The Pioneers - Promotori Musei Mare

COMPANY: ACCAME EMANUELE & F., RIUNIONE ARMAMENTO, NEPTUNIA, LA LIGURE-ROMANA

The forefather of the family, Luigi Accame was from Varazze. Using a little vessel, the Giuseppe Accame, he started trading cereals with Crimea, thus starting the family’s fortune.

During the second half of the 19th century the Accames owned and managed several sailing ships used to transport rice from Burma, wheat from California and guanos from Peru. They were among the few owners to survive the advent of the steamers.

The marriage between Luisa Accame and Alberto Ravano provided for a long future to the heirs in the shipping business.

The steamer was owned by the Accame family and was used for the transport of varied goods on the route to the Black Sea, Northern Europe and and was sunk by a German submarine.

Società Accame Emanuele & F
1899
Muggiano, La Spezia – Italy
100,04 mt
14,33 mt
38.830 tls
14 knots

Used as a bulk carrier on the routes towards the Black Sea, Northern Europe and Argentina she will be torpedoed by a German submarine and will sink on April 13, 1917 off Cape Spartel. A crew list dated May 1901 including the age, pay and origin of the sailors is still available.

COMPANY: LA VELOCE

The company was founded in 1884, deriving from the company created by Giobatta Lavarello, one of the pioneers of the business, deceased three years earlier.

The partners Matteo Bruzzo, treasurer for the City of Genoa and liquidator and the marquises Marcello Durazzo and Giacomo Filippo Durazzo Pallavicini during an assembly on April 24, 1884 chose to transform the company and to call it La Veloce, with 15 million liras joint stocks. Bruzzo kept the majority share until his death, on March 30 1896.Tthe company was, for many years, the only one totally funded with Italian, or better Genoese, money.

In 1892 the company was awarded by the Brazilian government with one hundred thousand liras for being the first foreign firm to have transported ten thousand unassisted migrants to the country.

COMPANY: TITO CAMPANELLA, SOCIETÀ INDUSTRIALE MARITTIMA, ITALNAVI

Tito Campanella was a naval engineer who worked at the shipyard Officine Savoia before the WW I where he acquired a deep experience in building internal combustion engines that were taking the place of steam powered engines. FIAT, that started producing these engines in Turin, asked Tito Campanella to test them on the ships owned by Società Commerciale di Navigazione.

In 1925 Campanella launched his own company that only five years later was managing 9 steamers. After the war the company changed its name into Italnavi, operating on the routes towards South America and the rest of the world, including tankers.

COMPANY: FRATELLI CERRUTI fu A. , MARITTIMA ITALIANA

The Cerrutis were a family of ship owners and builders based in Varazze.
Alessandro was a consultant for the “Mutua di assicurazioni marittime italiane” (Italian Maritime Mutual Insurance) founded in Genoa in 1857. He later transforms the Mutua in a bank, acting as its CEO, to fund initiatives in the business such as the “Gastaldi& C.”, a shipping firm and agency of the Lloyds.

At the beginning of the 20th century the family Cerruti still owned steel sailing ships. One of the heirs, also called Alessandro Cerruti, together with several other key figures like Cosulich, Premuda, Pittaluga and others created Marittima Italiana, a company managing a line of luxury steamers to and from India.

COMPANY: CROCE ITALO ARMAMENTO E GESTIONE NAVI

Information about the shipowner Croce date back to 1934. His office was located in piazza De Marini, in the city centre.

He equipped few steamships, but one out of those – the MAURO CROCE – stood out enduring a German submarine’s attack on April 23, 1943; the ship, even if seriously damaged, got back to the nearest harbour and the captain Cesare Rosasco was honoured with a gold war medal, the only one awarded to a captain from the merchant navy.

The company outlived the war period and for several years managed a reagular commercial line to Western Africa.

COMPANY: DALL’ORSO & CO. , TIGULLIA, TRANSATLANTICA DI NAVIGAZIONE, SOCIETÀ NAZIONALE DI NAVIGAZIONE, S.E.A. (SOCIETÀ ESERCIZIO ARMAMENTO)

The Dall’Orso family was originally from Chiavari, where in the first half of the 19th century they managed several ships used to trade cereals with the Black Sea.
They were both owners and traders, with branches in Nikolaev, Berdiansk, Genoa, Marseille and in other continents.

In 1917 they bought some steamers of the Ansaldo class, build at low cost during the war, and used them for trading with South America and the Gulf of Mexico.
In 1926 some financial issues forced the Dall’Orso to sell all their ships, bought for the most part by the owner Ravano.

