Enrico Alberto d’Albertis - naval officer and yachtsman

Navigator recreated Colombus’s Atlantic voyage

Enrico Alberto d'Albertis spent his
whole life sailing the globe

Enrico Alberto d’Albertis, an intrepid sailor who circumnavigated the globe at least three times during his lifetime, was born on this day in 1846 in Voltri, a former fishing village now a district of Genoa.

In his time, d’Albertis was a navigator, writer, ethnologist, philologist, yachtsman, and philanthropist. He served in the Royal Italian Navy and commanded merchant vessels, but is best remembered for recreating Christopher Columbus’s Atlantic route using self‑built historical instruments and for founding Italy’s first yacht club. 

He also built a home in the style of a castle, the Castello d’Albertis, an example of the Gothic Revival architectural movement, on the Monte Galletto hill, offering sweeping views over the Gulf of Genoa. He left the castle to the city.

As well as d’Albertis’s own living quarters, the castle now houses the Museo delle Culture del Mondo, which contains ethnographic and archaeological collections assembled by Captain d'Albertis during his travels in Africa, the Americas, and Oceania, as well as nautical collections and photographs, volumes from his library, hundreds of drawings for the construction of the neo-Gothic complex, and a substantial assembly of sundials, for which he had a lifetime’s fascination.

Born into a family who were successful in the textile industry, Enrico was educated at the Collegio “Carlo Alberto” in Moncalieri, near Turin, then entered the Collegio di Marina di Genova.

He made his first circumnavigation of the world as a naval cadet, aboard the Principe Umberto.  His route included the North Sea, Baltic, Egypt, and the Canary Islands as part of a full itinerary that saw him cross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans - an experience that shaped his lifelong interest in navigation, ethnology, and maritime instruments.

Commissioned as guardiamarina (ensign) in 1866, he fought in the Battle of Lissa during the Third Italian War of Independence, before serving on the battleships Ancona and Formidabile. In 1869, he witnessed the inauguration of the Suez Canal.

After being promoted to first-class midshipman, he left the navy for the merchant navy. Following several voyages in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea as mate aboard the Emma D, on which he also sailed to England in 1871, he was given command of the Emilia, a sailing vessel equipped with an auxiliary engine.

The Castello d'Albertis, the neo-Gothic villa-castle
d'Albertis built for himself on a hill above Genoa

The Emilia became the lead ship of the first Italian convoy to transit the Suez Canal en route to the Indies.

From 1874, D’Albertis dedicated himself to yachting. In 1879, he co‑founded the first Italian Yacht Club, a major institutional milestone in Italian maritime culture.

In 1891, he organised the voyage that made him famous in the world of navigators. The year before the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Cristoforo Colombo; d'Albertis set sail in a specially built yacht - the Corsaro - and with it retraced Columbus's course. 

After 27 days at sea, navigating with the same equipment used by his great predecessor, he reached the coasts of San Salvador. He sailed on from the Caribbean island to New York, where he was officially greeted by the US authorities in recognition of his achievement.

The journey back to the old continent was not as comfortable for d'Albertis as had been the one going. Returning on one of the four school ships of the Naval Academy of Livorno that were at anchor in the bay of San Lorenzo, d’Albertis ran into a storm that caused waves ten metres high off the island of Terranova. It was only after several days of violently pitching seas that he managed to get out of the storm.

Some of the instruments used by
d'Albertis in his Columbus voyage

Between 1895 and 1896 he made his second or perhaps third voyage around the world. Although he never published any accounts of these journeys, their itineraries have been reconstructed thanks to the text of unpublished manuscripts, which show that between October 1877 and October 1878 he visited Ceylon, India, Burma, Singapore, Borneo, New Guinea, Australia, Sumatra, Japan, the United States, and Panama, before travelling to South Africa, Tasmania, New Zealand, Polynesia, California, Mexico, and Cuba between 1895 and 1896. 

Further to these voyages, at the end of 1910 he visited Egypt, Ceylon, Australia, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil.

In between, he had travelled to Tripolitania, Algeria, Tunisia, Eritrea and Benadir in Somalia, as well as several times also to Egypt and Sudan, taking part in excavations while in Egypt. In 1906 he sailed to East Africa, Harrar, Uganda and Lake Victoria , while in 1908 he circumnavigated the entire African continent. 

When Italy entered World War One, d’Albertis volunteered to work in the Tyrrhenian Sea. He was awarded the War Merit Cross by the Ministry of the Navy for his work in the surveillance of enemy submarines

He spent the last years of his life in Genoa, in the castle he built atop Monte Galletto, which he transformed into a museum. In retirement, he devoted himself to the construction of sundials, which had always been a hobby he enthusiastically embraced. Between 1875 and 1928, he built around a hundred, many of which can be seen in the museum today.

D'Albertis died on the evening of March 3, 1932, leaving his castle to the municipality of Genoa.

The Sanctuary of Nostra Signora di Acquasanta,
which contains a number of important artworks
 

Travel tip:

The area around Voltri, where d’Albertis was born, has been inhabited since prehistoric times. It probably took its name from the Ligures tribe of the Veituri. In the Middle Ages it was a hamlet in the Republic of Genoa and a centre for the production of paper.  In 1796 Voltri was the site of a battle between the French troops of Napoléon Bonaparte and the allied forces of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont. After the fall of the First French Empire, it became an autonomous commune in the Sardinian territories, a status it kept until 1926, when the Mussolini’s Fascist government made it part of the wider Genoa area. It sits about 17km (10 miles) west of the centre of Genoa. It is now a quartiere of the city, part of the VII Municipio.  Notable sights include the Sanctuary of Nostra Signora di Acquasanta, the Villa Duchessa di Galliera and the parish churches of Sant’Ambrogio and Santi Nicolò ed Erasmo.

The headquarters of the Yacht Club Italiano, which
still plays a major part in the Italian yachting world 

Travel tip:

The Yacht Club Italiano, which Enrico d’Albertis co-founded in 1879 with Vittorio Augusto Vecchi, a naval officer, with the support of King Umberto I, is today based at the Porticciolo Duca degli Abruzzi in the Carignano area of Genoa, about 1.5km (1 mile) east of the city centre. The club is a thriving organisation, putting on prestigious events on the yachting calendar, including the Rolex Giraglia, Genova Sailing Week, and the Millevele. The club also provides sailing education through its Scuola di Mare Beppe Croce, founded in 2000. Croce was president of the club for 28 years, D’Albertis is remembered in a prize, the d'Albertis Trophy, which the club awards for significant sailing feats. Originally founded as the Regio Yacht Club Italiano, the club organised its first regatta in August, 1880, in the Gulf of La Spezia, featuring 177 boats. Following the fall of the Italian monarchy, the club was re-founded in 1946 as the Yacht Club Italiano.

More reading:

Amerigo Vespucci, the Medici clerk who discovered a new world

The four-year epic journey of Alessandro Malaspina 

Andrea Doria, the brilliant naval commander who freed Genoa from foreign domination

Also on this day:

1514: The birth of Lorenzino de’ Medici

1919: The founding of the Italian Fascists

1922: The birth of comic actor Ugo Tognazzi

1945: The birth of singer-songwriter Franco Battiato

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