Nearly a month before war was declared, Count Persano had been placed in command of the Italian fleet, and ordered to prepare it for active operations in the Adriatic, making Ancona his headquarters. On June 20th, the day of the declaration of war, eight ships (including two ironclads) were at Ancona. Persano with the main body of the fleet, consisting of ten wooden ships and nine ironclads, was still at the naval arsenal of Taranto. Admiral Tegethoff, the Austrian commander, was getting his fleet ready for sea at Fasana and Pola, at the head of the Adriatic. He had taken command on the 9th of May, and ever since had been hard at work fitting out his ships and training his crews. The only effective portion of the fleet was a squadron of seven ironclads, broadside ships, with thin armour, and no guns of really heavy calibre. At first, the Austrian Admiralty suggested that the fleet should consist only of these ironclads and a few light steamers to act as scouts and despatch-vessels. But there were lying in the dockyard at Pola and in the port of Trieste an old wooden screw line of battle-ship, the _Kaiser_, and six wooden frigates. Tegethoff asked for these to be added to his command. “Give me every ship you have,” he said: “you may depend on it I will find good use for them.” He was given a free hand, and he organised his fleet in three divisions. The first was composed of seven ironclads. The second, under his friend Commodore Petz, consisted of the seven wooden ships. The third was made up of gunboats, paddle-steamers, and other light craft. The crews were rapidly recruited among the fishing population of the Dalmatian coast, and the sailors of Trieste and Pola. So new were many of them to work on board a man-of-war that they were not even uniformed when the fleet sailed, and they still wore at Lissa the clothes in which they enlisted. But they were brave and hardy seamen to begin with, and Tegethoff had given them some weeks of training in which the crews were busy from morning to night at target practice, the captains of the guns being taught to lay a whole broadside so as to converge on a single mark; and there was also practice in manœuvring under steam, in which great stress was laid on the importance of rapid turning so as to avoid the enemy’s rams, and use the same weapon successfully against them. The result was that even the newly-enlisted men learned confidence in themselves and in the brave and skilful leader who commanded them. [Illustration: “FROM THIS POINT TEGETHOFF KEPT ON THE BRIDGE” (_p._ 160).]