COMPANY: DAPELO

Camogli is a small village where many owners were born. Among the families from Camogli, the Dapelos, who can be traced back to the end of the 18th century. The “bacàn” (master) Andrea “Drin do Campanin” was born in 1779 and had ten sons. Some took on his shipping business, other worked on board as crew-mates. In 1856 a vessel from the Dapelo’s fleet was used for the war campaign in Crimea. In 1891 the painter Angelo Arpe in an ex-voto depicted the brigantine Michele Dapelo surviving a storm off the island of Majorca.

The company “Dapelo Simone & C.” was liquidated in 1933 in a time when small owners cease to operate while big companies grow.

COMPANY: VILLAIN & FASSIO, COMPAGNIA INTERNAZIONALE DI GENOVA, ATLANTICA CONTAINERS COMMERCIALE

Ernesto Fassio (1893-1968) started working in the shipping business in 1913, partnering with a Swiss insurance broker and launching a company called In the 30’s their ship FRANCA FASSIO operated on the line Genoa-Barcelona, but the company was not extremely profitable.

The success arrived after the war, when the companies owned by Fassio worked with 15 vessels among tankers, bulk-carriers and refrigerated cargos.

In 1971 the company bought an Hansa Line’s ship and renamed her ATLANTICA GENOVA and was the first Italian container carrier.

Ernesto’s daughter Franca took over the company and managed it until it went bankrupt in 1975, due to the excessive costs of steam turbines.

COMPANY: MARITTIMA ITALIANA

In 1912 the owner Emilio Ferro won the tender for the State’s postal services, earlier operated in monopoly by the Navigazione Generale Italiana. The subsidy would amount to over 6 million liras per year and the service was only to be done on the Western coast of Italy.

Ferro created and was general manager of the company Marittima Italiana. In its most successful period the company managed some forty ships with terminals in Constantinople, Mombasa and Bombay. In 1931 it was merged with Lloyd Triestino.

COMPANY: GARDELLA GINO

Gino Gardella mainly worked in the shipbuilding business. His yard was based at calata Boccardo. He later produced naval furniture on luxury liners like the Leonardo da Vinci.

He also managed a shipping company that, in the 60’s, acquired some ships known as “baby Liberty” with a tonnage of around 2,000 tons. They were used for heavy loads, had back engines and were identified by the name BRICK, followed by roman digits. In the 70’s the ships stopped working and the company ceased its activity.

COMPANY: LIGURE-BRASILIANA

The Società Ligure-Brasiliana (Ligurian/Brazilian Company) was founded in 1897 to manage the traffic from Italy to Brazil with lines bound to the Amazon River and later to Argentina and the ports of Rio de la Plata.

In 1913 the company Hamburg America Line acquired the full capital of the firm that the following year was renamed Transatlantica Italiana Società Anonima di Navigazione.

In 1915, when Italy got into the WW I, the German stock share was liquidated and bought by Ansaldo. The bankrupt of the latter influenced the company that, in 1934, ceased all its activities.

COMPANY: TARROS, GRUPPO GRENDI

In 1828 Marco Antonio Grendi founded a shipping agency based in Genoa, the oldest still operating in Italy today. Since then the company has expanded and includes transport, ship-owning and terminal activities.

The ship-owning business is linked to the partnership with Ugo Musso – the founder of TARROS- and his sons Giorgio and Bruno. Musso launched a new container service between Genoa and Sardinia with innovative ro-ro ships.

The company, looking for better logistics and contracts, left Genoa in 1972 to come back in 1992.

Grendi was the first private Italian terminal operator in the port of Genoa.

COMPANY: LA VELOCE, LAVARELLO GB FU PROSPERO

The forefather of the family was Prospero Lavarello, who was born in Camogli but lived in Varazze and owned a brigantine.

GioBatta Lavarello was a pioneer of the migrants’ transport to South America, at first using sailing ships and later a fleet of steel steamer co-owned with Matteo Bruzzo -who was a treasurer of the city of Genoa- and the marquises Marcello Durazzo and Giacomo Filippo Durazzo Pallavicini. During the 70’s Lavarello was the only Italian funded company able to compete with foreign companies, especially from France.

GioBatta Lavarello’s funeral ceremony, that took place on December 6 1881 in the Saint Stephen Church in Genoa, was a true event for the town.

COMPANY: MARIANO MARESCA & C., MARCOR

The family came from Sorrento and was related to the Ciampa family, that is one of the most influential in the shipping business, and in the second half of the 19th century moved to Genoa.

In 1912 Mariano Maresca, Luigi’s son,owned two steamers and in 1915 is awarded with a gold medal for merit by the Federazione Armatori Liberi Italiani. (Federation of Italian Free Owners).

