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HISTORY - LLOYD AUSTRIACO to LLOYD TRIESTINO and ITALIA MARITTIMA

ITALIA MARITTIMA, part of EVERGREEN, renamed from LLOYD TRIESTINO, once founded as LLOYD AUSTRIACO in 1833/36. One of, if not the oldest existing shipping company in the world.
ITALIA MARITTIMA as the LLOYD AUSTRIACO is renamed after its merger with Taiwanese EVERGREEN Group, started wise, as if in foresight, as an AUSTRO-HUNGARY company, with the corporate language Italian. After 1919/20, according to the Versailles Treaties and special secret sub treaties, it became an Italian company sailing now from the Italian port of Trieste on the old routes and could reestablish the old business quite easy.
by Earl of Cruise
LLOYD TRIESTINO
GUGLIELMO MARCONI of  LLOYD TRIESTINO NAVIGAZIONE and the sister GALILEO GALILEI had been the biggest liners built for the company, they had been the peak and the end point of over 150 years of passenger transport - own collection
High up on one of the most sumptuous and imposing palaces in the Piazza Unità, facing the sea in Trieste, there is the inscription “LLOYD TRIESTINO” in large letters. This glamorous building still bears witness to the great power of the historic enterprise which, founded on the 2nd August, 1836, as LLOYD AUSTRIACO / ÖSTERREICHISCHER LLOYD (I, II, III), remains the oldest still-active shipping company even though its name was changed to ITALIA MARITTIMA a few years ago and ownership has passed to the Taiwanese EVERGREEN Group. In the XIX Century, Trieste, the chief city and port of the Giulian region, which was then part of Austria and its main port, became the obvious gateway between European and Eastern markets, thanks to its strategic geographic position.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 brought enormous benefits to LLOYD AUSTRIACO of Trieste. Not only for its shipping lines, but also as LLOYD was a shareholder, and Austro-Hungary was among the financing partners of the project. Kaiserin Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary was in Egypt for the opening, and LLOYD AUSTRIACO steamers sailed in the first group with the AIGLE and Imperatice Eugénie of France and the yacht of the Khedive.
French imperial yacht AIGLE, painting by Adolphe Hippolyte Couveley - Source: Wikipedia
Regular passenger and cargo routes were started to the Middle and Far East, reaching parts of the Red Sea, the Indian peninsula, China and Japan. Other regular intercontinental sea-lanes enriched the company’s offer after the Great War (1914-18), such as the Australian route, reinforcing the established lines which the LLOYD AUSTRIACO was already operating before the conflict, such as the service to the Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. After the Italian colonial adventure in Africa in the inter-war years, the regular routes to the new dominions were also entrusted to LLOYD TRIESTINO, based on the existing routes inaugurated by LLOYD AUSTRIACO.
These routes became the more interesting to travelers after the Semmering was opend. this was a) saving time for traveling into the Orient or India and China, and b) saved the traveler to cross the "unruly" Bay of Biscy and the tedious journes alll the length of the Mediterranean.
For a long time air fares had to Australia had been expensive, therefore the route was the longest served by passenger liners. But in the 1970s, prices fall, and competition from the airlines forced LLOYD TRIESTINO, like most other shipping companies, to close down its passenger services, withdrawing its glamorous liners and replacing them with container vessels. Although it is now a much lesser enterprise than it was in its glory days, the company still bears eloquent witness to the great seafaring tradition of the Adriatic city of Trieste, and still bears its Austro-Hungarian heritage. But unfortunately not that "loud" as it should be.
The different company logi of LLOYD AUSTRIACO to LLOYD TRIESTINO
After an uncertain and ill-omened period during the Napoleonic wars and occupation, Trieste staged a rapid resurgence with the support of the government in Wien/Vienna and thanks to the development of its harbour and the enterprise of its commercial and shipping interests. Further Trieste had a tax free port zone, an advantage in those days. It was in this prosperous time of renaissance that the steamer CAROLINA I, registered in Trieste, entered service in 1818, just weeks after the first steamer ever launched in the Mediterranean Sea, FERDINANDO I, registered in Napoli/Naples. It was only a matter of a few years before, in 1829, Josef Ressel successfully put to sea in the Gulf of Trieste the first propeller-driven steamer, the CIVETTA.
Model of CIVETTA, equiped with the screw of Josef Ludwig Franz Ressel - Source: Wikipedia
This model, and samples of srcrew models of Ressel, is displayed in the TECHNISCHES MUSEUM WIEN.
1849 saw another milestone in the LLOYD’s history, when a third section was created: the sezione letteraria was mainly devoted to cultural activities. Its main target was the publication of periodicals and books on different educational and entertainment subjects intended for a wide public. To achieve this purpose, Lloyd’s set up one of the largest print facilities in the whole of Europe: printing technology and specialised manpower brought in from abroad gave life to an extremely interesting part of the history of the Lloyd company, lesser known than some of its other activities but making a substantial contribution to the development of culture among the Italian-speaking public.
A close connection soon developed between the promotion and marketing office of the navigation section and the printing and publishing interests and in a matter of a very few years many illustrators, painters, artists, writers, etc. gravitated around the LLOYD AUSTRIACO’s large and modern print shop, originally headquartered in the still-existing “PALAZZO del TERGESTEO”.
