| Historical Information: |
From the Summer of 1917 until late 1918, the Mediterranean lines of
communication for the British Salonika Force ran the length of Italy from
Taranto in the south-east, to Turin in the north-west. On 4 May 1917, the
Hired Transport "Transylvania", proceeding to Salonika with
reinforcements, was sunk by torpedo off Cape Vado, a few kilometres south
of Savona, with the loss of more than 400 lives. The bodies recovered at
Savona were buried two days later, from the Hospital of San Paulo, in a
special plot in the town cemetery. Others are buried elsewhere in Italy,
France, Monaco and Spain. SAVONA TOWN CEMETERY contains 85 Commonwealth
burials of the First World War, all but two of them casualties of the
"Transylvania". Within the cemetery is the SAVONA MEMORIAL, which
commemorates a further 275 casualties who died when the "Transylvania"
went down, but whose graves are not
known. |