After 1946 the company MARCOR operates with no less than 24 Liberty class ships.
Maresca was among the first owners to support the innovation of containers: in 1970 he commissioned the ship Relay to the yard Van der Werf, that could host 85 containers, the first one of the genre flying an Italian flag.

COMPANY: ATLANTIDE SOCIETÀ PER IMPRESE MARITTIME

Emilio Menada was born in 1853 and lived a long life, dying at 104 years of age after a rich and eventful life, with strong human relationships among which the one he kept with his nephew Alfonso Clerici.

After some years of hard work on sailing ships and steamers, in 1898 thanks to
Edilio Raggio he became general manager at the Società Commerciale Italiana di Navigazione. Later he was appointed president and sat in boards of other relevant companies, such as the NGI and for some time at Ansaldo, and in 1901 was one of the founders of Confitarma (the owners’ association).

Given his technical skills he also contributed to design liners. A barge with mechanical elevators he invented was christened after him: it saved one third of the time needed to fully load a ship of coal.

COMPANY: MILESI PIETRO fu GIOVANNI

PPietro Milesi started working as a young boy in the Darsena. He managed, through hard work, to pile up a small fortune that he used to buy a steamer to transport migrants from Naples to Genoa. At the time, circa 1180, there were plenty of families leaving Naples for Genova to embark for a passage to the USA, on foreign and Italian ships.

Business was good, but Milesi chose not to go on investing on steamers and decided instead to commission a large ship called Australia to the Odero shipyard in Sestri Ponente, that was used on the Cape Horn route. Milesi became one of the key figures in ship-owning and was forever linked to sailing ships.

COMPANY: MORTOLA GIUSEPPE & BOZZO EMANUELE

The families Mortola and Bozzo were related and among the most influential in the business during the sailing ships era.

At the start of the WW I the company owned several big steel sailing vessels. The Sardomene was the first Italian ship to be torpedoed by the German submarines. After the war the company kept using sailing ships until a second-hand steamer was bought in 1927: the Maria Adele, that was used with mixed fortunes until 1932 when the company ceased its activity.

COMPANY: PARODI EMANUELE VITTORIO soc. an. nav.

There were several Parodi among owners, and it is often hard to understand how they were related, as Parodi is quite a common name in Genoa. Among them Angelo and Emanuele Parodi.

The latter in 1914 was elected president of the Federazione Armatori Liberi Italiani (the Italian Federation of Free Owners), the first ever example of employers’ trade union. He was one of the leading figures of the famous “Owners’ lockout” that jeopardized the position of both the owners and the workers, whose leader was the rising star of trade unionists Mr Giulietti.

The strike only ended on June 15, 1914 also because of the huge rise in fares caused by the incoming WW I.
In 1940 he was honoured Cavaliere del Lavoro (Knight of the Italian Order of Merit for Labour).

COMPANY: PITTALUGA LUIGI VAPORI

The Pittaluga Luigi Steamships was founded in 1902 with an asset of 150.000 £.

The company’s main activity was not the ship building and equipment but their demolition. The shipyard was located in Sampierdarena, from where the Pittaluga family was.

The ships were usually purchased in the United Kingdom. The captain used to go to the UK by train along with the crew. The ship was paid cash, fitted out and loaded with coal to be transported to Genoa; at its arrival it was demolished. This explains the great number of ship owned by the company along the years.

COMPANY: SORIMA – SOCIETÀ RECUPERI MARITTIMI

Giovanni Quaglia was an atypical owner, as he never operated in the trading business but on the scene of offshore disasters.

Founded in 1926, in 1929 his company managed four ships specializing in the search and rescue of sunk vessels and their loads along the coast.

The company became famous when its ship Artiglio recovered the treasure of the Egypt, a passenger steamer that sunk in 1922 off Brest in France, on a commission by the Lloyds of London.

COMPANY: SOCIETÀ COMMERCIALE ITALIANA DI NAVIGAZIONE

Edilio Raggio (1840-1906) became a ship-owner following his career in industry: he founded the Società Commerciale Italiana that in 1902 owned 11 steamers to transport minerals, mostly steel and coal, from Northern Europe.

Owner of mines, furnaces, cereal, sugar and cotton producing industries, but also insurances and banks he was considered the richest man in Italy. His son Carlo was one of the partners of the Navigazione Generale Italiana.

The family had also relevant real estate assets, including the famous Castello Raggio that Carlo had built on the seafront of Cornigliano and was taken down in 1951.

