"The undersigned, in charge of the administration of maritime affairs of a State located in the middle of the Mediterranean, rich in an enviable extension of coastline and a large maritime population, feels the duty to give the widest development to the naval resources of the Country".
Thus wrote the Prime Minister, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, presenting the Navy budget for 1860. The Prime Minister himself, on the following 18th March, will follow up on these inspired words, personally taking on the leadership of the newly formed Ministry of the Navy.
These are the premises that will see the birth of the Italian Navy, through Royal Decrees no. 4419, 4420 and 4421. It is 17 November 1860, exactly four months before the assumption of the title of King of Italy "by the grace of God and the will of the Nation" by Vittorio Emanuele II and the proclamation of national unity (Decree 4671 of 17 March 1861).
The Navy, defined in the decrees of 17 November 1860, registered the following day at the Court of Auditors, as "Navy", "Royal Navy" and "State Navy", maintains in force "the laws and regulations in force in the ancient Provinces of the State for the Navy", without differentiating the Sardinian Navy from the other pre-unification navies which, therefore, merge into a unicum which takes on, even formally, all the ancient traditions of Italian naval history, from the Maritime Republics to the pre-unification Tuscan, Papal, Neapolitan, Napoleonic and Garibaldian ones as well as, obviously, the Savoyard ones.
The Navy thus maintains that millennial continuity that is reflected in only two other institutions in the entire world panorama, the Japanese Empire and the Catholic Church.
