was also equipped with six 76 mm L/50 guns and two 450 mm torpedo tubes. The ship was only lightly armored, with a 38 mm thick deck, and 100 mm thick plating on her main conning tower.

Service history
Marsala's keel was laid down at the Castellammare shipyard on 15 February 1911, the same day as Nino Bixio. Work on Marsala proceeded slower than on her sister, and she was launched on 24 March 1912, where she was named for the city where Giuseppe Garibaldi launched the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860. After completing fitting-out work, the ship was commissioned into the Italian fleet on 4 August 1914. Italy declared neutrality at the start of World War I in August 1914, but by May 1915, the Triple Entente had convinced the Italians to enter the war against the Central Powers. Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, the Italian naval chief of staff, believed that Austro-Hungarian submarines could operate too effectively in the narrow waters of the Adriatic, which could also be easily seeded with minefields. The threat from these underwater weapons was too serious for him to use the fleet in an active way. Instead, Revel decided to implement a blockade at the relatively safer southern end of the Adriatic with the main fleet, while smaller vessels, such as the MAS boats, conducted raids on Austro-Hungarian ships and installations.

Marsala, Nino Bixio, and the cruiser ITALIAN CRUISER Quarto were based at Brindisi during the war, where they could patrol the path from the narrow Adriatic to the Mediterranean. By May 1917, the reconnaissance forces at Brindisi had come under the command of Rear Admiral Alfredo Acton. On the night of 14–15 May, the Austro-Hungarian cruisers Helgoland, SMS Novara (1912), and SMS Saida and several destroyers raided the Otranto Barrage&mdash;a patrol line of drifters intended to block Austro-Hungarian and German U-boats. Marsala was the only Italian cruiser with steam up in her boilers when word of the Austro-Hungarian attack reached Brindisi. The British cruisers HMS Dartmouth (1911) and HMS Bristol (1910) departed first, along with five Italian destroyers. Marsala, the flotilla leader ITALIAN FLOTILLA LEADER Racchia, and three destroyers followed thereafter. Marsala briefly engaged the fleeing Austro-Hungarians in the Battle of the Otranto Straits, before Acton broke off the pursuit and ordered a return to port.

Following the end of the war in November 1918, the Regia Marina demobilized; severely reduced naval budgets&mdash;the result of a weakened Italian economy in the early 1920s&mdash;led to further draw-downs. Marsalas engines were plagued with problems throughout her career, which made the ship an obvious target in the effort to trim the Regia Marinas budget. She was stricken from the naval register on 27 November 1927 and subsequently broken up for scrap.