In 1852, the company ordered three 850-ton sisters FIUME, JONIO and SMIRNE from British shipyards, the first iron-hulled and propeller-driven merchant vessels to fly the Austrian flag. However, the following year, the board of directors and the main shareholders voted for work to commence on the establishment of an in-house shipyard in the Sant’Andrea area of Trieste. It was intended for the dry-docking, maintenance and revamping of the whole fleet but in 1865 it moved into shipbuilding with the launch of its first new steamer, the AUSTRIA. In the coming years, many passenger liners - progressively bigger, more and more powerful and sumptuously decorated – slid down the slipways of what was known as the “ARSENALE del LLOYD”. In 1886, the 50th year since the foundation of the navigation section was celebrated by the commissioning of two sister flagships, the IMPERATOR and the IMPERATRIX, which were a crowning achievement for a fleet which now consisted of no less than 84 ships with a total tonnage of 120,000 tons. In 1907, after a few successful pleasure voyages, the LLOYD AUSTRIACO decided to convert one of its steamers, the 1886-built THALIA, into a full-time “pleasure yacht” (the term cruise ship was not yet known), intended to provide vacations at sea - the Mediterranean in Winter and the North Sea and Norway and North Cape in Summer. The THALIA proved to be a huge success and was amongst the very first examples in history of passenger ships devoted exclusively to pleasure voyages / cruising.
THALIA, constructed 1886 in Scotland, rebuild in the LLOYD ARSENAL into a fulltime pleasure voyage vessel - own collection
The company’s fleet suffered huge losses In the Great War (1914-18) and afterwards the victorious nations were intent on gaining possession of the surviving ships of the defeated countries, including Austria. This transfering into Italian ownership was secured by secret treaties first signed during the war, and then officially signed in Versailles. After a few years flying the inter-allied flag (blue with a horizontal white stripe), the company’s remaining fleet was transferred to the new LLOYD TRIESTINO. (The old name of LLOYD AUSTRIACO was no longer suitable since the city of Trieste and the nearby countryside had become part of Italy in the post-War settlement.)
In 1925 the company took delivery of its first ships to be propelled by internal combustion engines: the ESQILINO, VIMINALE and the later REMO and ROMOLO had the distinction of being the very first motorships to be built and engined in Italy. The success of these small combi-liners prompted Lloyd Triestino to order its first and major new passenger liner since Austrian days and to fit her with diesel engines.
The motorship ROMOLO of LLOYD TRIESTINO - own collection, copy from a period postcard
In June 1931, the celebrated VICTORIA entered service and immediately gained the distinction of being one of the most beautiful, well-proportioned ships ever launched.
In the second half of the ‘Twenties, control of LLOYD TRIESTINO was gained by the COSULICH family of Triestino shipowners and shipbuilders but a few years later, owing to the financial difficulties of the time, the company became the property of another leading Italian shipping concern, the LLOYD SABAUDO of Turin. As a result of the government-inspired reorganisation of the national shipping lines in 1932 and, again, in 1937, the LLOYD TRIESTINO fleet was enriched by another five large and prestigious passenger vessels transferred from other companies: from NAVIGAZIONE GENERALE ITALIANA - GIULO CESARE, from LLOYD SABAUDO - DUILIO, CONTE ROSSO, CONTE VERDE and CONTE BIANCAMANO. These ships, together with the VICTORIA, gained for the company a high reputation not only for their splendid on-board service but also for their long cruises around the World.
Advertising poster anouncing the inaugural sailing of DUILIO, the first real "superliner" under Italian flag - Source: Oldimages
CONTE VERDE in LLOYD TRIESTINO colours - own collection, copy from a period postcard
On the eve of the Second World War, the fleet of LLOYD TRIESTINO consisted of 85 ships, totalling 700,000 gross tons; by the end of the hostilities only five survived, amounting to 45,000 tons. Despite this depressing situation, the re-birth of the company was extraordinary: after the emergency use of a few old vessels to re-open their business, they started a big newbuild programme, partly subsidised by funds supplied by America as part of the Marshall Plan. In 1951, the new sister vessels AUSTRALIA, OCEANIA and NEPTUNIA re-opened the express service to Sydney and in the following year two similar sisters, AFRIKA and EUROPA re-started the direct service to Cape Town. The newbuild programme of the immediate post-War epoch concluded in 1953 with two more similar ships: the Asia and a new VICTORIA were allocated to the fast track to India and Pakistan.
EUROPA, the Africa liner of LLOYD TRIESTINO - own collection
1963 was the climax for Lloyd Triestino - but also the start of a rapid decline: that year, the large and beautiful sisterships GALILEO GALILEI and GUGLIELMO MARCONI started to ply the express Australian route. They were the biggest passenger ships ever built for LLOYD TRIESTINO - and also the last. Although they cut the time to Sydney from 31 to 23 days, they arrived at a time when the decline of the passenger liner caused by the jet planes was irreversible. Since the mid 1970s the air fares from Europe to Australia dropped significantly, and became comparable to a liner ticket, but with only 10% of time to get there ...

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