The war diaries of a Naval Officer
Three unique and previously
unpublished diaries by Italian Navy Officer Carlo Cattaneo, translated into English with photos and explanatory notes.
They feature three accounts of war during his navy career:
Italo-Turkish War (1911-12),
War 1915-18, and My Prison (1917).
Italo-Turkish War 1911-1912
Lieutenant Carlo Cattaneo’s memoir of colonial war between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire over Libya, one of the last conflicts in the scramble for Africa. Features his eye-witness account of action in Preveza; bombardment of the Dardanelles; the occupation of the Dodecanese Islands, Rhodes and Tilos; naval patrols off Libya and Greece and contains sharp comments on commanding officers and naval bureaucracy.
50 pages with maps, photographs and Italian postcards from the time.
The diary of Italian navy Lieutenant Carlo Cattaneo during WW1, describing some of the first air raids, minesweeping and patrolling in the Adriatic, the maritime defence of Venice and the Tremiti Islands, commanding gun batteries along the Venice Lagoon and Po Delta, and posting to Libya.
A very personal account of the frustrations and lack of action that occupy as much combatants’ time as fighting, and the dangers of friendly fire and disease.
82 pages with photographs, maps, and postcards.
A spectator of huge tragedy
The Italian Front of World War One,
1915-1918
My Prison
The journal of Carlo Cattaneo, Italian navy Lieutenant, recovering from illness and placed to his great surprise under arrest in a fortress near Venice on Sant’Erasmo island close to the Piave front, at a time when Italy’s fortunes in World War One were collapsing.
This first-hand account of WW1 includes descriptions of air raids, pilot training, and fears of evacuating Venice.
22 pages with photographs and maps.
The author - Carlo Cattaneo
Carlo Giustino Francesco Cattaneo was born on 8 June 1875 in Milan. His parents owned land near Moncalvo, Piemonte where he was brought up.
Carlo joined the Italian Naval Academy aged 16 and served in the Turkish-Italian War (1911-1912) and World War One (1915-1918). He reached the senior officer rank of Lieutenant Commander in 1918 and retired from the navy in 1921.
On retirement, he married Emma Dogliotti and lived in Genoa. He had one daughter, Fiammetta. He owned a seaside apartment in Alassio where he relocated during World War Two to avoid the allied bombing of Genoa. He died in 1951 in Niella Tanaro, Piemonte.
About the diaries and the editor
Carlo Cattaneo on left in 1892, above in 1939 with his wife Emma and daughter Fiammetta
Carlo Cattaneo’s diaries remained in his family, unpublished, until they were edited by his grandson, Julian Scola, and translated into English in 2025. The three original Italian navy diaries are being donated to the Ufficio Storico Marina Militare (Historical Office of the Italian Navy) in Rome. Carlo Cattaneo also left a collection of historic photographs and postcards, some of which are in the English version of his diaries or displayed on this website.
Julian Scola is the son of Carlo’s daughter Fiammetta Cattaneo Scola. He also edited ‘12000 miles behind barbed wire’, his father’s diary of deportation to Australia and internment as an Italian ‘enemy alien’ in World War Two, and surviving the sinking of the ‘Arandora Star’.
Thanks to Leila Scola for proof-reading and sub-editing. Credit to Deepl Translator for help translating, and to Chat GPT and Perplexity AI for translation and fact-checking.
Carlo Cattaneo in Tremiti Islands above in 1917, and to left in Piave Vecchia in 1915-16
Carlo Cattaneo, second from left, in Vlore, Albania in 1915
