The battle re-emerged

We are in a small room where light is kept to a minimum so as not to interfere with the shine emanating from six digital screens on which exciting images are projected. In the background a continuous buzzing that almost cradles our sensations and the awareness of being in front of an important event for underwater archeology and for the naval military events of the 18th century. This is the scenario where the story we are about to make you takes place: a fascinating story, to be rewritten thanks to what after the centuries the sea returns to the human eye.

We are on board the Navy ship Antaeus which, despite its years, is always in optimal operating conditions, especially thanks to the continuous maintenance work carried out by its crew. On a ship everything works like a clock, there are no dead moments, since everyone is part of a complex gear that never stops, not even in the middle of the night. THE'Antaeus a few days ago it is moored in front of Finale Ligure and on board it hosts the elite of the Navy, that is to say the divers of COMSUBIN a department of excellence envied from all over the world. In the midst of blue uniforms and some camouflage, people in civilian dress circulate who, despite being non-military, seem to be at home between rigging and steel pipes: they are scholars and archaeologists of the Superintendence who for days have worked in close contact with the staff of the Navy.

A story to rewrite

The naval history of the eighteenth century, but also of the next, is characterized by the eternal duel between the British and French fleet. France of the 1795 had just come out of the turbulent years of the Revolution and the new board was preparing to spread the new ideals of freedom and equality by bringing the message to all European nations on the tip of the soldiers' bayonets. The main monarchies, governed by secular families, not only threatened their territorial integrity, but above all the cardinal principle around which their power revolved. By land, the Republican armies had extraordinary officers, including a young Napoleon Bonaparte whose nascent star had just begun to shine. On the sea, however, things went differently because there were the vessels of the reign on the waves Royal Navy although the British navy was not at its most efficient. William Pitt, mindful of when the British fleet dominated the seas of half the world, overcame the economic crisis imposed by the war in America by putting new ships in 33 and repairing other 60¹. The British were proud of their navy, nevertheless the method of enlisting the so-called "press-gang" was rather adverse: the young - often the stragglers - were forcibly taken and sent against their will. In 1792 this custom was abandoned in favor of enrollment according to more human and regular principles.

Between the two contenders the French Navy was in far worse conditions because the revolution of the 1789 had shifted the official cadres, many of which - contrary to the revolutionary principles - had fled abroad; in addition to these political motivations, in the 1793 the British conquest of the port of Toulon had further aggravated the situation with the ruinous loss of a good part of the Levante fleet².

On the other hand, Toulon represented a formidable starting point for getting control of Corsica which was several times on the verge of being voluntarily abandoned by the French.³. It was Admiral Lord Hood and his political advisor to Toulon, Sir Gilbert Elliot, who moved the British fleet towards the conquest of Corsica. The island was defended by a garrison of about 3.500 soldiers concentrated in Bastia and Calvi, two hinges that became the main target of the English landing force. Right in front of Bastia the vessel crossed Agamemnon (image), under the command of Horatio Nelson with the task of cannoning the coasts. Thanks to the initiative of Major General James Stuart and the same young Nelson, the fortress of Calvi fell the 10 August.

A year later the French, who had understood the importance of the island at their own expense, organized an armed expedition to reconquer it and in this context, in March 1795, the clash between the English, French and Neapolitan fleets took place off the coast. Noli, or otherwise called the battle of Genoa.

The English fleet commanded by Vice-Admiral William Hotham was guarding the Mediterranean from Livorno with 4 three-deck liner ships (the Britannia from 100 cannons, followed by Princess Royal, St. George and Windsor Castle from 98 cannons) and 8 vessels from 74 cannons including theAgamemnon (from 64 cannons) of Nelson and a vessel of the Neapolitan navy (the Tancredi) commanded by the knight Francesco Caracciolo.