COMPANY: NAVIGAZIONE GENERALE ITALIANA

Raffaele Rubattino – together with the Florio family from Sicily, represents the modern way of being an owner in a time of huge technical and political changes.
He was one of the creators of the Italian merchant fleet, his life retracing the success of steamers that he contributed to promote.

He was eight when, on October 14, 1818, the first steamer operating in the Mediterranean, the Ferdinando I, docked in the port of Genoa. In 1837 Rubattino created the first company bearing his name, using a wheel steamer. Later he bought several other vessels from British shipyards.

He died in 1881, two months after founding the Navigazione Generale Italiana, one of the most successful European and global shipping companies.

COMPANY: COMPAGNIA GENOVESE DI NAVIGAZIONE A VAPORE, INCRES

The Scerni family has been operating in the naval transport since 1840 but has been active in the shipping business only since 1902. Paolo Scerni is the president and Enrico Scerni one of the board members of the company they contributed to found.

In the decade before the war the Compagnia Genovese di Navigazione a Vapore managed some ten ships, used for regular service in the East Mediterranean and since 1936 towards Canada, transporting fresh fruits, citrus and typical Italian goods, taking back bulk goods and cereals.

The fleet was annihilated during the war but the family managed to react and became one of the pioneers in the business of cruises and a leader in logistics.
Gianni Scerni was also president and general manager of the Genoa Football Club and president of the RINA register until 2012.

COMPANY: ZANCHI

The company Zanchi Andrea started its activities in 1925 in Genoa with an office in the central Piazza Banchi. It soon specialized in the transport of frozen meat from South America, Argentina and Uruguay, using the very first refrigerated ships of the Italian merchant fleet. These ships used to dock at the Calata Gadda, where there was a huge refrigerated storage area called “Frigorifero Andrea Zanchi”.

The most famous ship owned by Zanchi was the Olterra. Moored in Algeciras, during the war she was used as a secret base for the Italian navy seals, working to place mine bombs on the English ships anchored in the nearby bay of Gibraltar. The Allies discovered the deceit only after the armistice in September 1943.

COMPANY: LLOYD PACIFICO, S.E.A. – SOCIETÀ ESERCIZIO ARMAMENTO

The Zino family was from Savona.

In 1912 Dionisio Zino founded the Lloyd Pacifico based in Genoa, to operate regular lines to South America, to both the Atlantic and Pacific coast ports.

Its ships had a distinctive livery: a ochre chimney with a red Z letter on both sides and were all christened with names ending with an accented A.

In 1924 he founded S.E.A. Luigi Zino was also the representative of the Genoese owners in the board of the Naval Register. He died in 1931 and his companies did not survive the war.

COMPANY: ZOBOLI MARIO&C. , SOC. ANONIMA SARDA DI ARMAMENTO

The name of owner Zoboli is first mentioned in 1933, he had his offices in piazza Raibetta in Genoa and later moved to Pegli at Villa Helvetia
.
Zoboli owned as many as five ships, all lost during the war. After the conflict the bulk carrier Mario Z underwent an important naval “surgery” operation. Its hull was lengthened by 23 metres, the biggest change ever made to a ship in Italy. The new section was built in 1966 by the “Cantieri del Mediterraneo” in Pietra Ligure and towed to Genoa were it was added to the ship, previously cut at the centre, by the shipyard Campanella.

The Association aims at to maintain and promote the heritage and the exhibits kept at the Galata Museo del Mare, at the Naval Museum of Pegli and at the Commenda di San Giovanni di Prè.

We are a no-profit organization made of several companies from the Genoese shipping business. Our association is inspired by the anglo-saxon cultural foundations.

Calata De Mari, 1 16126 Genova – Italia
info@promotorimuseimare.org

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FAMIGLIA ACCAME

THE STEAMER GIUSEPPE ACCAME

FAMIGLIA BRUZZO

FAMIGLIA CAMPANELLA

FAMIGLIA CERRUTI

FAMIGLIA CROCE

FAMIGLIA DALL’ORSO

FAMIGLIA DAPELO

FAMIGLIA FASSIO

FAMIGLIA FERRO

FAMIGLIA GARDELLA

FAMIGLIA GAVOTTI

FAMIGLIA GRENDI-MUSSO

FAMIGLIA LAVARELLO

FAMIGLIA MARESCA

FAMIGLIA MENADA

FAMIGLIA MILESI

FAMIGLIA MORTOLA – BOZZO

FAMIGLIA PARODI

FAMIGLIA PITTALUGA

FAMIGLIA QUAGLIA

FAMIGLIA RAGGIO

FAMIGLIA RUBATTINO

FAMIGLIA SCERNI

FAMIGLIA ZANCHI

FAMIGLIA ZINO

FAMIGLIA ZOBOLI