Baron Gautsch

'Titanic of the Adriatic Sea' - The Baron Gautsch was an Austrian-Hungarian passenger boat which was sunk by sea mine on 13. august 1914. The Austro-Hungarian Lloyd luxury steamer "BARON GAUTSCH" was build at the british shipyard Gourlay´s & Sons in Dundee in 1908. She was 84,5m long, 11,6m wide and had 2069 BRT. On the 13th of ausgust 1914 she was driving from Dalamtia to Triest. At he same time the Austrian minelayer "BASILISK" was building a large minefield to protect Austria´s most important harbour for warships - POLA (now PULA). The "BARON GAUTSCH" was going closer to the shore than the Austrian War Government had allowed and ignored all signals from "BASILISK". The crewmembers of "BASILISK" saw the passengers on the "BARON GAUTSCH" watching them with great interest but without reacting. So the disaster was unavoidable. The "BARON GAUTSCH" hit a mine on the portside and sank quickly taking 177 passengers with her, only 159 could be saved. The "BARON GAUTSCH" is not the real "Titanic of the adriatic sea"! This is the Austro-Hungarian Lloyd luxury steamer "LINZ", which was torpedoed at the 19th of march 1918 off Albania, over-crowded with a lot of political refugees. Inoffical list tells of more than 2700 people dying, which makes this one of the greatest ship-disasters ever! -GS, Big Blue Dive Academy- The Baron Gautsch is a wreck which is situated a couple of seamiles offshore of Rovinj. The divesite can only be accessed by boat from Rovinj, Pula.