The role played by the Neapolitan navy is another point on which there will be implications since, according to what the local historian Sandro Garulla will document at the end of the research, the role of the Neapolitans was deliberately underestimated by the British. The French fleet, commanded by Admiral Pierre Martin (in total 15 vessels, 7 frigates and 15 corvettes), was ready to launch the attack in the direction of Corsica, attempting to disembark in force. The English ships that guarded that part of the sea warned Admiral Hotham of the movements of Martin's fleet, which was about to take off the anchor and set off for the island; in addition, the French had also captured the Berwick unfortunately stuck in the enemy avant-garde. Despite the apparent advantage Pierre Martin did not dare to point the bow of his ships towards Corsica preferring the safest area off the coast of Provence⁴. In pointing the bow towards the Provençal coasts, the French ships met the English ships in front of the Gulf of Genoa; Admiral Martin was not enthusiastic about the idea of ​​clashing with the British who had the Britannia with his 100 guns ready to hit the French team. The 13 March, in accordance with the orders of the Convention, the French commander sent out his ships to give battle: the vessel from 80 cannons Ça ira under the command of Captain Coudé he inadvertently bumped the ship that preceded him, seriously damaging his trees. At that point the Ça ira he had no chance to maneuver and became an easy target for enemy cannons; the little frigate the Vestal, which drifted in the vicinity, tried to approach to pull him to tow just as he was crossing theAgamemnon of Captain Nelson. The Englishman did not waste a moment and ordered to open fire: the first beadings of his 60 guns caused irreparable damage to the French vessel. The small transalpine frigate had shown courage, but was forced to leave the stretch of Liguria in favor of censeur who stood next to the damaged French ship.

The next morning, the 14 in March at sunrise, the British took advantage of a light breeze to head on the two French boats that remained isolated. The Captain and Bedford two vessels from 74 cannons opened fire on the ships of captains Coudé and Benoit; the Ça ira, despite being almost immobilized, together with censeur they countered the British vessels equally. The heroism of French crews led to a brief victory over the ships of Hotham which suffered significant damage. The English team, in numerical advantage, resumed the route to the French in style, deploying theIllustrious, la Le Courageux , Princesse Royale all from 98 pieces, plus Nelson arrived with theAgamemnon. After several hours of fighting the incandescent pieces of the French ships were silenced by the British: the censeur was set on fire while what remained of the Ça ira he was captured.

According to the sources published by the French, the events of those two days in March, but the recent findings and the archival material still to be studied, will soon reveal some news: neither the English nor the French reports mention the Tancredi forgetting about his participation in the clash. In addition to paper contributions, the seabed is the largest archive in the world, too bad that it is often difficult to recover "documents". The abysses and the submarine nature do not allow all the divers to be reached and the wrecks risk being trapped by the strong embrace of the sea, but there is someone for whom the impossible word does not exist, especially when it comes to sea depths.

Recovery operation

The depth of the sea remains one of the most hostile environments to the human being: few accept the challenge and only thanks to a tiring preparation can get his respect, but never win it. Men with physical and intelligence that from 165 years form one of the elite categories of the Navy: divers. Thanks to their work the story of the battle of Capo Noli will re-emerge from the abyss, ready to tell us a different truth about those terrible days. The boys of the GOS (Operational Group Underwater) of COMSUBIN do not hide the emotion to prove that every mission entrusted to them is permeated with enthusiasm and a lot of concentration. What we have witnessed is one of the most complex procedures foreseen for GOS divers: saturation immersion. For 10 days the operators chosen to dive have stayed in a hyperbaric environment, living in a narrow space of only 18 cubic meters in which the air they breathed was a ternary mixture of helium, oxygen and nitrogen regulated by specialized doctors. We entered one of these rooms (if they can be defined) and for a moment we felt a sensation of suffocation: the whole preparatory process - explains the captain of frigate Giampaolo Trucco - it is based on the physical abilities of the diver, but above all rests on his mental balance. Every breath or heartbeat is monitored by medical personnel specialized in underwater medicine and everything takes place within truly maniacal security parameters.

Then we access a small room, illuminated by screens that project the frames of the operators at work from every possible angle, including a webcam placed on the suit: in total there are three, two underwater and the other (called Tender) that - housed in a small bell acts as a connection to the ship and support if a colleague is in trouble. An important factor to remember is how the diver at work has the brain committed to 100% towards the tasks he has to do, without worrying about other functions. Its physical condition and the air it enters into the lungs is verified directly on board by a qualified nurse, ready to intervene at the slightest change in values.

But let's get back to the bottom ...

