While in Australia we desperately seek and jealously protect any tiny thing that can have a ‘historical’ label slapped on it, in Croatia ‘history’ just exists. A short time ago I was walking along the waterfront at the shipyard and saw the sunken boat below.

Its now just another of the rusting hulks tied to the pier in the North Port in Split. But when she was on top of the water and fully rigged she looked like the picture below and was known as the MY Dalmat.

The 270-ton, 45m-long Dalmat was built at the San Rocco shipyard in Trieste in 1896. At that time Trieste was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Dalmat became a royal yacht in the Hapsburg’s navy.

In June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrived off the Dalmatian coast in his flag-ship, the battleship SMS Viribus Unitis. From the battleship he was transferred to the Dalmat, which sailed him up the Neretva River to Metkovic.

In Metkovic Franz Ferdinand boarded a train which took him to Sarajevo. At school we are all taught the events that followed. Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated and as a result World War 1 began.

The bodies were then transported back to Metkovic, where the Dalmat had the proud role of again transferring the Archduke back to the Viribus Unitis. Below is the New York Times article of the day.

So here in the North Port’s polluted waters is one of history’s most important boats.

In the 1990s the Dalmat (renamed the Istranka), after being decommissioned from the Yugoslav and Croatian navies, became a floating restaurant in Split Port!

She was then towed to the North Port for the first time, until Gianfranco Cozzi from Genoa, a Christian Democrat member of the Italian parliament, and a naval collector purchased her and began renovations.

His plan was to place her in his museum at Santo Stefano al Mare, near San Remo, on the Italian Riviera. However in 2003, just as he was to move her across the Adriatic, the Croatian government declared the Dalmat a national treasure and didn’t allow her to leave Croatian waters. (See original Times of London article.)

“She had been dumped like a lump of old iron”, Gianfranco said. “I saved her from being scrapped, but now Zagreb is refusing to let the yacht leave out of a nationalistic whim. The Habsburg yacht has nothing to do with Croatia beyond that she happened to end up there. There is no case for blocking her export. It was built in Trieste, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but is now Italian. I paid €500,000 or her, and I have since spent €5 million restoring her.”

Unfortunately Gianfranco recently died – so he will never see the project completed. The Croatian government doesn’t own the vessel and doesn’t have the funds or nous to renovate her. Again she was left in the North Port, where she will just slowly dissolve – the last remaining vessel of the Austro-Hungarian navy.

(Without the Austro-Hungarian navy Georg von Trapp wouldn’t have become a U-boat hero and we would never have had the Sound of Music!)

Tim sent the latest pictures of the leut renovation.

The planks, ribs and rudder have been repaired, the refurbished engine is back in, the decks sanded, the lanteen and mast completed, the hatch coamings and covers finished, bulkheads installed and the benches begun.

All is looking good for a February launch date – finally! She will then act as a support boat for our kayak tours.

Name? Maybe Crni Labud – which means Black Swan – after Perth’s river.

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