barbucomedie:Boarding Pistol of the K.K. Kriegsmarine dated around the late 1860′s on dis
barbucomedie:Boarding Pistol of the K.K. Kriegsmarine dated around the late 1860′s on display at theHeeresgeschichtliches Museum in ViennaThough the navy was never a priority for the Emperor Franz Joseph and was not as popular in the Austrian press as the army. With the development of naval guns and ironclads in the late 19th century, naval boarding was becoming uncommon. Though many navies, all over the world, still trained marines and sailors for boarding and repelling boarders.Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, at the age of 22 in 1854, was appointed Commander in Chief of the Austrian Navy. With the patronage of an Imperial Prince the Austrian Navy went through a series of modernising reforms for the ships and the soldiers of the navy. He also instigate large scale scientific missions such as the Novara Expedition in which the SMS Novara became the first Austrian ship to circumnavigate the globe. It would later ferry Maximilian and his wife to Mexico for his ill fated reign. These reforms would aid the navy during the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866 specifically at the Battle of Lissa in the Adriatic. This battle is famous for being one of the last naval battles to have wooden ships and the use of ramming attacks. Photograph taken by myself 2016 -- source link
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