The two divers at work have various tools to extricate themselves in the marine environment, among the most important there is the so-called sorbona, a sort of powerful underwater vacuum cleaner that cleans the environment scoured by land and debris. In this case, in the days before our arrival, the GOS boys had already "brought home" some priceless remains, including a sextant, a telescope, ceramic enamel plates and some weapons. Near the staff of the navy sat the archaeologist Simon Luca Trigona of the Superintendence of Archeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Liguria with his face tended by days of commitment, but always hungry for new discoveries. Every moment when the divers moved the seabed, something sensational surfaced and we did not have to wait long for the sea to remind us that so many seafarers were remarried below: the discovery of fragments of bones and skullcaps were, in fact, the raw testimony of death in battle.

The underwater archeology operation started off the coast of Finale is an excellent example of synergy between civil and military authorities. The divers from GOS are engaged in continuous training to refine their techniques and maintain the high operating standard that distinguishes them: so why not take advantage of the opportunity and provide useful support to society? If in the civil field a similar archaeological campaign had been organized, the costs would have been exorbitant, while this outlay is part of the normal budget of the Navy. The input came just from civilian enthusiasts, the divers of GUE Italy who first found the wreck and made the initial measurements: it was then added the historical expertise of Sandro Garulla 1795 Association and then the Superintendency and the Navy Military. The 19 July 2018 ended the second part of a larger project that, in the hope of all, could resume very early to bring to the surface new interesting discoveries.

The Underwater Operating Group (GOS)

Speaking of divers, a wonderful film comes to mind with Robert de Niro entitled "Men of Honor"In which the story of the first colored diver of the US Navy was told. In this feature film, oozing with values ​​and patriotism, emerged above all the difficult training to which sailors were subjected who aspired to dive, with heavy diving suits, well beyond the keel of the ships. While the American navy is filming such films, few know that in the same period - we are in the Second World War - the Italian navy on diving techniques was always a step ahead of any belligerent naval force.

The diving school, established in Genoa on 24 July 1849, was deliberately designed to train personnel capable of descending to the 10 meters of depth and recovering what was lost at sea. In 1910 the courses moved to Varignano, the beating heart of COMSUBIN, where divers diversified their skills and began to try their hand at the difficult task of neutralizing underwater explosive devices. One thing that the Captain of Frigate Trucco explained to us is that to make the diver serve physical qualities, but above all a great desire to devote himself to study because - using his own words - "every movement that makes a diver when it is on the bottom is linked to the knowledge of a physical law ". The course to become a diver of COMSUBIN lasts for 11 months: in a first phase the student learns the trade according to the canons of the old tradition, and then accesses the most contemporary and technological phase.

Today the GOS operator is able to deal with all the existing diving systems, from oxygen to gas mixers, from systems interlocked from the surface to integral systems for deep dives, from the traditional diving suit to the rigid rigid diving suit ADS (Atmospheric Diving System) for dives up to 300 meters. The "archaeological" exercise we have witnessed was not designed to recover shipwrecks, but to save lives. The goal of saturation diving is, in fact, to prepare for the rescue of the personnel of the disaster victims: together with the ship Anteo the divers of the GOS are the only ones able to save the lives of sailors trapped in a damaged sub. To this end, there is the SP (Submarine Parachute Assistance Group), an airborne unit always ready to intervene in case such a circumstance occurs. The assignments assigned to the group of divers (made up of very few elements) are varied and none can be defined as easy: subjected to the pressure of the sea, with reduced visibility, the word "easy" is not contemplated. However, every operator, when wearing his work tools, has only one thing in mind: to do his best and put into practice everything that has been taught to him by sailors with more experience than him. There is no approximation and the error margins - at 300 meters underwater - are zero.

The service to the community - specified Admiral Paolo Pezzuti, commander of the "Teseo Tesei" Submarine and Incursor Grouping - is an important factor for the life of a department such as GOS; they have also demonstrated this in tragic situations such as the Costa Concordia emergency or the collapse of the Piloti Tower in Genoa. These are happy, unique combinations that bring two different worlds - military and civilian - towards mutual appreciation: the training of the Navy, GOI and GOS personnel is the flagship of our nation.