Giovanni Biagio Luppis von Rammer
(1813-1875)
Giovanni Biagio Luppis von
Rammer (Croatian Ivan
Lupis) (27 August 1813 – 11 January 1875) was an officer of
the Austrian Navy, born in
Fiume/Rijeka
(today in Croatia
), who had
the idea of the first self-propelled torpedo.
Early years
Giovanni Luppis in his Early
years
Luppis (or Lupis) was born in
Fiume/Rijeka in 1813.
His parents where Ferdinando Carlo, nobleman
of Parenzo/Poreč
and Lissa and Giovanna Parich,
noble of Ragusa-Dubrovnik
. In the city of Fiume/Rijeka, then part of the Illyrian Provinces and officially called
Fiume, Giovanni Luppis's family has been powerfull
shipowners. Lupis attended a gymnasium in Fiume/Rijeka and the Collegio di
marina, the Austrian naval
academy in Venice
. Then
he married a noblewoman of Fiume/Rijeka, the Baroness Elisa de
Zotty.
He served in the
Venezianisch-Österreichische
Kriegsmarine (after 1849 K.u.K Kriegsmarine ) and rose up the
ranks to the position of
Frigate
Captain
(
Fregattenkapitan).
In 1848/1849 he was an officer on the ships
that blocked Venice.
The "Salvacoste" (Coastsaver)
About the middle in the nineteenth century, an officer of the
Austrian Marine Artillery conceived the idea of employing a small
boat carrying a large charge of explosives, powered by a steam or
an air engine and remotely steered by cable to be used against
enemy ships. Upon his death, before he had perfected his invention
or made it public, the papers of this anonymous officer came into
the possession of Capt. Giovanni Luppis.
Bust of the Baron Captain Giovanni
Luppis von Rammer in the
Family Palacein Italy
He envisioned a floating device for destroying ships that would be
unmanned and controlled from land, while the explosive charges
would detonate at the moment of impact. His first prototype was one
metre long, had glass wings, and was controlled via long ropes from
the coast. It didn't succeed due to primitive implementation.
The second model was built with a clock mechanism as the engine for
the
propeller. The explosives were in the
stern and were ignited through a pistol-like
control, which in turn was activated through the bow, the sides or
the mast. It had two
rudders: one turned to
the right, the other to the left, that were moved by ropes/wires
from land. After numerous experiments, this design, marked '6 m',
finally performed well enough. He nicknamed it 'Salvacoste',
Italian for "Coastsaver".
In 1860, after Luppis had retired from the Navy, he managed to
demonstrate the '6 m' design to the emperor
Franz Joseph, and it was a success, but the
naval commission refused to accept it without better propulsion and
control systems.
The meeting with Robert Whitehead
In 1864 Fiume/Rijeka the future mayor
Giovanni de Ciotta introduced Luppis to
the British machine engineer
Robert
Whitehead, manager of the local factory 'Stabilimento Tecnico
Fiumano', with whom he signed a contract to develop the
'salvacoste' further.
Whitehead built a model but decided that the idea was not viable.
He did however start to think about the problem of setting off
explosive charges remotely below a ship's waterline, this being far
more effective than above-water bombardment. Whitehead made a
device running under water and installed an engine running on
compressed air, as well as automatic guidances for the depth and
direction.
Whitehead had significantly altered the original design, but always
credited Lupis with the invention.
On 21 December 1866 the first automobile torpedo, now named
Minenschiff, was officially demonstrated in front of the
Austro-Hungarian state commission for evaluation. This model was
355mm in diameter and 3.35m in length, weighing 136 kg with 8 kg of
explosives. The naval commission accepted it, and subsequently on 6
March 1867 the government contracted the inventors for a test
production and agreed to pay all the production costs.
Whitehead retained the copyrights and even negotiated a new
contract with Luppis which gave Whitehead full control of all
future sales.
On 27 May 1867, the navy paid 200,000
forints in royalties to the inventor.The
invention was generally regarded as a promising one, but in the
first years of production there were not enough orders, so
'Stabilimento' went through a crisis and went bankrupt in 1873. R.
Whitehead took it over and at the beginning of 1875 transformed it
into a private company called 'Torpedo-Fabrik von Robert
Whitehead'.
Giovanni Luppis was given the noble title of Baron von Rammer ('the
sinker') on 1 August 1869.
He died in Milan
on 11
January 1875.
Further reading
- Gray, Edwin. The Devil's Device:
Robert Whitehead and the History of the Torpedo, Annapolis:
Naval Institute Press, 1991 310pp, ISBN 0-87021-245-1
- Wilson, H. W. Ironclads in action;: A sketch of naval
warfare from 1855 to 1895, London: Sampson Low, Marston and
Company, 1895, Fourth Edition 1896 (Two Volumes), pre ISBN
References
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