The Cosulich shipowners of Trieste: from Lussinpiccolo to the transatlantic liners

Few dynasties tied their name to the Adriatic like the Cosulich family. Trieste welcomed them in 1889, when the brothers Callisto and Alberto left the island of Lussino with a fleet of sailing ships and a precise intuition: the future of shipping belonged to steam, and its capital could only be the great port of the Habsburg empire. In little more than a generation, that family of captains from Lussinpiccolo built a shipping line that connected the Adriatic to the Americas, founded one of the most modern shipyards in Europe and launched ocean liners that made history.

The origins in Lussinpiccolo: a family of sea captains

The Cosulich family had been living off the sea for centuries in Lussinpiccolo, on the island of Lussino in the Quarnero gulf, where genealogical records mention them as early as the sixteenth century. The founder of the family's modern fortunes was captain Antonio Felice Cosulich (1816-1884), who by the 1850s, together with his brothers, owned sailing ships such as the Gloria, the Marco and the Elena, built in the yards of Trieste and Fiume.

The profits of the Crimean War

The turning point came with the Crimean War (1853-1856). The French and British armies urgently needed ships for logistics, and the freight rates were extraordinary. The vessels of Lussino, including those of the Cosulich family, worked for almost two years at very high charter prices: the profits allowed the family to expand its sailing fleet and accumulate the capital that would finance the great leap.

The move to Trieste: the steam revolution

By the 1880s the sailing ship was losing the battle against the steamer, and the small island of Lussino could no longer offer adequate infrastructure. In 1889 the sons of Antonio Felice — Callisto, Alberto and Fausto Cosulich — moved their business to Trieste, the booming emporium of the Austro-Hungarian empire after the opening of the Suez Canal. That same year they bought their first steamship in England, named Elena Cosulich: it marked the transformation of the firm from an owner of sailing vessels into a modern steamship company.

The Austro-Americana and the ocean routes

In 1895 the freight forwarders Gottfried Schenker and August Schenker-Angerer, together with the Englishman William Burell, had founded in Trieste the Austro-Americana, a cargo line between the Adriatic and North America. Taking advantage of the economic crisis of 1900, the Cosulich brothers first acquired a third of the company and then took control: in 1902 Burell sold them his share, and in 1903 the company became the Unione Austriaca di Navigazione (Austro-Americana & Fratelli Cosulich). Challenging giants such as the Norddeutscher Lloyd, the Hamburg-Amerika Linie and the Cunard Line, by 1906 the company owned 24 steamers and had obtained the right to embark Italian emigrants from Palermo and Naples.

The Martha Washington and the great emigration

On 9 April 1904 the steamer Gerty left Trieste for New York: it was the first regular passenger voyage of the future Cosulich Line. In November of the same year the Georgia sailed with 1,156 emigrants on board. The flow grew so rapidly that in 1906 the family created the Casa dell'Emigrante in Servola, a hostel for over a thousand people awaiting embarkation, while the passenger office was housed in the Hotel de la Ville on the seafront.

The new flagship arrived in 1908: the Martha Washington, built in Scotland, left Trieste for New York on 23 March 1908 on her maiden voyage. She was the company's first transatlantic liner with luxury accommodation in first class, alongside space for some two thousand emigrants in third class.

The Cantiere Navale Triestino and the company town of Panzano

The weakness of the Austrian crown against the pound made foreign orders increasingly expensive. The family therefore decided to build its own shipyard: on the advice of Arturo Rebulla, mayor of Monfalcone and a friend of Oscar Cosulich, the marshy bay of Panzano was chosen. The statute was approved on 9 November 1907 and the Cantiere Navale Triestino was officially founded on 3 April 1908, with the British naval engineer James Stewart as technical director and British foremen training the local workforce.

Around the yard the Cosulich built a genuine company town:

• houses for workers' families and hotels for single workers and clerks
• nurseries, schools, a hospital and social cooperatives
• a theatre, recreation halls and sports clubs

From its slipways, on 9 September 1911, came the Kaiser Franz Joseph I: with over 12,500 tons, it was the largest ocean liner ever launched in the Mediterranean until then.

War, rebirth and the golden years: Saturnia and Vulcania

The First World War razed the shipyard, which stood right on the front line, and of the 31 pre-war steamers only ten survived. Yet the family rebuilt everything: in March 1919 the company, now under the Italian flag, took the name Cosulich Società Triestina di Navigazione. In the 1920s Oscar and Augusto Cosulich made the boldest choice: to equip the two new flagships with diesel engines, built in Trieste under Burmeister & Wain licence — the largest internal combustion engines ever made until then. The motor ships Saturnia (1927) and Vulcania (1928) combined record-breaking technology, sumptuous interiors and an advertising campaign entrusted to artists such as Argio Orell, author of the new company logo.

The decline: the great crisis and Italia Flotte Riunite

The debts incurred for the absorption of the Lloyd Triestino and the Great Depression of 1929 brought the group to its knees. In 1932 the government merged Cosulich, Lloyd Sabaudo and Navigazione Generale Italiana into Italia Flotte Riunite; with the IRI reorganisation at the end of 1936, the Cosulich name disappeared for ever from the liner routes. The family remained, however, in the senior management of Italy's state-owned maritime industry.

The Cosulich legacy in Trieste today

The memory of the dynasty survives in the city: in the maritime collections, in the buildings of the emigration era and above all in Villa Cosulich in Gretta, the neoclassical residence purchased in 1920 by Antonio Cosulich on his return from Argentina — hence its other name, Villa Argentina — which remained in the family until 1980 and whose great park is now open to the public. A century and a half after their arrival, the history of Trieste as an ocean port still speaks the name of the Cosulich.