Italian cruiser Minerva

Minerva was a torpedo cruiser of the Partenope class, the second of eight ships built for the Italian Regia Marina in the 1880s and early 1890s. She was laid down on 1 February 1889 at the Ansaldo shipyard in Genoa, launched on 27 February 1892 and commissioned on 20 August that year. She was 73.1 metres long and displaced about 833 tons, with two horizontal triple-expansion steam engines and four coal-fired locomotive boilers that gave 19 knots on trials. Her main weapons were six 450 mm torpedo tubes, backed by a light gun battery. Minerva spent most of her career with the main fleet on training duties, was converted to a minelayer with new oil-fired boilers in 1909 to 1910, laid defensive minefields in the First World War and was discarded in May 1921.