We all know the story of the Titanic, the metal mastodon and the supposed technical marvel that sank on its maiden voyage. But there were ships that didn’t even make it that far, didn’t even make it past the testing of its machinery and seaworthiness or a short-haul trial voyage. There are ships that didn’t get anywhere. It’s impossible to know what thoughts were swarming through the minds of the assembled masses of people in the port of Sestri Levante in northern Italy on a quiet afternoon on September 22, 1907.
Politicians, business moguls, Roman Catholic priests, roasted chestnut vendors, finely dressed ladies, the local proletariat and the rest of the frog-filled paradise – they were there to witness the launch of the largest Italian passenger ship of all time. Principessa Yolanda, a 150-meter ocean liner with a displacement of some 16,000 tons, was supposed to be the pride of a nation known for kneading pasta and playing bad football. With a capacity of 1,600 passengers and 360 crew members, unprecedented luxury and technical equipment, this ship was the pinnacle of Navigazione Generale Italiana, an ocean-going shipping company and a constant supplier of fresh emigrant meat to the North American continent.
At the signal to lower the ship through the slipway into the water, the Princess immediately reached the water and at the same moment, tilting critically to one side during the descent into the water, she began to take in water through the numerous open cabin windows and other holes in the hull. The ship, which was supposed to serve for decades, remained above water for an incredible 22 minutes before sinking before the eyes of thousands of onlookers who, in disbelief, shock and panic, could not believe their own eyes. This also broke the 279-year-old record of the Swedish admiralty ship Vasa, which took three hours to reach the bottom on the day of its ceremonial commissioning.
The crew and journalists who were on board nevertheless left this bizarre and epic shipwreck in time and fortunately there were no human casualties. The only victim was the national pride of the paradise that communicates verbally with the help of nervous tics. Further inspections of the ship clearly indicated that it would not be possible to extract and salvage it, despite being located shallow, right on the shore. All that remained was to save what could be saved, the most valuable equipment such as Marconi's supermodern wireless radio and powerful steam engines with triple expansion of steam. The hull was left to rot in the harbor as a silent witness to the engineering-technological-propaganda cataclysm. The assumptions about the disturbed center of gravity were the most current, and since the Princess had her sister, Principessa Mafalda, which was also under construction - the lessons learned were applied to at least the second and last ship of the same class to prevent a similar debacle. Appropriate ballast was placed throughout the hull and part of the deck structure was removed in order to prevent critical overloading and tilting.
But life is unpredictable and fate is sneaky, so the curse was only postponed, the design flop was only latent and was activated in 1927 when this ship, after 18 years of service, turned into a tragedy. The history of the second Princess was filled with problems, epidemics due to refrigerator breakdowns and clogged sewage pipes, drifting across the oceans several times due to a total collapse of the propulsion system, the detachment of one or even both (?!) propellers, the rudder getting stuck and wandering to the left or right, rotting at the bottom of the hull and the corresponding intake of water...
And that October 25, 1927 was a special day.
Then, one of the propellers did not settle for a simple failure but began to shake and bend towards the hull - along the way cutting it in several places and allowing water to begin to penetrate quickly. The safety doors did not work and this marked the end of the journey for this ship. Fortunately, the sinking occurred on a popular route for travel to South America and several ships arrived in time to rescue most of the people on board. However, 314 people were left to their watery grave, out of a total of 1,259 people on board the Princess at that moment. To this day, this accident remains the worst in the history of Apennine shipping, which in 2014 surprised us with a new disaster, the sinking of the Costa Concordia, famous for the escape of the frogman officers led by the captain and leaving the passengers to drown.
Thus ends an unimportant tale about two forgotten giant metal sisters who were conceived under an unlucky star, under a bad arrangement of the sky, under the wrath of the sea, technological flops in search of disaster, horror, coal and corpses.
(Roger Mortis, 158)
