An unusual donation arrived recently at the address of the Maritime Museum of Montenegro from Romania, from a Romanian tourist who visited Boka Bay and toured the Maritime Museum ten years ago.
It is about a 73-year-old Karol Nemes from the city of Turda, who donated to the Maritime Museum a print, a portrait of his grandfather, an Austro-Hungarian sailor who served in Boka Kotorska during World War I, as a mechanic on the Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS “Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf” and was one of the participants in the famous sailors' mutiny on the Austro-Hungarian fleet in Boka from February 1 to 3, 1918.
The graphic was created specifically for the ship "Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf", and was drawn by one of the sailors - a colleague of Nemeš's grandfather who served with him on that ship. Along with this drawing, Nemeš also donated to the Kotor Maritime Museum two old photographs of sailors from this Austro-Hungarian battleship, which during World War I was a guard ship at the entrance to the bay in Boka, with a base in Rosa, as well as several old Austro-Hungarian postcards with motifs of Kotor, and other places in today's Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which at that time, together with Boka Kotorska, were part of the Habsburg Monarchy.
"These are photographs and postcards that are all over 100 years old and that I believe have a rightful place in a museum. Please feel free to use them as you see fit. The graphic I am sending you is a portrait of my grandfather. The portrait was created on board the ship, during his service on the "Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf", and the author is one of his shipmates. I did not have the opportunity to meet my grandfather in person because he passed away before I was born, but my mother preserved these objects, and as a child, looking at them, I always wondered where this place called Kotor could be and where my grandfather was during the war. Therefore, in 2015, I finally came to Montenegro as a tourist and discovered the beautiful Kotor and the Bay of Kotor, where, to my surprise, I also found a photograph of the ship on which my grandfather served here more than 100 years ago in your museum," Karol Nemeš wrote in a cover letter to the management of the Kotor Maritime Museum.
The battleship SMS “Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf” was built in 1889 in Pula and by the beginning of World War I was already obsolete and was withdrawn to secondary duties. This 96,7-meter-long warship with a displacement of 6.939 tons was armed with three heavy 305 mm guns, six 120 mm guns, seven 47 mm rapid-fire guns, and two 37 mm guns as well as four 400 mm surface torpedo tubes. The ship was manned by a crew of 450 officers, non-commissioned officers and sailors.
The SMS “Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf” met the beginning of World War I in the Bay of Kotor, serving first as a coastal defense ship and then as the command ship of the local Mining Command. It was then commanded by the frigate captain Richard Florio, a native of Prčanj, and the ship was most often stationed in Rosa at the entrance to the bay. "Rudolf" was then at the head of the group, which, in addition to this battleship, also consisted of one old destroyer, four torpedo boats, one minelayer, two minesweepers and several smaller and auxiliary vessels, and their common main task was to take care of the placement and maintenance of mine barrages deployed at the approaches to the bay, that is, in the part of Boka up to the Kumbor Strait.
Then the most exciting war episode for the “Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf” happened, because on November 29, 1914, the French submarine “Cugnot” managed to slip through the mine barrages at the entrance to the Boka and penetrate the bay unnoticed. The submarine tried to attack and torpedo the “Rudolf”, which was the largest Austro-Hungarian ship that “Cugnot” had spotted on the stretch from Mamula to Kumbor, but it was prevented from doing so by encountering an underwater reef into which the submarine hit. Then the “Cugnot” was spotted by the Austro-Hungarian torpedo boat 57T and sounded the alarm, so the submarine was attacked right next to this torpedo boat by the destroyers “Ulan” and “Blitz” and the small gunboat Tb36. The torpedo fired by 57T at the “Cugnot”, however, missed and the French submarine managed to evade the Austro-Hungarians and escape from the bay to the open sea.
The rest of the war, “Rudolf” spent most of it inactive in Boka Bay, until on February 1, 1918, its crew, which included the grandfather of the latest donor of the Kotor Maritime Museum from Romania, disobeyed their superiors and joined the great mutiny of sailors on Austro-Hungarian ships that then broke out in Boka Bay. The next day, SMS “Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf” left its berth in Rosa and headed for the Tivat Bay, wanting to join the other rebel points there. However, while passing Herceg Novi, it was attacked and shelled by one of the batteries from the Španjola fortress, which was manned by troops of the Austro-Hungarian land army who remained loyal to the emperor and did not participate in the mutiny that engulfed the fleet. In the process, the gunners from the fortress managed to hit “Rudolf” with one shell, slightly damaging it and killing two of the rebel sailors on the ironclad, so it returned to Rosa. On February 1918, XNUMX, the Third Division of battleships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy arrived in Boka from Pula, which, along with the hesitation of the rebel leaders and pressure from the mainland, ultimately resulted in the final crushing of the sailors' rebellion.
After World War I and the collapse of Austria-Hungary, SMS “Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf” was assigned to the Navy of the newly established state - the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, where it served for a short time under the new name “Kumbor”, before being cut into scrap metal in 1922.
"This gesture made us very happy because behind it all stands a beautiful and interesting story from the maritime past of Boka, intertwined with events of world importance, and which also has a pronounced international dimension. We rarely receive donations from abroad, so this gift from Romania, which also has sentimental family value for its donor, is even more significant to us, and I sincerely thank Mr. Nemeš for that," he told "Vijesti" yesterday. Ilija Mlinarevic, curator of the maritime and technical collection of the Maritime Museum of Montenegro in Kotor.
Bonus video:
