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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  January 16, 2013

Here we see the Austrian navy frigate SMS Novara sailing through the gentle Pacific in the 1850’s.

Laid down in 1843 at the Venetian Arsenal, in Venice, Italy, she was placed in service in 1851. Armed with four impressive 60-pounder Paixhans guns and two dozen smaller 24-pounders, she could hold her own. At the time the commander of the Austrian Navy was Archduke Maximilian. The good Archduke sent the Novara in 1857 on a 27-month long scientific research mission. Circumnavigating the globe, it was the first large-scale scientific, around-the-world mission of the Austrian Imperial navy and remains a proud moment in Austrian history. In the mission they collected 21-binders of information and made more than 26,000 collections of fauna around the world. These collections lead to the discovery of pure cocaine, which is celebrated at high-dollar events to this day.

In 1864 the heroic vessel was charged with carrying Maximilian to Mexico where he assumed his new throne over that country, installed by French troops. However that didn’t work out too well for Max, and in 1868 the Novara returned to Mexico to retrieve his body.

The ship participated in the greatest Austrian naval victory at the Battle of Lissa in 1866 and spent  another three decades as a gunnery training ship before she was scrapped in 1899 at age 56.

She is well-remembered in Austria, a country that hasn’t had a blue-water navy since 1918.

Specs:

Displacement:     2,615 t (2,574 long tons)
Length:     76.79 m (251 ft 11 in)
Beam:     14.32 m (47 ft 0 in)
Draft:     5.8 m (19 ft 0 in)
Installed power:     1,200 ihp (890 kW)
Propulsion:     1 shaft, 1 steam engine
Speed:     12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph)
Range:     3,300 nmi (6,100 km; 3,800 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:     550
Armament:     4 × 60-pounder smoothbore Paixhans guns
28 × 30-pounder Novara guns
2 × 24-pounder Breech-loading guns

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