In the sixteenth century Lampedusa was almost uninhabited and chronicles say little about it. One event, however, made it into the history books: the wreck of a fleet belonging to Emperor Charles V.
Fazello’s chronicle
The Sicilian historian Tommaso Fazello tells the story in De rebus Siculis, printed in Palermo in 1557-1558. He describes Lampedusa as the largest of the Pelagie islands, deserted at the time, and explains its name by the lightning so often seen there. Then he adds (from the sixteenth-century Italian edition):
This island has become famous in my time because of the fleet of Emperor Charles V, commanded by the Genoese Antonio d’Oria, who was wretchedly shipwrecked there.
What happened
In early July 1551 Antonio Doria left Messina with fifteen galleys carrying supplies to «Africa», as the city of Mahdia in Tunisia was then called, recently taken from the Turks. A sudden storm – a north-easterly grecale, according to Doria’s own report – drove the fleet at night onto the island’s north and east coasts.
According to the documents studied by the Sicilian Superintendence of the Sea, three of Antonio Doria’s galleys sank (the Capitana, the Speranza and the Amicizia), both galleys of the Marquis of Terranova, the Patrona of the Grimaldi lords of Monaco, Vincenzo Cicala’s Gatta and the Califfa of Sicily. Other ships found safety at Cala Pisana.
The cannons found again
Three centuries later the island was a Bourbon colony. A note of June 1853, kept in the State Archive of Agrigento, mentions three cannons and a bronze musket fished from the sea and sent by governor Bernardo Sanvisente to the government.
In October 2003 two local divers, Vincenzo Mordenti and Pietro Lo Bue, reported a cannon near the mouth of Cala Pisana, on the east side of the island. Dives by the Superintendence of the Sea with Carabinieri divers found three artillery pieces about two and a half metres long, at a depth of some ten metres, hidden by posidonia seagrass. In 2005 iron cannonballs and bricks were found nearby.
Researchers believe the remains of Antonio Doria’s flagship may still lie in the sea north of the island.
Sources. T. Fazello, De rebus Siculis Decades Duae, Palermo 1557-1558; A. Nobili, Artiglierie da fuoco nelle acque di Lampedusa fra storia e ritrovamenti, Soprintendenza del Mare, Sicilian Region.
