In this story there isn’t a sailboat and not a man but it is a story of the sea and life of a woman and a ship and deserves to be told here.

Caracciolo1The main characters are :

a ship, the “Francesco Caracciolo”

a neapolitan woman, Giulia Civita Franceschi.

the “scugnizzi” … turned into “I Caracciolini” 

the ship

A corvette mixed with propeller, wooden hull with copper-clad hull , three masts and square sails designed by the Inspector of Naval Engineers Giuseppe Micheli. Launched by the name of “Brilliant” in January 1869, shortly after the launch was renamed “Francesco Caracciolo.”

From 1875 to 1880 it was used for the training of siluristi.

In 1881 the station was used as the South Pacific to replace the cruiser Christopher Columbus.

He sailed from Pozzuoli 30 November of the same year and carried the circumnavigation of the earth in a long journey fraught with difficulties and dangers, along 35,374 miles of which 16,222 sailing with diplomatic duties, scientific and basins, often in war zones or unhealthy, ending the cruise in Venice September 9, 1884.

In 1893 she was taken in the pipeline for important works.

On May 10, 1894, changed the sail plan and rigging, resumed service in La Spezia as a School Hubs and Helmsmen.

In October 1895 the engine was removed.

Over the next decade continued to be used as a training ship sailing the length and breadth of the Mediterranean cruises in training.

She was decommissioned on 11 December 1904.

It was then the bill the minister Pasquale Leonardi Cattolica to ensure the city of Naples then the donation of the “Caracciolo” by the Ministry of the Navy.
Radiata in 1907 from the list of woods sailors , the ship was used as a nursery, but first there was the passage of the Act ( 724 of 13 July 1911) and later the establishment of the Consortium pro Ship Asylum, with its approval Statute (RD # 758 of June 23, 1912 ). The ship was opened almost two years later in
April 1913. Personality contributed to the realization of the project period, Henrietta Chiaraviglio Giolitti, Antonia Persian Nitti , David Levi – Morenos and others.

giulia civita franceschi

the woman

Giulia Civita Franceschi was 43 years old when , in August 1913 , he went on board the ship remained there until 1928, the year in which fascism, totalitarian in its intent, he wanted to enter the institution in the Opera Nazionale Balilla, affecting permanently the unique characteristics of the experiment.

Born in Naples on April 16 , 1870 , Julia was the daughter of the sculptor Emilio Franceschi and Marina Vannini , who had moved from Florence in Naples a few years earlier. At age 19 she married Theodore Civita criminal lawyer with whom she had an only son, Emilio, his invaluable help in the direction of the ship.

His name, as the teacher of the “Caracciolo”, was suggested by Giolitti Chiaraviglio Henrietta, daughter of the President of the Council and Antonia Nitti Persian, his childhood friend. Both convinced that the education of abandoned children a woman should be in charge. The life spent in those years by Giulia Civita Franceschi on the ship entirely merged in that of the “Caracciolini” or the urchins boarded the ship Caracciolo.

i caracciolini
the “scugnizzi”

“The scugnizzi is abandoned , often parents themselves, cruel facts from vice or misery. The word, belonging to the lower jargon, it was taken many years ago by the writer on the lips of those same boys and has its origin in the game told spaccastrommole, consisting in the ability scognare, ie flake chip, with the tip of his top, that already cruising companion.”

” … Abandoned children … the urchins are at the mercy of the case up to fifteen or sixteen and, as adults, they can not become another – less than a few rare exceptions – that people and evil life.”

Description of this Ferdinando Russo to whom we owe not only the introduction in the literature the term urchin but also the most heartfelt lyrics on this particular breed of people Neapolitan childhood .

The first recorded use of the term dates back to 1895, when Ferdinando Russo wrote: “In the jargon these guys that start carelessly on the street in prisons and under house arrest, are called street urchins.