Italian cruiser Caprera

Caprera was a torpedo cruiser of the built for the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) in the 1880s.

Design
Caprera was 73.1 m long overall and had a beam of 8.22 m and an average draft of 3.48 m. She displaced 833 MT normally. Her propulsion system consisted of a pair of horizontal triple-expansion steam engines each driving a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by four coal-fired locomotive boilers. Specific figures for Caprera's engine performance have not survived, but the ships of her class had top speeds of 18.1 to 20.8 kn at 3884 to 4422 ihp. The ship had a cruising radius of about 1800 nmi at a speed of 10 kn. She had a crew of between 96–121.

Caprera was armed with a main battery of two 120 mm /40 guns and six 57 mm /43 guns mounted singly. She was also equipped with three 37 mm /20 guns in single mounts. Her primary offensive weapon was her five 450 mm torpedo tubes. The ship was protected by an armored deck that was up to 1.6 in thick; her conning tower was armored with the same thickness of steel plate.

Service history
Caprera was laid down at the Cantiere navale fratelli Orlando (Orlando Brothers' Shipyard) in Livorno on 27 July 1891, originally under the name Clio. She was renamed Caprera on 23 February 1893 and was launched on 6 May 1894, the last member of her class to enter the water. After fitting-out work was completed, the ship was commissioned into the fleet on 12 December 1895. That year, Caprera was stationed in the 2nd Maritime Department, split between Taranto and Naples, along with most of the torpedo cruisers in the Italian fleet. These included her sister ships ITALIAN CRUISER Partenope, ITALIAN CRUISER Aretusa, ITALIAN CRUISER Euridice, ITALIAN CRUISER Iride, ITALIAN CRUISER Minerva, and ITALIAN CRUISER Urania, the four s, and ITALIAN CRUISER Tripoli.

At the start of the Italo-Turkish War in September 1911, Caprera was stationed in Italy, alternating between the ports of La Spezia and Naples, along with her sister ships ITALIAN CRUISER Urania and ITALIAN CRUISER Iride. The threat of an Ottoman attack from the Arabian Peninsula across the Red Sea to Italian Eritrea led the Italian High Command to reinforce the Red Sea Squadron. Caprera and several destroyers were sent to strengthen the Italian defenses. The Italian cruiser ITALIAN CRUISER Piemonte and two destroyers annihilated a force of seven Ottoman gunboats in the Battle of Kunfuda Bay on 7 January 1912. Caprera and the rest of the Italian ships then commenced a bombardment campaign against the Turkish ports in the Red Sea before declaring a blockade of the city of Al Hudaydah on 26 January.

On 27 July and 12 August, Caprera, her sister ship ITALIAN CRUISER Aretusa, and the protected cruiser ITALIAN CRUISER Piemonte conducted two bombardments of Al Hudaydah. During the 12 August attack, they destroyed an Ottoman ammunition dump. On 14 October, the Ottoman government agreed to sign a peace treaty, ending the war. Caprera did not remain in service long after the end of the war. She was sold for scrap in May 1913 and thereafter broken up.