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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Gaetano Russo - sculptor

Creator of New York’s Christopher Columbus Monument

Gaetano Russo's monument to Christopher
Columbus has been in place since 1892

The sculptor Gaetano Russo, famous for having created the monument dedicated to Christopher Columbus at Columbus Circle in New York, was born on this day in 1847 in the Sicilian city of Messina.

Russo’s 13ft (3.96m) statue of the 15th century Genoese explorer, carved from a block of Carrara marble, stands on top of a 70ft (21.3m) granite column, decorated with bronze reliefs depicting the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, Columbus’s three caravel sailing ships.  At the foot of the column there is an angel holding the globe.

Unveiled on October 12, 1892 on the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the Americas, the statue was a gift to the city from New York’s Italian-American community, funded by a campaign by an Italian-language newspaper, Il Progresso.

For the laying of the statue’s cornerstone, a procession took place from Little Italy to what is now called Columbus Circle, at the southern end of Central Park, a distance of 6.5km (4.2 miles). Close to 10,000 people are said to have attended the dedication ceremony.

Additional ornamentation around the base of the column depicts Columbus’s journey, American patriotic symbols, and allegorical figures. The monument was restored in 1992 on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of his transatlantic crossing.

The Columbus Circle intersection, seen from the air, is
an important part of the geography of New York City

Columbus Circle, at the intersection of Broadway, Central Park West, Central Park South (West 59th Street) and Eighth Avenue, has a symbolic importance to New Yorkers, as the traditional geographic centre of the city.

For decades, the Hagstrom Map Company sold maps that showed the areas within 25 miles (40km) or 75 miles (121km) of Columbus Circle. Even today, the New York City government employee handbook defines 'long-distance travel' as a trip beyond a 75-mile (121km) radius of Columbus Circle.

The monument came under threat in 2018 as part of a nationwide review of whether figures regarded traditionally as American heroes, and who were celebrated in statues and other monuments, deserved their status. Columbus was controversial for having taken back indigenous people from the Caribbean to sell in Spain as slaves and there were calls for the statue to be taken down.

However, after Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, who is descended from Campanian immigrants, had spoken out on behalf of his fellow Italian-Americans in upholding the importance of Columbus in the links between the two countries, it was announced that the statue would stay in place but that there would be notices placed in or around Columbus Circle explaining the history of Columbus and of the monument.

The angel holding a globe on the pedestal
of the Christopher Columbus Monument

Gaetano Russo was born in Via dell’Oliveto in Messina and baptised in the nearby church of San Leonardo.

Little is known about his early life until 1870, when he received a grant to go to Rome where he studied with Girolamo Masini and Giulio Monteverde.

He worked in both Rome and his native Sicily. In the capital he was commissioned to sculpt bas-reliefs for the facade of the building that now houses the Academy of Dramatic Art, the pediments of the Policlinico Umberto I and the cenotaph dedicated to Felice Bisazza.

In Messina he was commissioned to make funerary sculptures for the monumental cemetery and the monument to Marco Miceli Puglisi, dated 1877, on which stands an imposing winged figure.

No record of Russo exists after 1908 and it is assumed that he died in the devastating earthquake of the same year that destroyed much of Messina and may have killed up to 200,000 people. It is known that his brothers, Letterio and Stellario, both perished and that all the buildings in and around Via dell'Oliveto, a heavily populated area of ​​the city, disappeared.

Messina's 12th century cathedral, originally built by the
Normans, suffered serious damage in the 1908 earthquake

Travel tip:

Messina is a city in the northeast of Sicily, separated from mainland Italy by the Strait of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island and is home to a large Greek-speaking community. The 12th century cathedral in Messina has a bell tower which houses one of the largest astronomical clocks in the world, built in 1933. Originally built by the Normans, the cathedral, which still contains the remains of King Conrad, ruler of Germany and Sicily in the 13th century, had to be almost entirely rebuilt following the earthquake in 1908, and again in 1943, after a fire triggered by Allied bombings.

Gaetano Russo sculpted the figures in the pediment
over the entrance to the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome

Travel tip:

Located in the San Lorenzo quarter, the Policlinico Umberto I of Rome, where Russo sculpted the bas relief figures decorating the pediment over the main entrance, is the polyclinic of the faculty of medicine and surgery of the Sapienza Università di Roma. The city’s main hospital, it is the second largest public hospital in Italy. Its construction was promoted by Italian physicians and politicians Guido Baccelli and Francesco Durante and began in 1883 to plans by Giulio Podesti and Filippo Laccetti. The opening was presided over by the then university rector Luigi Galassi and by King Umberto I, after whom it is named.


