End of the Austro Hungarian Navy

The Imperial and Royal Navy of Austria and Hungary met its end in 19

Dec 4, 2006

From 1382 until 1918 this force was one of the largest in the world. Often bloodied but never beaten it disappeared from the oceans with a whimper.

The origin of the Austrian navy goes back its possession of the nautical city state of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea in 1382. Two fleets were maintained, one an oceangoing force in the Adriatic, the second an armed flotilla along the Danube River (which cuts through Vienna and eventually empties into the Black Sea). The Adriatic force expanded in 1797 with the Austrian acquisition of Venice with it the naval shipyards, docks and arsenal. By 1833 the Adriatic fleet had more than forty ships and was the sixth largest in the world. In 1840 a naval expedition to Syria led to the first overseas Austrian adventure. In 1853 the Austrian navy moved its main base to Pula (now in Croatia) and changed its command language to German from Italian after the loss of the state of Venice. In 1857 the steamship Navora circumnavigated the globe on a scitific voyage. The fleet fought the last ever combat between all wooden ships in the Battle of Heligoland on 9 May 1864 in Danish War. With the end of the wooden era, the fleet also fought the first battle between fully armored fleets against the Italian navy on 20 July 1866 at the Battle of Lissa which the Austrians also won. Austrian ships sailed to Brazil and Mexico in the 1860’s in an effort to prop up Austrian Emperor Maximilian (who had formerly been the commander of the Austrian navy) of Mexico’s doomed empire. In 1867 Austria became a dual monarchy with a union with Hungary in which the Hapsburg king ruled both countries. The turn of the century saw Austrian ships in the Pacific Ocean, fighting in China during the Boxer rebellion.

The Danube River as it stood in 1914 was had a length inside the empire of 2,840 kilometers and was an important defensive line. Not only trade plied its waters, but it became a supply line during wartime. From the 16th century the Austrians maintained armed flotillas on the river and in 1830 launched their first steamship the Franz I on the river from Vienna. In 1870 two revolving turret armored monitors were built, joined by another two in 1892 and a third pair in 1905. The first shots of the war were fired by these ships floating in the river in front of the Serbian capital of Belgrade on July 29, 1914. The river monitors fought the whole war against the allies in the Balkans and later in the Black Sea area. The cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth, caught in the Pacific six thousand miles from home went down fighting Japanese naval forces in the German treaty port of Tsing-tau in China. The crew scuttled the ship in deep water after running out of ammunition.

When the guns of war blew at the beginning of World War One, the Navy of Austria/Hungary was the seventh largest in the world. It contained 3 large new ‘Dreadnought’ type battleships, nine smaller pre-dreadnought battleships, 9 cruisers, 25 Destroyers, several flotillas of Torpedo Boats, and 7 Submarines. Successes were few as the fleet spent most of the war bottled up by a larger force of Allied vessels. Notably the fleet did successfully raid the coast of Italy upon her entry in the war in 1915. The Austrian navy was not to have any of the fleet actions such as the Battle of Jutland experienced by their German Allies.

Most of the damage done to the allies by the Austrians was from their submarines. A total of 28 mainly newly built Austrian U-boats lurked in the Adriatic and Mediterranean during the war, many of them quite deadly. They sank 117 ships during the War, amounting to a total gross tonnage of 220,121 tons. Captain George von Trapp (of the Sound of Music fame) was a very intrepid and successful Submarine commander for the Austrian Navy in WW1 sinking 19 ships including a French Cruiser before going down in music history. The surface fleet, led by Hungarian Admiral Miklos Horthy (later dictator of Hungary during world war two), remained largely bottled up but in doing so they tied down large numbers of Italian, French and British vessels.

By the late autumn of 1918 the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was well under way. On 6 October 1918 the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (later to be the country of Yugoslavia) was founded in Zagreb. On 29 October the Council cut all political and diplomatic relations between the new nation and Austria-Hungary. Military history guru Al Nofi stated in his CIC column that ,"On October 31, 1918, the last day of the existence of the Imperial-and-Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy, the shortly-to-be-unemployed Minister of Marine announced a major round of promotions for senior officers. "

Emperor Charles I gave the entire Austro-Hungarian navy and merchant fleet, with all harbors, arsenals and shore fortifications to the Council of the new country effective two days later. On 31 October in Pula harbor the Emperor's Hymn, Gott erhalte unseren Kaiser was played for the last time and the Austro-Hungarian flag was replaced by the Croatian flag. At 5 p.m. on 31 October 1918 the commander of battleship Viribus Unitis, an ethnic Croatian by the name of Janko Vukovich Podkapelski took command of the entire fleet. Yugoslavia promoted him to rear admiral, and sent a message to the Allies that they were not at war with any of them and that the Council had taken over the entire ocean going Austro-Hungarian fleet. It was basically a fleet in name only, with more than 70% of the sailors leaving for their newly independent countries and only the Yugoslav sailors staying behind. Tragically the now peaceful Viribus Unitis was sunk the next day by Italian combat swimmers, killing more than 350 men including the new Admiral Podkapelski. On November 4th the Allies entered Pula and Trieste and seized the fleet, replacing the Croatian flag with the Italian tricolor. The fleet would end up divided up by the victors (mainly Italy and France) and the once mighty battleships, cruisers and other warships would be sunk as targets or broken up for the value in scrap metal, typically within a couple years of being handed over.

This almost meant the end of the Austrian navy -----that is except for the Danube flotilla which would continue to live on for eighty more years.

The copyright of the article End of the Austro Hungarian Navy in Military History is owned by Christopher Eger. Permission to republish End of the Austro Hungarian Navy in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.