HISTORY

Tito Neri, founder of a maritime firm that still bears his name today, was born in Livorno on 28 June, 1888. He began working at the age of six helping his father Costante produce “coffe”, the local name for the coaling baskets used for unloading coal from ships. While still very young, heedless of adverse weather conditions, he would set out from the port of Livorno in a small boat to meet the sailing ships and steam ships nearing the coast. He would reach the ship knowing that whoever arrived first gained the right to unload. He would then follow the ship to berth, together with other young “riskers” (that’s what these day laborers were called in that period), where lighters lined up ready to unload the coal, which was collected by hand and deposited in the coaling basket. The lighters then followed Livorno’s canals inland to take the goods to their destination. The working conditions were hard, but those young men were proud of their work. Those who gained the right to unload a ship would then have to go to the nearby beaches, load gravel and return to ballast the same ship.

They worked first as riskers then as “ballast handlers”, their faces black from smoke, clothes soaked with sweat and hands covered with callouses. “Young Tito”, as his grandson Piero Neri tells it, “had studied only up to the third year of elementary school and he used every cent he earned to learn English at a school in Livorno. So doing he had an advantage over the other riskers, above all with the ships arriving from England, because he personally negotiated the price for his services in English“. Having grown more mature, Tito understood that the lighters had to be towed, and he did everything in his power to get a small steam-powered tugboat. This was the beginning of his harbor business. Other tugboats were soon added, but the activity had difficulty taking off because some important businessmen had a monopoly on towage services in Livorno at that time. The only sector where no one ventured was maritime recovery: if salvage operations were successful, excellent profits could be made.

At twenty-three, Tito was already “somebody” and he demonstrated it in 1911- 1912 during the Italo-Turkish War over Libya when he was called to the African country to recover several sunken ships. During the recovery work there was a storm, and a ship at quay broke its moorings and drifted out to sea. The crew abandoned ship. Tito and one of his men, whom he affectionately called by the nicknames ”Cadet”, ”Turchetto” and “Puce”, reached the ship and climbed along the sides until they got to the main deck. Meanwhile, the ship, adrift, was being hammered by the stormy sea. The rescue vessels put out and, after two days, found the ship at the mercy of the waves. The two men were invited to return ashore, but Tito grabbed a megaphone and shouted: “I’m the master of the ship now and I’m not leaving it. Send me my tugboat”. That’s how it happened that the ship was saved.

In 1924 Tito Neri made another important salvage, this time the Dutch ship SS Rijperkerk had run aground near Bastia in Corsica. By this time his organization was solid and Tito had no difficulty getting into the business of towage services in the coastal area between Tuscany and Liguria.

Two years later the film world opened its doors to him: in 1926 he was contacted by the well-known American film production company Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and soon became Mister Goldwyn’s friend. He was asked to build a fleet of Roman galleys, which were to be used in the shots at sea for the naval battle sequences in the colossal “Ben Hur“. Tito accepted and began building the fleet at his shipyard. When it came time to stipulate the contract, a bit embarrassed he asked the Americans, “In America, what type of agreement would you make?“. He heard them offer the same type of contract used overseas, that is cost plus, or compensation plus a profit of 20 percent on all expenses incurred by Neri. Tito applied it to the letter, knowing that the more he spent, the more he earned. When he returned home every evening with a pack of dollars in his pocket, it astonished his wife Algerina, a woman of modest origins whom he had married in 1911. She was afraid that she and her husband would soon be arrested. The Americans were so satisfied with Tito Neri’s work that at the end of production, before going back home, they made him a gift of the entire fleet and a car, driver included.

