main index   © Jeff Matthews 2002-2012  entry Nov. 2002

Castellammare & Shipbuilding

Castellammare has a long history as a shipyard. Neapolitans learned shipbuilding from the Phoenicians and the Greeks, then became the principal shipwrights for the Romans, contributing to the Empire's domination of the Mediterranean. Neapolitan shipwrights continued their activity even during the Middle Ages, thanks to extensive merchant and cultural trading between Europe and the Middle East. The Normans, Swabians, Angevins and Aragonese carried on maritime commerce, and Naples was of primary importance in the southern Tyrrhenian sea. In 1571, Neapolitan yards contributed greatly to the successful outcome of the Battle of Lepanto by furnishing a number of ships in the victorious fleet. 

In 1734 with the ascension of the Bourbons to the throne, Neapolitan shipwrights began building naval ships for the protection of the newly independent kingdom. In 1739  the first completely Bourbon frigate was launched, the S. Carlo e Partenope. In the same year in Naples, the Accademia di Marina was opened; it was the first academy in Italy for the training of naval officers. In 1780 Ferdinand IV established a Ministry of the Royal Navy and opened a shipyard at Castellammare di Stabia to build ships for the fleets of the kingdom. Ferdinand chose Castellammare as the site of the royal shipyards because of the inhabitants' reputation as master craftsmen. The kingdom, itself, was unstable at times, but the Bourbons, nevertheless, developed the facility at Castellammare into one of the most impressive in the Mediterranean. 

In 1818 at Vigliena, the first steamship in Italy was launched, the Ferdinand I. By the time of Italian unification (1861), the yards at Castellammare had built fifty ships of medium tonnage for the navy, as well as countless smaller merchant vessels. On January 18, 1859, Francesco II witnessed the launching of what turned out to be the last ship built for the navy of Naples, the frigate Borbone. 

The last years of the kingdom of Naples saw a general restructuring of port facilities. In addition to the shipyards, the Kingdom of Naples had other considerable industrial and manufacturing activity, particularly in metallurgy, an industry which drew widebased financial support from English, French and Swiss entrepreneurs. 

With the unification of Italy came a reevaluation of the shipyards of the ex-Kingdom of Naples. The question of Castellammare was, of course, but one part of the much larger question of just how much industry should be assigned to the southern half of a  unified nation. 

Since unification, Castellammare has had to contend with numerous proposals to close the shipyards altogether. Also, it has had to battle competition from other shipyards  throughout Italy. Nevertheless, between 1861 and 1918 the yards launched 83 naval vessels, many of which proved to be among the finest in the nation's fleets. From 1918 to the early 1980s, 170 more ships were built at Castellammare, some of more than 50,000 tons capacity. Two ships, well-known to all, have come from the Castellammare yards: the naval training ship, Amerigo Vespucci (1931) (as well as her sister-ship, the Cristoforo Colombo -1928), and the bathyscaph Triest (1953) which took Auguste Piccard down to 3,150 meters in the waters off Ponza.

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