Breakthrough in Search for the Wreck of Famous Merchant Sailing Ship “Splendido”

A breakthrough has been made in the search for the wreck of one of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’s most famous merchant sailing ships, the Splendido. Deep divers from the 2nd Reconnaissance Regiment “Gergely Bornemissza,” technical and bomb disposal divers, and divers from the Karst Water Sports Association dived in the Adriatic Sea, at the northern tip of Unije Island, where they managed to identify the presumed crash site of the sailing vessel and recovered several objects of contemporary use.

The wooden structure of the sunken sailing vessel is thought to have been completely destroyed by salt water and intensive fishing over the years, but the fishing nets that had become entangled in the wreck and the accumulated sediment created a regular 70-meter-long rise in the otherwise completely flat seabed. This shape was spotted by the locators and examined by underwater drone.

Decades of research seem to have proved that the sea does indeed hide the wreckage of the sailing ship where László Czakó, the theoretical leader of the research, thought it would.

Although little was known about Hungarian merchant shipping in the 19th century, it is known that the first merchant fleet of the country appeared on the world’s seas in the mid-1800s. One of the most famous ships of this early merchant fleet was the two-masted sailing ship Splendido, built in 1850, in Fiume.

The merchant ships of the second half of the 19th century were of various types. Most of these ships were built in the shipbuilding workshops of Rijeka and Trieste and their surroundings. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’s merchant fleet was the largest in the mid-1880s, exceeding 300 sailing ships, wrote buvarinfo.hu. This meant that the size of the monarchy’s merchant fleet was almost on a par with that of France, Germany, or Italy, which all had a long and rich maritime tradition. The monarchy was a major player in civilian shipping, but also ranked sixth in the world in terms of its navy.

The Splendido, under the command of Captain Ivan Visin, circumnavigated the globe between 1852-59, before the much larger, steam-powered frigate Novara managed the feat in 1857-59.

Unfortunately, the ship later sank during a storm on a Trieste-Cres voyage. According to the site, Czakó and his colleagues carried out a search with a locator in 2009, which identified a sunken vessel. As there were no other wrecks in the area and the locator did not find any others, the identity of the ship was likely, he said at the time.

Via 2nd Reconnaissance Regiment “Gergely Bornemissza”, buvarinfo.hu; Featured image: Facebook/MH Bornemissza Gergely 2. Felderítőezred