Torpedo Boat - The Era of Self-propelled Torpedoes

The Era of Self-propelled Torpedoes

The first European prototypes of a self-propelled torpedo were created by Giovanni Luppis, an Austrian naval officer from Fiume (today Rijeka, Croatia), a port city of the Austrian Empire. In 1860, he presented the salvacoste (coastsaver), a floating weapon, driven by ropes from the land. The project was not taken up by the Navy. Luppis knew Robert Whitehead, an English engineer who was the manager of a Fiume factory and in 1864 Luppis made a contract with him in order to perfect the invention. The result was a submarine weapon, the Minenschiff, the first real self-propelled torpedo, officially presented to the Imperial Naval commission on December 21, 1866.