SMS Juan de Austria

SMS Juan de Austria was the third member of the built for the Austrian Navy in the 1860s. Her keel was laid in October 1861 at the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino shipyard; she was launched in July 1862, and was completed in 1863. She carried her main battery&mdash;composed of sixteen 48-pounder guns and fifteen 24-pounders&mdash;in a traditional broadside arrangement, protected by an armored belt that was 110 mm thick.

Juan de Austria saw action at the Battle of Lissa in July 1866. There she was heavily engaged in the center of the melee; she traded broadsides with the Italian ironclad ITALIAN IRONCLAD Re di Portogallo and was hit three times by the turret ship ITALIAN IRONCLAD Affondatore, though she received little damage. After the war, Juan de Austria was modernized slightly in 1867 to correct her poor seakeeping and improve her armament, but she was nevertheless rapidly outpaced by naval developments in the 1860s and 1870s. Obsolescent by 1873, Juan de Austria was officially "rebuilt", though in actuality she was broken up for scrap, with only her armor plate, parts of her machinery, and other miscellaneous parts being reused in the new SMS Don Juan d'Austria.

Design
Juan de Austria was 70.78 m long between perpendiculars; she had a beam of 10 m and an average draft of 6.32 m. She displaced 3588 MT. She had a crew of 386. Her propulsion system consisted of one single-expansion steam engine that drove a single screw propeller. The number and type of her coal-fired boilers have not survived. Her engine produced a top speed of 11 kn from 1900 ihp. She could steam for about 1200 nmi at a speed of 10 kn.

Juan de Austria was a broadside ironclad, and she was armed with a main battery of sixteen 48-pounder muzzle-loading guns and fifteen 24-pounder 15 cm rifled muzzle-loading guns. She also carried a single 12-pounder gun and a six-pounder. The sides of ship's hull were sheathed with wrought iron armor that was 110 mm thick and extended from bow to stern.

Service history
Juan de Austria was built by the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino (STT) shipyard. She was laid down in October 1861, and her completed hull was launched on 26 July 1862. Fitting-out work was completed the following year and she was commissioned into the Austrian fleet. She proved to be very wet forward, owing to her open bow, and as a result, tended to handle poorly. In June 1866, Italy declared war on Austria, as part of the Third Italian War of Independence, which was fought concurrently with the Austro-Prussian War. Rear Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff brought the Austrian fleet to Ancona on 27 June, in an attempt to draw out the Italians, but the Italian commander, Admiral Carlo Pellion di Persano, refused to engage Tegetthoff.

Battle of Lissa


On 16 July, Persano took the Italian fleet, with twelve ironclads, out of Ancona, bound for the island of Lissa, where they arrived on the 18th. With them, they brought troop transports carrying 3,000 soldiers. Persano then spent the next two days bombarding the Austrian defenses of the island and unsuccessfully attempting to force a landing. Tegetthoff received a series of telegrams between 17 and 19 July notifying him of the Italian attack, which he initially believed to be a feint to draw the Austrian fleet away from its main bases at Pola and Venice. By the morning of the 19th, however, he was convinced that Lissa was in fact the Italian objective, and so he requested permission to attack. As Tegetthoff's fleet arrived off Lissa on the morning of 20 July, Persano's fleet was arrayed for another landing attempt. The latter's ships were divided into three groups, with only the first two able to concentrate in time to meet the Austrians. Tegetthoff had arranged his ironclad ships into a wedge-shaped formation, with Juan de Austria on his right flank; the wooden warships of the second and third divisions followed behind in the same formation.

While he was forming up his ships, Persano transferred from his flagship, ITALIAN IRONCLAD Re d'Italia, to the turret ship ITALIAN IRONCLAD Affondatore. This created a gap in the Italian line, and Tegetthoff seized the opportunity to divide the Italian fleet and create a melee. He made a pass through the gap, but failed to ram any of the Italian ships, forcing him to turn around and make another attempt. Juan of Austria initially attempted to follow Tegetthoff's flagship, SMS Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, but quickly lost contact with her in the ensuing melee. Juan of Austria became surrounded by Italian vessels, prompting her sister SMS Kaiser Max (1862) to come to her aid. Juan of Austria thereafter engaged ITALIAN IRONCLAD Re di Portogallo for around half an hour before shifting targets back to Affondatore. The latter scored three hits on Juan of Austria's unarmored bow, but they caused little damage. The first passed directly through the ship without exploding, the second struck the belt armor and failed to penetrate, and the third hit her quarter deck.

By this time, Re d'Italia had been rammed and sunk and the coastal defense ship ITALIAN COASTAL DEFENSE SHIP Palestro was burning badly, soon to be destroyed by a magazine explosion. Persano broke off the engagement, and though his ships still outnumbered the Austrians, he refused to counter-attack with his badly demoralized forces. In addition, the fleet was low on coal and ammunition. The Italian fleet began to withdraw, followed by the Austrians; Tegetthoff, having gotten the better of the action, kept his distance so as not to risk his success. As night began to fall, the opposing fleets disengaged completely, heading for Ancona and Pola, respectively.

Later career
After returning to Pola, Tegetthoff kept his fleet in the northern Adriatic, where it patrolled against a possible Italian attack. The Italian ships never came, and on 12 August, the two countries signed the Armistice of Cormons; this ended the fighting and led to the Treaty of Vienna. Though Austria had defeated Italy at Lissa and on land at the Battle of Custoza, the Austrian army was decisively defeated by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz. As a result, Austria, which became Austria-Hungary in the Ausgleich of 1867, was forced to cede the city of Venice to Italy.

Juan de Austria was rebuilt in 1867, particularly to correct her poor sea-keeping. Her open bow was plated over and she was rearmed with twelve 7 in muzzle-loaders manufactured by Armstrong and two 3 in 4-pounder guns. By 1873, the ship was obsolescent and had a thoroughly-rotted hull, so the Austro-Hungarian Navy decided to replace the ship. Parliamentary objection to granting funds for new ships forced the navy to resort to subterfuge to replace the ship. Reconstruction projects were routinely approved by the parliament, so the navy officially "rebuilt" Juan de Austria and her sister ships. In reality, only some parts of the engines, armor plate, and other miscellaneous parts were salvaged from the ships. Juan de Austria was dismantled at the STT shipyard beginning in December 1878. The new ironclads were given the same names of the old vessels in an attempt to conceal the deception.