In 1939, when Tito Neri’s fleet numbered around 100 naval vessels, an episode put the entire company at risk of failure. “That year“, according to the maritime lawyer Enrico Vincenzini, whose internationally known legal practice has always looked after the legal interests of the Neri company, “an Italian entrepreneur, a certain Mister Vianello, was in Tobruk working on the recovery and demolition of nine steamships handed over to him by the Libyan government. On 15 July after a violent storm, a Savona motorsailer, the Vanna, sank a few miles from Tobruk, and got stuck on the stern of the Giano, one of the wrecks that Vianello was working on. Neri’s firm was called in to recover and lift the wreck. In addition to his own recovery vessels, he used the shears hulk Rosetta, which belonged to Vianello. But during the lifting operation there was a crash: the iron trellis securing the hulk’s shears broke suddenly and the Rosetta became unserviceable. Vianello subpoenaed Neri’s firm, secretly hoping to eliminate his competitor. With an attachment order, the court froze all the credits that Neri’s firm had with the banks and all the sums of money that it was due from the Ministry of the Navy. “It seemed like the end”, Vincenzini continues, “the company found it absolutely impossible to operate and risked collapse”. Subsequently the Neris demonstrated that the attachment was invalid and that there had been an attempt to make their business fail. Damages were paid to Vianello. Fortunately the matter ended with a positive outcome.

At the end of the Second World War, Tito Neri, aware that the retreating Germans were coming to Livorno to sink the moored military ships, decided to get there first and to proceed with sinking his own tugboats. When the Germans reached the quay with their explosives, they could do nothing but confirm the sinking of the fleet and continue with their escape. Who else but Tito Neri, a recovery expert, could permit himself a similar move? In fact, after the Americans passed through, he raised his vessels in a short time. Nevertheless, the damages and the losses were so enormous that Tito was forced to call together his five sons: Corrado, Costante, Piero, Luigi and Oreste and tell them: “Boys, tomorrow we start all over again”.

As the years pass, his modesty and selfless generosity soon made him a pillar of the city, which “elected” him indisputable arbiter of all the controversies arising within the port of Livorno.

At the risk of failure for the entire company, Tito Neri never left anything undone. This was the case with the cargo ship Pelayo flying the English flag. In 1957 the ship, around 100 meters long, struck an outer breakwater off Livorno during bad weather, and instead of stopping it drifted off-course, sinking outside the port and capsizing ninety degrees. Bringing it to the surface seemed like an impossible task, but not to Tito Neri, who made that recovery a question of pride and principle. Everything could have been resolved in a short time with modern means, but in those days the most powerful shears hulk was able to lift only up to 100 tons. The ship was turned upright after 20 days of constant struggle against the sea’s fury, doing his best with 8 shears hulks, 3 tugboats and 2 barges. Now he needed to raise it, but everyone considered the Pelayo practically lost and advised Tito Neri against continuing. According to the naval architect Pierluigi Pacini, former director of Fincantieri and a collaborator of the Neris since 1950, as well as historical testimony of the most important salvages, “…some tanks of three meters in diameter by ten meters in length were borrowed from the Italian Navy to lash along the sides of the ship. Several divers made underwater tunnels in order to pass steel cables from one side of the Pelayo to the other, and the tanks were hooked to these. It all seemed ready”, continues Pacini, “when a violent southwester broke over the wreck. The tanks began knocking violently against the sides. The ship was dragged more than 150 meters from its position. When the storm ended, they were back at square one.” Anyone would have given up, but not Tito Neri, who took up the challenge, determined to win it. The tanks were removed and several Livorno carpenters made wooden panels of nine meters by eight meters in order to stop the leaks. In the following months, Neri would spend hundreds of millions for that recovery, shouting “that ship must come up, whatever it costs”. After almost a year the Pelayo floated to the surface, and once it was repaired it could take to the sea again. On that occasion several newspapers even spoke of a “miracle”.

In the early sixties the Elbano Primo was recovered, an American landing craft that had been transformed into a ferry for transporting cars and trucks between Italy and Sardinia. During a stormy night, it ran aground a granite reef in the port of Olbia. To avoid sinking, it reached a shoal and was stranded there. The Neris intervened with a shears hulk, which was being used during the construction of the port at Arbatax, and unloaded all the trucks on board one at a time. They patched the breach with cement and several oak bulkheads 10 centimeters thick, which were placed against the hull and secured tightly from inside. After 40 days of intense labor, this recovery too was concluded with a positive outcome.

