The Modern Italian Navy

Shipbuilding in Italy, 1861-1913: The Burden of the Evidence

“…Its main distortion seems to stem from the fact that it directly aggregates sail and steam register tons, and (in 1861-1907) net tons at that; because a steamer is a more complex machine per gross ton, and naturally has a much higher ratio of gross tons to net tons, the Istat series much understates the (steam-ship) output of the later years relative to the (sailingship) output of the early ones. 7 6 The naval construction boom in the pre-War years was tied specifically to the panEuropean Dreadnought race, that of the 1880s to the narrower Franco-Italian rivalry in the Mediterranean (Ropp T. 1941). 7 The Istat series is also more volatile than the present series, as the latter spreads tonnages launched over the plausible construction period, but that is by the bye.…”