The Garden of the Forgotten Venetians: The Victory Column (Part 2): Wien and Buccari
I pick up the story of the column where I left it some while back, because there is one more bronze plaque to decipher.
To review: The granite column made for an Austrian admiral before World War I, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was at the peak of its pride, was transported to Venice as spoils of war to commemorate the Italian victory in World War I. But, you may ask, what part did the Italian Navy play in said victory? The plaque shown below, which covers the front of the base, tells part of the story — the stately, official part. But the rockstar exploits, the ones that played an outsized role in the whole affair, have been omitted. I will now correct that oversight.
Beneath the disk which once contained the profile of Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian (and now vaunts the lion of San Marco), is this impressive screed. I know it’s annoyingly long (it’s an official document, so no mercy is shown), but please read it because otherwise the rest of this post won’t mean much.
(Translated by me): To the fleet (Order 22 March 918) The enemy fleet, constantly avoiding battle, has recognized in the most complete and evident way the efficiency of the (Italian) fleet and of the Allied units which maintained control of the Adriatic. / The enemy was able to evade combat but not the surrender and the disarming of his fleet. / We have thus obtained the most decisive victory that could ever have been accomplished, and the importance of this is in no way damaged by the circumstance of not having achieved it in battle. / A part of that fleet that for 40 months waited in vain on the open sea today reaches Venice and in the historic city the glory of the navy which checked the Muslim barbarities joins the glory of her natural heir — the navy of the New Italy — that on the same sea checked the threat of other barbarities. / In the doing of which the nation now sees the tangible result. Admirals, commanders, officials, and crews have made the highest contribution maintaining the fleet always ready to enter in action. Conserving intact for 40 months of irritating waiting the combative ardor and the sentiment of discipline that stirred them on the day of the declaration of war. And it is for this that we have won. (signed Duke Paolo Camillo) THAON DE REVEL (admiral and commander of the Italian Royal Navy).
To summarize: “During 40 interminable, maddening months of constant patrol, our ships never got to fight because those pusillanimous Austrians didn’t come out and face us like men. But no matter! Our hardy seamen and equipment were always ready to take them on, and that’s a great thing and the reason why we won.” (This proclamation is a participation prize awarded by the admiral to console everybody for having missed out on combat.)
Don’t think, though, that the Italians were doing nothing but steaming back and forth across the Adriatic, scanning the horizon in vain. Four legendary feats proved that you don’t always need a big scary battleship to seriously damage your enemy; brains, skill, luck, and nerve — or as the saying here goes, “square balls” (coglioni quadrati) — can also get the job done. History shows that Venetian seamen and commanders often matched that description, and their Italian confreres weren’t far behind.
The master of all those qualities and protagonist of three of these deeds was Luigi Rizzo, born in Milazzo, Sicily, who became the most-decorated man in the history of the Italian Navy not only for his military talent but for his seeming inability to realize that he could ever get hurt. He and a few hardy colleagues dealt some very heavy blows to the ships, plans, and pride of the Austro-Hungarian navy. Their secret weapon, apart from their cog. quad., was their vessel, a type of small torpedo boat acronymed “MAS.”
First Exploit: On the night of December 9/10, 1917, Rizzo sank the battleship SMS Wien (pronounced VEEN, the Austrian name for Vienna) while it was at anchor near Trieste.
The Wien, with its sister ship Budapest, was in the Gulf of Trieste on November 16 to bombard Italian coastal defenses. Budapest and Wien opened fire at 10:35 AM and knocked out most of the Italian guns after about a half-hour. Efforts to counterattack by air or by torpedo boat were unsuccessful; the two ships then moved a few miles down the coast from Trieste to the Bay of Muggia, where they anchored and, I suppose, their crews drew deep breaths of satisfaction along with the smoke from freshly lit cigarettes. Not only were their ships big and strong, they were protected by seven steel chains strung at various depths across the harbor, so let’s not bother closing the watertight doors below. All was peace and tranquility; Rizzo had yet to be introduced.
