page_title: Royal Sardinian Navy
section_title: Creation and expansion
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Sardinian Navy / History / Creation and expansion
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Giorgio Andrea Agnès Des Geneys
context_page_description: The Royal Sardinian Navy was the naval force of the Kingdom of Sardinia. The fleet was created in 1720 when the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, became the King of Sardinia. Victor Amadeus had acquired the vessels be used to establish the fleet while he was still the King of Sicily in 1713. The Sardinian Navy saw action in a number of conflicts, including the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars from the 1790s to 1810s, limited actions against the Barbary Coast such as the Battle of Tripoli in 1825, and the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859. The last war was a major step toward Italian unification, which led to the creation of a united Italian state in 1861. During the fighting in 1860, the Royal Neapolitan Navy defected to Sardinia and placed itself under Sardinian control; in 1861, the navy also absorbed the Royal Sicilian Navy, resulting in the creation of the Regia Marina, which itself became the Marina Militare, the modern Italian navy, in 1946.
context_section_description: The fleet traced its origins to the rule of Victor Amadeus II in the early 18th century, who as Duke of Savoy became the King of Sardinia in 1720. Prior to 1713, Victor Amadeus had no navy. As duke he relied on the one or two galleys and smaller vessels belonging the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus and on ducal letters of marque authorizing privateers to operate out of his main ports, Nice and Oneglia. When in 1703, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the Emperor Charles VI first proposed that the Duke of Savoy should receive the Kingdom of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus rejected the proposal on the grounds that he had no navy with which to defend the island. In 1713, however, Victor Amadeus acquired the Kingdom of Sicily and with it a squadron of galleys. He issued orders that the squadron should be maintained at five galleys and three other vessels. He created a marine corps and in 1717 promulgated fleet regulations. In 1718, Spain conquered Sicily during the War of the Quadruple Alliance and captured the Savoyard fleet. Victor Amadeus was forced to rely on privateers for the duration of the conflict, but when he gave up Sicily in exchange for Sardinia in 1720 he also received back his fleet.
  Throughout its existence, the Sardinian fleet was small compared to the fleets of the Great Powers. The kingdom was a small country with a limited budget; it was also surrounded by potentially hostile states, most significantly France and the Austrian Empire, which placed greater demand for spending on the Royal Sardinian Army than for the navy.
  During the 18th century, the fleet took part in a series of wars against the Ottoman Empire, the states of the Barbary Coast, and Spain, the latter in the War of Jenkins' Ear. During that conflict, Sardinia allied itself to the Kingdom of Great Britain after Spanish troops tried to force their way through Sardinian Piedmont in 1742; the small Sardinian fleet of galleys was placed under the command of the British Mediterranean Fleet. The shallow-draft vessels could be used close to shore, where the larger British warships could not easily maneuver, though their small size rendered them vulnerable to bad weather, which kept them from operating through the winter. In the 1790s, Sardinia was a member of the coalitions arrayed against Republican France in the French Revolutionary Wars. Having been defeated by Napoleon in his mainland possessions, King Charles Emmanuel IV abdicated and his son, Victor Emmanuel I, retreated to the island of Sardinia. Bankrupted and protected by the British Royal Navy, he allowed his navy to decline so that by 1809 it consisted of two xebecs, a galley and two half-galleys. In the Treaty of Vienna that ended the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the old Savoyard state was restored with the addition of the former Republic of Genoa. This acquisition gave Sardinia access to Genoa's superior shipbuilding facilities. By this time, the largest ship of the fleet was a 20-gun corvette. Victor Emmanuel embarked on a naval expansion program under the direction of Admiral Giorgio des Geneys, who ordered a series of warships from Italian and British shipyards.
  Victor Emmanuel did not remain on the throne to see the fruits of his program; revolution in 1821 forced him to abdicate in favor of his brother Charles Felix. During the revolt, the Austrian Navy mobilized ships to intervene in the conflict (which also involved the Neapolitan Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) and attack the Sardinian fleet, but by the time the Austrians arrived the revolt had ended. The Sardinian fleet saw action against the Barbary states twice in the 1820s; Geneys led a squadron to attack Morocco in 1822 that achieved little. Geneys ordered the fleet to attack the Vilayet of Tripoli in 1825, resulting in the Battle of Tripoli. The Sardinian success at Tripoli convinced Charles Felix to continue his predecessor's construction program, ordering a number of frigates, corvettes and sloops in the late 1820s. These included the 50-gun frigates Bereldo and Haute Combe, the 60-gun frigates Carlo Felice and Regina, the 
caption: Giorgio des Geneys
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