Italian cruiser Basilicata
Basilicata was a small protected cruiser built for the Italian "Regia Marina" (Royal Navy) in the 1910s. She was the second and final member of the , along with the lead ship . The "Campania"-class cruisers were intended for service in Italy's colonies, and so were given a heavy armament and designed to emphasize long cruising range over high speed. "Basilicata"s career was cut short in mid-1919 when one of her boilers exploded and sank her while in Tewfik, Egypt. The ship was raised in 1920 but deemed not worth repairing; she was sold for scrapping in July  1921. Design. "Basilicata" was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of . She displaced normally and up to at full load. Her propulsion system consisted of a pair of vertical triple-expansion steam engines each driving a single screw propeller. Steam was supplied by four coal-fired, cylindrical fire-tube boilers that were vented into a single funnel. Her engines were rated at and produced a top speed of . The ship had a cruising radius of about at a speed of . She had a crew of 11 officers and 193 enlisted men. "Basilicata" was armed with a  main battery of six L/40 guns mounted singly; one was placed on the forecastle, one at the stern, and two on each broadside in sponsons on the main deck. She was also equipped with two L40 guns, three 76 mm L/40 guns in anti-aircraft mountings, two guns, and a pair of machine guns. The ship was only lightly armored, with a thick deck, and thick plating on her conning tower. Service history. "Basilicata" was laid down at the Castellammare shipyard on 9 August 1913, the same day as "Campania". Both ships were built on the same slipway. They were  launched less than a year later on 23 July 1914. Fitting-out work proceeded more slowly on "Basilicata", and she was completed on 1 August 1917, four months after her sister ship. After completion, "Basilicata" was stationed in Italian Libya. On 13 August 1919, while moored in Tewfik at the southern end of the Suez Canal, one of "Basilicata"s boilers exploded, which sank the ship. Salvage operations began thereafter, and on 12 September 1920 after three days of work, the ship was refloated. The "Regia Marina" decided that repairing the ship was not worth the cost, and so on 1  July 1921 she was sold to ship breakers in Suez.