As darkness fell on December 9, the two Italian MAS were towed into the bay of Trieste; towlines removed, the men started their silent electric engines and spent the next two hours cutting all the steel chains. Still undetected, at 2:32 AM they fired their torpedoes at Wien and Budapest. Budapest was unscathed, but Wien was hit: Rizzo’s two torpedoes blew a hole 10.5 meters (34 ft) wide abreast the boiler rooms, killing 46 men. Because all the watertight doors were open, the Wien capsized and sank in five minutes.
Both MAS were gone before being detected and Rizzo was awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor. But this was no “star is born” moment — he had just received his third Silver Star for his actions at Grado during the Retreat from Caporetto (a mere month earlier), performing with what evidently was his hallmark attitude — “calm, serene, and scornful of danger.”
Wien was buried in the mud of the harbor bottom at a depth of 16.5 meters (54 ft); salvage of the ship was ordered on December 14, but soon abandoned. The immediate court-martial convicted Vice Admiral Alfred Freiherr von Koudelka, commander of the naval district, the captains of both ships, and the commander of the naval defenses of Trieste of failing to ensure that all possible precautions had been taken. “What — me worry?” is not a recommended military philosophy, especially if there’s a war going on.
Second Exploit: On February 10, 1918, a mere two months after Wien went to the bottom, Rizzo joined what became the legendary raid on the Austrian ships in the bay of Buccari (now Bakar, Croatia), an adventure that almost immediately became known as the Beffa di Buccari (“the prank of Bakar”).
The basic idea would have been characterized as crazy, which was a huge advantage. As the town (and then-Austrian naval outpost for military as well as mercantile ships) lies at the end of a sheltered waterway 80 km (50 miles) long, it was commonly assumed that it was beyond attack. So naturally off we go.
Three MAS were organized under the overall command of Costanzo Ciano: #94 commanded by Andrea Ferrarini, #95 by Odoardo De Santis, and #96 commanded by Rizzo, which also carried poet and Air Force Major Gabriele D’Annunzio, the brain behind the whole affair.
Quite a flotilla departed Venice at 10:45 AM on February 10: Three groups of destroyers and Scout cruisers were assigned to tow and then support the nimble little MAS, just in case Austrian opposition was greater than anticipated.
Group 1 (one Scout ship and five destroyers) were positioned at Porto Levante on the Italian coast slightly south of Venice, ready to intervene if ordered to do so by central command in Venice.
Group 2 comprised three destroyers, each of which was to tow a MAS to within 20 miles west of the island of Susak, where each ship passed the tow line to a torpedo boat (torpediniere) and then moved to a spot 50 miles off Ancona to be on call for assistance to the MAS on their return.
Group 3 consisted of three torpedo boats, each of which towed a MAS to a mile from the entrance to the bay of Bakar.
There were also two submarines standing by, one 15 miles west of Pola, and another 15 miles south of Cape Kamenjak, guarding the escape route. What once appeared to me to have been just a batch of high jinks indulged in by a small group of bring-it-on guys was actually a mission running major risks which the Italian Navy intended to be ready to resolve. The assumption, based on aerial reconnaissance, was that there were military ships in the bay of Bakar.
As the convoy moved nearer the Croatian coast, Austrian sentinels ought to have given some kind of challenge. But once again, all was peace and quiet. If any lookout noticed the Italian ships in the winter darkness, he would have assumed they were Austrian, because how could they be anything else?
Still unrecognized by the Austrian coastal gun batteries, the three MAS continued until, a mile from the bay, they switched on their noiseless electric motors.
At 12:35 AM they reached the mouth of the bay of Bakar and saw their objectives — not warships, as they’d been informed, but three cargo steamships and one passenger ship. Never mind! MAS 96 (commanded by Rizzo) was assigned to attack ship #1, MAS 94 was given two, and MAS 95 headed for the fourth ship. At 1:20 AM the three boats launched their torpedoes.
I’ll skip the minute details. Of the six torpedoes fired, only one exploded (Rizzo’s, as it happened), which revealed that the ships were protected by anti-torpedo nets. As the alarms immediately began to blare, the MAS commenced to flee the bay past bewildered Austrian lookouts who even under the blinding floodlights didn’t shoot because they still couldn’t believe that the enemy had penetrated their harbor.
The lookouts at the entrance to the bay at Prestenizze managed to fire their rifles, to which the Italians replied, not with their machine guns, but with wisecracks; they even sarcastically slowed down.
