Italian cruiser Marsala (original) (raw)

Marsala was a protected cruiser built by the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) in the 1910s. She was the second and final member of the Nino Bixio class, which were built as scouts for the main Italian fleet. She was equipped with a main battery of six 120-millimeter (4.7 in) guns and had a top speed in excess of 26 knots (48 km/h; 30 mph), but her engines proved to be troublesome in service. Marsala spent World War I based at Brindisi; she was involved in the Battle of the Otranto Straits in May 1917, where she briefly engaged Austro-Hungarian cruisers. Marsala's career was cut short in November 1927 when she was stricken from the naval register and sold for scrap, the result of her unreliable engines and drastic cuts to the naval budget.