double the Austrian; but the government, whilst spending freely on their new ships and guns, had neglected to insure the quality of their officers and the discipline of their seamen.
The officers were young, without knowledge or experience, without the discipline or even the social training which teaches men so thrown together to live in mutual amity; there was a lamentable want of harmony between those of the same grade, and of deference from inferiors to superiors. This was nothing new; it had always been so in the Sardinian navy; and was aggravated by the coalition with the Neapolitan. It was so universal that the writer from whom I quote concludes that it is the necessary condition of naval life: "Everybody," he says,‘‘knows that this poisonous plant takes root and flourishes amongst other seafaring people; and it seems that the compulsory and continual living together renders it difficult to avoid the clashing of individual characters, and makes their differences more acrimonious."[1]
The command-in-chief of this fleet was entrusted to Persano, the one admiral of the Italian navy; under him were Albini, vice-admiral; and Vacca, rear-admiral. Vacca was a Neapolitan; Albini, a native of Sardinia. Carlo Pellion di Persano, of noble family, was born at Vercelli in Piedmont, in 1806. At the age of eighteen he entered the Sardinian navy, and having passed through the regular grades of the service, was made a captain in 1841. He then commanded the "Eridano" brig for a three years' commission in the Pacific; and, during the Adriatic campaign of 1848-9, had had command of the brig "Daino," in which he is said to have distinguished himself. In 1851, he was in command of the "Governolo," which carried to London the Piedmontese contribution to that first International Exhibition. Afterwards, in 1859, he had command of the "Carlo Alberto," a fifty-gun frigate; and having served in her through the operations of that year, was, in October, raised to the rank of rear-admiral. He then had charge of the squadron which, in the early summer of 1860, was co-operating with Garibaldi on the coast of Sicily; after which he conducted the naval attack on Ancona, and received the surrender of Lamorici£re on board the flag-ship, the "Maria Adelaide," on the 30th of September. For this service he was made a vice-admiral; Albini, the second in command, being at the same time made a rear-admiral. In 1862, Persano was a member of the Ratazzi cabinet, as minister for the navy; and, on its breakup in the end of the year, before he retired from office, promoted himself to the rank of admiral.
This is a short outline of Persano's service claims to distinction. He was generally esteemed as a man of good family and of amiable temper; he had married an English lady, and being thus connected with English society, was looked on as partly an Englishman, or at least was supposed to have caught, as by infection, the good qualities of the typical English naval officer. When the war broke out in 1866, he was considered the man of the day, and great things were expected from him. He proved, however, wanting in almost every gift which raises an officer to the height of an emergency. At Taranto, where he took the command on May 16, he found that a great deal was still wanting to make the fleet fit for active service; the equipment was imperfect, the men were newly raised, the senior and commissioned officers were inefficient, and of petty officers there was a great scarcity. Such defects were of course very real; but Tegetthoff, at Fasana, was struggling manfully against the same: at Taranto or at Ancona, Persano does not seem to have realized that it was his duty to do this. "Send me what you have," wrote Tegetthoff to the minister for the navy, "I will do something with it." Persano's tone was rather, "If you don't send me what I ask for, I can do nothing." And, meantime, he did nothing. The drills were slack, discipline uncared for, and the equipment left very much to itself.
Any competent witness who had been able to study the condition, the preparation, above all the temper of the two fleets, as they lay in their respective roadsteads, would have had no doubt as to the result of a hostile meeting between them. Though the material superiority lay so entirely with the Italians, he would have remarked that a large proportion of the Austrian seamen were Dalmatians, the descendants of the the Uscocchi and other maritime tribes of the Gulf of Quarnero, the best and sturdiest seamen that the Mediterranean has ever seen, the men who had, for centuries, upheld the supremacy of Venice in the Adriatic, or who, on their own account, had questioned the rule alike of Venetian, Turk, or Spaniard; he would have remarked the personal differ-
- ↑ La Guerra in Italia nel 1866. L'Esercito, la Flotta e i Volontarj Italiani. Studio militare. Milan, 1867, p. 344.