But wait! Looking back, the Italian commanders couldn’t see the third MAS. THEY TURNED BACK, passing Prestenizze again. The search was fruitless — the missing craft had escaped on its own — so they turned around and passed the lookout point a FOURTH time, tossing three bottles into their wake as they made for Ancona. The three MAS reached the port at 7:45 that morning, uninjured though possibly somewhat disappointed.
But only “somewhat,” because the intrepid crews had fulfilled part of their mission. They had left a message in those three floating bottles sealed with the red, green and white of the Italian flag. It was D’Annunzio at his most taunting, giving what today would be called a very sick burn.
Unexploded torpedoes faded into insignificance in the face of this fabulous feat. Brief as it was, making fun of the Austrians in their own harbor had a tremendous psychological effect on the Austrians (humiliation) and even more on the Italians (invigoration) after the profound demoralization that followed the disaster of Caporetto. D’Annunzio became a national hero.
A certain Giacomo Scotti, in his book “Disertori in Adriatico,” has cast doubt on the glory of this event, pointing out that the ships in the harbor weren’t military, and accusing D’Annunzio of having cleverly managed to transform a failure into a resounding success (which he totally did). I have now shared Mr. Scotti’s opinion, and move on, because the one incontrovertible fact is that whatever D’Annunzio and his Thirty did on that freezing February night — danced a hornpipe in kilts, sang barbershop quartets, threw Slinkies at each other — they got through the Austrian defenses (if one can call them that) and made it home, thereby giving such a shot to Italian morale that eight months later Italy drove the Austrians out of the country once and for all.
Rizzo was awarded a bronze star (changed to a silver star at the end of the war) for his part in this adventure. Then he got back to work with his MAS and his torpedoes — details to come.
Floating music
We had the radio on very low this afternoon — a makeshift substitute for the soothing sound of an imaginary Alpine brook — when I realized I was hearing an extremely beautiful aria that I hadn’t heard in ages. (For the record: “Mi par d’udir ancora” from Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers,” though I don’t know who was singing. I’ll gladly settle for Beniamino Gigli, though, just to keep it in mind.) Here is the link: https://youtu.be/8B_Vhth7nis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B_Vhth7nis
Lino also hadn’t heard it in ages, but it immediately brought back some happy, and very specific, memories of a hot summer evening when he was a little boy. I want you to be listening to this seductive barcarole — though perhaps it was more lovely at a slightly less funereal tempo — as you imagine this scene:
“I was standing by the Rialto Bridge with my sisters on the evening of Ferragosto (August 15),” he told me.” (If you’ve never been in Venice on August 15, it means “hot.”) “And the galleggiante was coming slowly up the Grand Canal and there were the chorus and musicians from La Fenice playing, and this is what they were singing. And there were hundreds of boats following along behind, rowed by just everybody.”
The galleggiante (literally “floating”) was a platform made of two peatas lashed together, perhaps towed, perhaps rowed, he doesn’t remember. Here is a picture of a peata, which was used for everyday work of massive dimensions till the Fifties, at least. 
A gazebo-like dome had been constructed on which little lights were shining — I’ll pause while you adjust your mind to the very idea — and the summer-night music was wafting up along the canal as the boats drifted by.
The mere thought of such an event brings a “knot to my throat,” as they say here. Evening promenades were nothing new in Venice — over the centuries they were often indulged in by Venetians of all ranks and stations seeking a breath of cooler air in the sultry summer nights. There were even boats designed for these nocturnal perambulations, such as the gondola da fresco, the mussin (there is one still to be seen occasionally), and the pupparino. Even today, if someone asks me how I stand the summer heat here, I say “We go out on the water, that’s how.”
If music in the Grand Canal seems like the best idea ever, I would concur. A group of women have organized a somewhat similar event over the past few years, but although I haven’t participated, I have the impression that it wasn’t very much like the evening Lino remembers. For one thing, Venetians (few as they are nowadays) tend to go to the mountains in August. But I can tell you that if I’d been there with him, I’d never have forgotten it either.
recycling the cinema, part 2
As I mentioned in my last post, Venice used to be infested with movie theatres, but time and tide and commerce wait for no man, and we all know that cinemas stay in business on a margin thinner than tissue paper. But it wasn’t always so. Lino took me on a walk around Venice to discover the movie theatres he remembered from days gone by.
