Pietro Micca: 1895

  • She is the oldest italian merchant ship in existence.
  • She is steam - powered with a triple - expansion piston engine.
  • She flies the italian flag and is registered in Naples, No.33 in the Coastal Sector Register.
The PIETRO MICCA is the oldest italian triple-expansion steam-powered merchant ship and is in a class of her own for her state of preservation and operational performance, having been engaged in regular port activities on a par with modern tugs until 1993.
She was built as a sea-going steam tugboat by Rennoldson & Son, in Southshields, Newcastle (GB) and in 1905 was registered as a steam-powered tug, Schooner Class, in the Coastal Sector Register in Naples, in whose waters she was to spend most of her days.


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A life fulfilled in the world of work and all that it entails: ships and seamen from distant lands with tales and legends of cargoes and the knowledge that a frayed cable could cost lives, that a tow badly aligned could cause a ship to capsize... It is memories like these which amply justify the over a century aged Pietro Micca's honest pride.
And even today she has not been pensioned off. At the beginning of 1996 she was bought by the "Associazione Amici delle Navi a Vapore G. L. Spinelli" (the G.L. Spinelli "Friends of Steamships Association"), in order to save a part of our cultural heritage from certain demolition and make her still valid services available to the public.

The Pietro Micca is always ready and waiting to put to sea again to work for her future, as historical witness of the old technology.
Presentation - Technical characteristics - The History - The shipyard - Link - Home Page
e-mail: pietromicca@tecnomar.net