More reading:

The Alabama legacy of Giuseppe Moretti

How Corrado 'Joe' Parnucci made his made on Michigan

The genius of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Also on this day:

1891: The birth of World War One flying ace Luigi Olivari

1941: The death of  mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita

1966: The birth of footballer Stefano Eranio


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Alessandro Malaspina - explorer

Mapped Pacific on four-year epic journey

Alessandro Malaspina spent much of his
life in the employ of the Spanish navy

Alessandro Malaspina, an explorer not so well known as his compatriots, Amerigo Vespucci and Christopher Colombus, but whose contribution to mankind’s knowledge of the globe was no less important, was born on this day in 1754 in Mulazzo, a village now in the province of Massa-Carrara, about 120km (75 miles) northwest of Florence.

Like Vespucci and Columbus, Malaspina sailed under the flag of Spain, whose king, Charles III, was an enthusiastic supporter of scientific research and exploration.

He spent much of his life as an officer in the Spanish navy, and it was after completing an 18-month circumnavigation of the world on behalf of the Royal Philippines Company between September 1786 and May 1788 that he proposed to the Spanish government that he make an expedition to the Pacific similar to those undertaken by the British explorer James Cook and the Frenchman Comte de la Pèrouse.

His proposal was accepted in part after word reached Spain that a Russian expedition was being prepared with the objective of claiming territory on the northwest coast of North America that had already been claimed by Spain.

After two years of preparation, the Malaspina Expedition, made up of two frigates - one named Descubierta in honour of Cook's Discovery - that he had built specially for the expedition, set sail from Cadiz on July 30, 1789, bound for South America. They rounded Cape Horn and sailed up the Pacific coast to Mexico.

The route followed by Malaspina's party

At this point, Malaspina received word that King Charles IV, who had inherited the throne following the death of Charles III in 1788, wanted him to detour to Alaska and survey the coastline to find out whether a rumoured northwest passage from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic existed.

Malaspina’s vessels anchored off Alaska for a month, studying local tribespeople and collecting and recording numerous plants. Today, a glacier between Yakutat Bay and Icy Bay is known as the Malaspina Glacier.

Malaspina knew that Cook had surveyed the west coast of Prince William Sound about 15 years earlier had not found a northwest passage. He was not convinced it did exist and, rather than spend more time looking after failing to find evidence of it, the Italian set sail for the Spanish outpost at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, established two years earlier.

His men surveyed and mapped the area around Nootka Sound more accurately than had previously been achieved, and made more botanical studies. He moved south again to explore the mouth of the Columbia River, near where Seattle is now.

Malaspina's two frigates, drawn by Fernando Brambilla, one
of a number of artists who accompanied the expedition

Eventually, he headed back along the coast to Acapulco in Mexico, before crossing the ocean to explore the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia, before returning to Spain, arriving in arriving in Cadiz in September 1793, to be greeted with great acclaim.

Malaspina was elevated to fleet-brigadier in the Spanish navy but his status as a national hero collapsed, however, over the next few years as the political climate in Spain changed following the French Revolution. He became involved with a plot to overthrow the prime minister and was arrested.

He was stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released after eight years when Napoleon Bonaparte, who had taken control of the territory around his home town in Italy, intervened on his behalf. But the years in jail, often in solitary confinement, had destroyed his health.

Malaspina’s documentation from the expedition was taken from him during his incarceration and his proposed seven-volume account of the journey was left unpublished.

He returned to Italy, settling in Pontremoli in the area of northern Tuscany at that time known as the Kingdom of Etruria, where he died in 1810 at the age of 55.  Although some of his journals had by then been published, it was not until 1987 – 177 years after his death - that the first volume of his full account was published by the Spanish Naval Museum.

The last of the seven was published in 1999 and the full extent of Malaspina’s achievement could finally be appreciated, so that he could take his place alongside Columbus and Vespucci as one of history’s great explorers.

Mulazzo has a monument to the poet Dante Alighieri

Travel tip:

Mulazzo is a village in the part of northwestern Tuscany known as Lunigiana, an area of great beauty that was a favourite of the poet Dante Alighieri.  Although he would often retreat to the Monastery of Santa Croce Corvo on the coast near Marina di Carrara, he also enjoyed the peace and solitude of the mountain regions inland and visited Mulazzo, which stages a Dante celebration every year.  Mulazzo also has a study centre dedicated to the career of Alessandro Malaspina.

Pontremoli sits alongside the Magra river

Travel tip:

Pontremoli has the status of city even though its population is fewer than 8,000.  Built on the site of a settlement first noted in 1,000 BC, its position and fertile landscape in the Magra valley made it a strategically important location and consequently it changed hands many times, owned by a succession of powerful families until 1508, when it became part of an area controlled by the French.  Subsequently it was taken over by the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish, the Republic of Genoa, the Medici Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the French again before becoming part of the unified Italy.  Malaspina had a palace there.

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