Launching our voyage of discovery were two plaques I had long since noted (I can’t remember why I was there) on a meaningless little side street between San Marco and San Moise’. These announce to the few people who pass each day that two extraordinary events in Venetian history, and the history of theatre/spectacle/opera/public performances, took place there.
This spot was the site of the Teatro San Moise’, which like many cinemas was born as a regular theatre, with a stage and sandbags and so on. It had been established (as many theatres were) by a noble family — in this case, the Giustinian of San Barnaba — as an opera house in 1640 and, though small, was highly influential. (In 1668 it was enlarged to 800 seats.) Vivaldi and Albinoni and other musicians, Venetian or otherwise, held concerts of their music here, and it was also used for entertainments of the commedia dell’arte. In 1818 the theatre shifted to puppets, then was rebuilt as the Teatro Minerva.
There is nothing that even hints at an erstwhile theatre except this doorway:
Back to the plaques. The first one commemorates the defunct theatre in its musical incarnation:
And just a few feet away, on the same wall of what is now partly shops and partly apartments, is this:
As must be clear by now, movie theatres came, and then went. Their relatively brief life here was glorious. Following are most of the cinemas that Lino remembers. He didn’t favor me with any reminiscences about the back rows.
Let’s stop for coffee. The next episode will be a wander around Lino’s old neighborhood on the other side of the Grand Canal.
recycling the cinema, part 1
A ridiculous amount of movies has been made in Venice over the last 100 years or so — Wikipedia lists 114, but that is a paltry and inaccurate number because the list omits many films, as well as the many films that have been made here in languages other than English.
For example, there is “Viaggi di Nozze” (“Honeymoons”) starring Carlo Verdone in which he plays an insufferable doctor who takes his bride to Venice on their honeymoon, but by the time they arrive in their suite at the Danieli Hotel he has become so unbearable that she throws herself out the window just to get the hell away from him. There is the fabulous “Vacanze Intelligenti” (“Intelligent Vacations”) with Alberto Sordi, in which he and his fruit-selling Roman wife end up at the Biennale in the summer heat and she, exhausted, collapses under a tree and is mistaken by the public for a work of art. There is also “Les Enfants du Siecle,” a French film about George Sand and Chopin in which Lino repeatedly rowed an old boat loaded with oranges past the facade of Palazzo Pisani-Moretta. These are just random examples, but you see that the list could go on and on into German and Spanish and probably Russian and, for all I know, Tongan.
But while we’re all accustomed to Venice being the star of innumerable movies, you may never have asked yourself if anybody ever went to the movies in Venice. They did. A lot. Back before cell phones roamed the earth and everything electronic took over people’s brains, going to the movies was just as much prime entertainment here as it was in Boring, Oregon and Sweet Lips, Tennessee. Perhaps you imagined the Venetians spending their free time floating around in boats, singing folk songs, but most people were sitting in the dark watching crazy things happen on a big square of silver-coated cloth. Venice was rife with movie theatres.
I managed to see a few movies in my early days in Venice (dubbed in Italian, as is almost always the case here), before the few remaining theatres gasped their last. A few small ones are hanging on, showings listed each day in the Gazzettino. “La-La Land” is here, with subtitles in Italian. Martin Scorsese’s “Silence” is also here (or was, a few days ago), in English.
All this has come to mind because of the renovation and reopening of the Teatro Italia, shown above. Ever since I’ve been here this splendid edifice has been closed, silent and empty. But there are plenty of Venetians who have vivid memories (especially of the back rows, I’m guessing) of the decades when it reigned as a movie theatre. Now people who go there will be having vivid memories of the mortadella and the rigatoni, because it has been revived as a supermarket belonging to the Dutch supermarket chain, De Spar. To its credit, the company has retained and refurbished the frescoes (did your hometown movie theatre have FRESCOES?), adding a touch of glamour to your search for scallopine and cheap wine.
Let me give you a glimpse of this transformed emporium of fantasy and thrill, but I’m not going to stop there. As usual, I let myself get carried away, and so in the next episode I will be conducting a tour of the movie theatres that Lino remembers from the days of yore.
