SMS Zrínyi SMS " Zrínyi " ( " " His Majesty ' s ship Zrínyi " " ) was a pre - dreadnought battleship ( " Schlachtschiff " ) of the Austro - Hungarian Navy ( " K . u . K . Kriegsmarine " ) , named for the Zrinski , a noble Croatian family . " Zrínyi " and her sisters , and , were the last pre - dreadnoughts built by the Austro - Hungarian Navy . During World War I , " Zrínyi " saw action in the Adriatic Sea . She served with the Second Division of the Austro - Hungarian Navy ' s battleships and shelled Senigallia as part of the bombardment of the key seaport of Ancona , Italy , during May 1915 . However , Allied control of the Strait of Otranto meant that the Austro - Hungarian Navy was , for all intents and purposes , effectively bottled up in the Adriatic . Nonetheless , the presence of the " Zrínyi " and other battleships tied down a substantial force of Allied ships . With the war going against the Austrians by the end of 1918 , " Zrínyi " was prepared to be transferred to the new State of Slovenes , Croats and Serbs . On 10 November 1918 — just one day before the end of the war , Yugoslav navy officers sailed the old battleship out of Pola ( Pula ) and eventually surrendered to a squadron of American submarine chaser s . Following the handover to the United States Navy , she was briefly designated USS " Zrínyi " . In the Treaty of Saint - Germain - en - Laye , the transfer was not recognized ; instead , " Zrínyi " was given to Italy and broken up for scrap . Design and construction . " Zrínyi " was built at the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino dockyard in Trieste , the same place where her sister ships were built earlier . She was laid down on 15 November 1908 and launched from the slipway on 12 April 1910 . The teak used on " Zrínyi " s deck was the only material Austria - Hungary had to purchase abroad to build the ship . The ship was completed by 15 July 1911 , and on 22 November 1911 she was commissioned into the fleet . She was the last ship of the class to be completed and had a crew of 880 to 890 officers and men . " Zrínyi " was 138 . 8 m ( 455 ft 4 in ) long , and had a beam of 24 . 6 m ( 80 ft 8 in ) and a draft of 8 . 1 m ( 26 ft 9 in ) . She displaced normally , and up to with a full combat load . She was powered by two - shaft four - cylinder vertical triple expansion engines rated at 19 , 800 indicated horsepower . The ship had a top speed of . " Zrínyi " was the first warship in the Austro - Hungarian Navy to use fuel oil to supplement her 12 Yarrow - type coal - fired boilers . She had a maximum range of at a cruising speed of . The ship ' s primary armament consisted of four 30 . 5 cm ( 12 in ) 45 - caliber guns in two twin gun turret s . This was augmented by a heavy secondary battery of eight 24 cm ( 9 . 4 in ) guns in four wing turret s . The tertiary battery consisted of twenty 10 cm L / 50 guns in casemate d single mounts , four 47 mm ( 1 . 85 in ) L / 44 and one 47 mm L / 33 quick - firing gun s . Furthermore , the ship ' s boats were equipped with two 66 mm ( 2 . 6 in ) landing guns for operations shore . Three 45 cm ( 17 . 7 in ) torpedo tubes were also carried , one on each broadside and one in the stern . Service history . The ship was assigned to the Austro - Hungarian Fleet ' s 1st Battle Squadron after her 1911 commissioning . In 1912 , " Zrínyi " and her two sister ships conducted two training cruises into the eastern Mediterranean Sea . On the second cruise into the Aegean Sea , conducted from November to December , " Zrínyi " and her sister ships were accompanied by the cruiser and a pair of destroyers . After returning to Pola , the entire fleet mobilized for possible hostilities , as tensions flared in the Balkans . In 1913 , " Zrínyi " participated in an international naval demonstration in the Ionian Sea to protest the Balkan Wars . Ships from other navies included in the demonstration were the British pre - dreadnought , the Italian pre - dreadnought , the French armored cruiser , and the German light cruiser . The most important action of the combined flotilla , which was under the command of British Admiral Cecil Burney , was to blockade the Montenegrin coast . The goal of the blockade was to prevent Serbian reinforcements from supporting the siege at Scutari , where Montenegro had besieged a combined force of Albanians and Ottomans . Pressured by the international blockade , Serbia withdrew its army from Scutari , which was subsequently occupied by a joint Allied ground force . During that year , the first of four new dreadnought s , , that made up the — the only dreadnoughts built for the Austro - Hungarian Navy — came into active service . With the commissioning of these dreadnoughts , " Zrínyi " and her sisters were moved from the 1st Division to the 2nd Division of the 1st Battle Squadron . World War I . At that time of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914 , the battleships in the Austro - Hungarian Navy consisted of the " Radetzky " class , the " Tegetthoff " class ( which still had one ship , , under construction ) , the and finally , the older . Along with the remainder of the Austro - Hungarian Navy , " Zrínyi " was mobilized in late July 1914 to support the flight of and . The two German ships broke out of Messina , which was surrounded by the British navy and reached Turkey . The flotilla had advanced as far south as Brindisi in southeastern Italy when news of the successful breakout reached Vienna . The Austro - Hungarian ships were then recalled before seeing action . On 23 May 1915 , between two and four hours after news of the Italian declaration of war reached the main Austro - Hungarian naval base at Pola , " Zrínyi " and the rest of the fleet departed to bombard the Italian and Montenegrin coast . Their focus was on the important naval base at Ancona , and later the coast of Montenegro . The bombardment of Montenegro was part of the larger Austro - Hungarian campaign against the Kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia , who were members of the Entente , during the first half of 1915 . The attack on Ancona was an immense success , and the ships were unopposed during the operation . The bombardment of the province and the surrounding area resulted in the destruction of an Italian steamer in the port of Ancona itself , and an Italian destroyer , , was severely damaged further south . On the shore , the infrastructure of the port of Ancona , as well as the surrounding towns , were severely damaged . The railroad yard in Ancona , as well as the port facilities in the town , were damaged or destroyed . The local shore batteries were also suppressed . During the bombardment , " Zrínyi " also helped to destroy a train , a railway station , and a bridge at Senigallia . Additional targets that were damaged or destroyed included wharves , warehouses , oil tanks , radio stations , and the local barracks . Sixty - three Italians , both civilians and military personnel , were killed in the bombardment . By the time Italian ships from Taranto and Brindisi arrived on the scene , the Austro - Hungarians were safely back in Pola . The objective of the bombardment of Ancona was to delay the Italian Army from deploying its forces along the border with Austria - Hungary by destroying critical transportation systems . The surprise attack on Ancona succeeded in delaying the Italian deployment to the Alps for two weeks . This delay gave Austria - Hungary valuable time to strengthen its Italian border and re - deploy some of its troops from the Eastern and Balkan fronts . Aside from the attack on Ancona , the Austro - Hungarian battleships were largely confined to Pola for the duration of the war . Their operations were limited by Admiral Anton Haus , the commander of the Austro - Hungarian Navy , who believed that he would need to husband his ships to counter any Italian attempt to seize the Dalmatian coast . Since coal was diverted to the newer " Tegetthoff " - class battleships , the remainder of the war saw " Zrínyi " and the rest of the Austro - Hungarian Navy acting as a fleet in being . This resulted in the Allied blockade of the Otranto Strait . With his fleet blockaded in the Adriatic Sea , and with a shortage of coal , Haus followed a strategy based on mines and submarines designed to reduce the numerical superiority of the Allied navies . Post - war fate . After the Austro - Hungarian Empire collapsed in 1918 , the Austrians wanted to turn the fleet over to the newly created State of Slovenes , Croats and Serbs ( later to become a part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ) in order to prevent the Italians from claiming the ships as spoils of war . However , the victorious Allies refused to acknowledge the conversations between the Austrians and the south Slavs and , in due course , reallocated the ships . The ship had been boarded by a scratch Yugoslav crew on 10 November 1918 , one day before the Armistice , and had left Pola with her sister ship , " Radetzky " . They were soon spotted by heavy Italian ships , so the two battleships hoisted American flags and sailed south along the Adriatic coast to Castelli Bay near Spalato ( also known as Split ) . They appealed for American naval forces to meet them and accept their surrender , which a squadron of United States Navy ( USN ) submarine chasers in the area did . She had apparently been turned over to the fledgling south Slav state , as it was a Croat naval officer , " Korvettenkapitän " Marijan Polić , who presented the ship as a prize of war to representatives of the United States Navy on the afternoon of 22 November 1919 at Spalato ( Split ) in Dalmatia . Simultaneously she was commissioned as USS " Zrínyi " and Lieutenant E . E . Hazlett , USN , assumed command . The initial American complement consisted of four officers and 174 enlisted men — the latter entirely composed of United States Navy Reserve Force personnel . The ship remained at anchor at Spalato for nearly a year while the negotiations that would determine her ultimate fate dragged on . Only once did she apparently turn her engines over , and that occurred during a severe gale that struck Spalato on 9 February 1920 . On the morning of 7 November 1920 , " Zrínyi " was decommissioned . took her in tow and , assisted by and , towed the battleship to Italy . Under the terms of the treaties of Versailles and St . Germain , " Zrínyi " was ultimately turned over to the Italian government at Venice . She was broken up for scrap later that year and into 1921 . Notes . Footnotes Citations