Italian cruiser Umbria

''Umbria'' was a protected cruiser of the Italian ''Regia Marina'' (Royal Navy) built in the 1890s. She was the lead ship of the , which included five other vessels. All of the ships were named for current or former regions of Italy. The ship was equipped with a main armament of four and six guns, and she could steam at a speed of . ''Umbria'' spent much of her career abroad, including several years in American waters. In service during a period of relative peace, ''Umbria'' never saw combat. In 1911, she was sold to Haiti and renamed ''Consul Gostrück'', though she did not serve for very long under the Haitian flag. Her crew was too inexperienced to operate the ship, and she foundered shortly after being transferred to the Haitian Navy.

Design

''Umbria'' was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of . Specific displacement figures have not survived for individual members of the class, but they displaced normally and at full load. The ships had a ram bow and a flush deck. Each vessel was fitted with a pair of pole masts. She had a crew of between 213 and 278.

Her propulsion system consisted of a pair of horizontal triple-expansion steam engines that drove two screw propellers. Steam was supplied by four cylindrical fire-tube boilers that were vented into two funnels. On her speed trials, she reached a maximum of at . The ship had a cruising radius of about at a speed of .

''Umbria'' was armed with a main battery of four L/40 guns mounted singly, with two side by side forward and two side by side aft. A secondary battery of six L/40 guns were placed between them, with three on each broadside. Close-range defense against torpedo boats consisted of one gun, eight guns, two guns, and a pair of machine guns. She was also equipped with two torpedo tubes. ''Umbria'' was protected by a thick deck, and her conning tower had 50 mm thick sides.

Service history

''Umbria'' was built by the Odero-Terni-Orlando shipyard in Livorno. Her keel was laid down on 1 August 1888. Shortages of funding slowed the completion of ''Umbria'' and her sister ships. Tight budgets forced the navy to reduce the pace of construction so that the funds could be used to keep the active fleet in service. As a result, her hull was not ready to be launched until 23 April 1891, and fitting-out work took another almost three years to complete. ''Umbria'' finally joined the fleet on 16 February 1894. After entering service, she was stationed in Taranto along with the ironclads and , the protected cruisers and , the torpedo cruisers , , and , and several other vessels. She remained there through 1894. On 1 February 1897, ''Umbria'' was assigned to the Cruiser Squadron of the main Italian fleet, along with her sister ''Liguria'' and the cruisers and . Later that year, ''Umbria'' and ''Dogali'' cruised off the eastern coast of South America. In 1902, ''Umbria'' was part of a squadron with the protected cruisers and in American waters.

In September 1904, ''Umbria'' stopped in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to supervise the transfer of sailors who had been killed by a yellow fever outbreak on her sister in 1896. The men, 134 in all, had been buried in various cemeteries, but were re-interred in a large mausoleum in São Francisco Xavier. On 29 December, ''Umbria'' stopped in Valparaiso, where she met the German cruiser and the United States' cruisers and and the gunboat . In June 1905, ''Umbria'' represented Italy at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon. She was joined there by the United States' cruisers and . She visited San Diego, California in August exchanging salutes and visits with the commander of the coastal fortification outside the city. Two days after arriving, ''Umbria''s captain, officers, and twenty crewmen went ashore and placed a wreath to commemorate the men who had been killed aboard the United States' gunboat ''Bennington'' in a boiler explosion. ''Umbria'' ran aground outside Kingston, Jamaica in July 1906, while en route from Puerto Rico. The salvage ship assisted in pulling the ship free.

By 1910, the ''Regia Marina'' had decided to dispose of the obsolescent cruiser. Rumors that year of a potential sale to the Ecuadorian Navy prompted Peru to buy the old French cruiser , though Ecuador did not end up purchasing ''Umbria''. Instead, in December 1910, the ''Regia Marina'' sold ''Umbria'' to the Haitian Navy, but she did not arrive in Port-de-Paix, Haiti, until 13 June 1911. After the sale, the ship was renamed ''Consul Gostrück''. The ship was rumored to be carrying Cipriano Castro, the deposed president of Venezuela, though they later proved to be false. A German captain, Willy Meyer, was hired to take command of the ship upon her arrival in Haiti, but due to the lengthy delays, he quit. The cruiser sank shortly after entering service because her crew was not experienced in handling the ship. ''Consul Gostrück'' was eventually raised and towed to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for disposal in 1913.

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External links

Umbria
Marina Militare website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Umbria
Regioni-class cruisers
Ships built in Livorno
1891 ships