THE SWISS HAD A NAVY

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4452, 30 January 1940, Page 4

THE SWISS HAD A NAVY

WORK ON LAKE OP GENEVA There is no reason to doubt the former existence of a Swiss Navy, writes a correspondent of the ‘Manchester Guardian/ although it .is a good many years since Switzerland was entitled to rank as a naval Power. The fact is that the Swiss Navy was formed during the 16th century for work on the Lake of Geneva and reached quite a reasonable strength in succeeding years. Not only did it boast a full admiral, but even had its own dockyard and training school for officers. The Swiss Navy was eventually dispersed in 1753. Since those times, it may be noted, the Swiss have continued to interest themselves in nautical matters, and quite a number of small vessels have been built for owners in that country during the last few years. One of the old Thames “penny steamboats” was sent out to Lake Geneva when the London County Council river service ended in 1909, and she is probably still in active service there. The passage of years has made the old , Swiss Navy and its admiral a stock joke in some quarters, like Wigan pier, yet both the Swiss admiral and Wigan pier actually existed, and neither were considered particularly amusing in their day. As for the Papal Navy, another correspondent offers its history in some detail. A pamphlet in the Admiralty Library of the 15th century, he writes, makes allusion to the “Papal galleys” as “being in existence in A.D. 728 or earlier.” Through the many centuries we get glimpses of the Papal galleys and storeships in the Levant waters, as in A.D. 1329 Bfcfeop Jordanus asks for a “pantellaria (three-decked galley) to guard the storeships from Alexandria.” Admiral Blain in 1654 records a “Papal galley bringing him a present from the Pope as he lay in the roadstead at Messina,” and in 1796 Pope Pius VII. was requested by Napoleon to use the Papal Fleet “in clearing from all Papal ports ships of nations hostile to Prancg. ? ’ In the earlier 19th century we find the Papal Fleet under its own Cardinal Admiral based on Ancona, and in 1853 there is a record of Great Britain and the Holy See reaching an agreement that the ships of each nation should have “national treatment” in each other’s ports, thereby indicating that'the Papal authority had a mercantile as well as a naval squadron. , In 1868 the Papal Fleet consisted of 13 ships under Admiral Alessandro Cialdi; there wa§ the Immacolata Concezione, of 650 tons, 14 knots, and having eight 18-pounders, San Pietro and Guasco had four guns each, Papin and Gitana had two 18-pounders each, and the San Giuseppi had one 24pounder. All these were steamers, but there were also seven sailing xebecs and feluccas, all flying the Papal flag. Nearly all of the steamers were built on the Thames, the first-named at the Thames Ironworks, with engines cast by Seaward and Co., of Millwall.

Brassey in his “Voyage of the Sunbeams” describes meeting the Iramacolata Concezione. After the fall of the Papal States in 1870 this vessel was sold and renamed the Loire. She went East, being finally burned by accident in Manila Harbor in 1907. Thus ended the Papal Navy’s last representative. The Papal flag in the early days was a red cross and a red star on white background, but after Jerusalem was taken in the Crusades from the Turks the gold and silver flag which the medieval kingdom of Jerusalem used passed to Rome, and thus the “yellow and white” flag was evolved.