In 1970 the Petrarca was saved, a 130-meter passenger ship belonging to the company Tirrenia that was in service between Naples and Catania. While crossing the strait of Messina, due to unknown causes, the ferry struck the tip of Scilla with full force and a rocky outcrop got stuck in the bow of the hull. The ferry came to rest against a stretch of rocky outcroppings, beyond which it risked sinking to a depth of 80 meters. The Neri firm intervened first by shifting the on-board weight in order to settle and balance the ship properly. Divers were lowered into the engine room, which was completely under water, and they put in cases of cement to establish buoyancy. Then they began to pump water overboard. Meanwhile, another team of men worked on the bow, freeing it from the anchors and chains: the aim was to eliminate weight and raise the ferry above the level of the outcroppings. At noon on Easter Sunday, the tugboats made a final thrust and pulled the Petrarca into deep water after 15 days of uninterrupted work, right as the bells were sounding the holiday. The ferry arrived in Palermo with a piece of rock still in its bow, which had been broken off the outcroppings by the force of the tugboats. Exactly 20 years after recovering the Petrarca the Neri firm saved its twin, the ferry Carducci. During some modifications being carried out at a shipyard in La Spezia, an enormous block of cement fell on the ship and smashed through its hull, which sank. In a single week the ferry was brought back to the surface.

Another extremely risky salvage was the Universe Patriot, a 200,000-ton, 300-meter cargo ship. The ship, built with double plating and able to transport minerals and grain, was sailing “ballasted” (without  cargo) in the Mediterranean in January, 1977. The residual gases in the tanks caused a serious explosion aboard. It was a massacre: there were 18 deaths, and the drifting cargo ship ran aground on the western coast of Sardinia. As told by the lawyer Enrico Vincenzini: ”…from a technical point of view the operation was indescribably complex. One of the Neris’ engineers got on board, knowing well that it was necessary to move with extreme caution. Even going up and down the steel ladders could have generated sparks, which are extremely dangerous in environments full of residual gases. There was the risk of causing new explosions. This is echoed by the engineer Pacini ”The ship was so weak that it was impossible to even consider refloating it, given the risk of breaking it in two. A section of the side weighing 600 tons had actually blown into the air and then fallen into sea. ”Needless to say, in this case as well the tenacity of the Neris got the upper hand and the Universe Patriot was recovered after several weeks of work.

The following year it was turn of the motor tanker Bello, a 40,000-tonner belonging to the shipbuilder Grimaldi, whose recovery is tied to a curious anecdote. An explosion on the bow caused the ship to catch fire between Capraia and Capo Corso. A tugboat arrived late in the evening. The sea was literally burning. Fed by the combustible liquid flowing out of the tanks, a lot of small fires surrounded the ship, whose poop deck was the only thing above water. In spite of the columns of smoke and fire, they managed to hook a cable to the tugboat, intent on pulling the wreck toward Capraia Island. After a long night, they were greatly astonished to find they were in the very same position as on the previous evening. A motor launch was lowered away, and it was soon discovered why: during the night a tugboat from Marseille had hooked onto the motor tanker from the opposite side and had begun pulling it in the other direction. Instead of arguing over who should complete the salvage operation they began collaboration with the French, who participated in the recovery. When they reached a bay at Capraia, they established that the ship was larger than the natural harbor and decided to head toward Elba. The Bello was intentionally run aground on the shoals inside Porto Azzurro to the amazement of the population, who watched as a ship entered port, ripped in half and still full of crude oil.

In the same year the Saiya, a Finnish tanker with a cargo of 38,000 tons of diesel fuel ran aground near Cavallo Island. When Neri’s men went on board they didn’t find anyone except the boatswain, who had come up to the stern completely drunk and was surrounded by a sea of beer bottles, the same bottles covering the sea floor. Meanwhile the ship’s master, who had been transferred to the gendarmes in Bonifacio, had attempted suicide. The Saiya was completely ruptured from stem to stern, and there was a great danger of contamination. Initially they began to remove all the diesel fuel contained in the ship, transferring it to coastal depots. The operation, carried out in French waters under the vigilance of authorities, was defined as an operation of real surgical engineering, during which not a single drop of diesel fuel was poured into the sea. After 30 days of work, right when the Neris were ready to pull the ship, with a gesture of force the French gendarmes demanded that the Italian tugboats provide a guarantee of several billions due to “the feared danger of contamination”. As a response, an “escape” plan was devised. With the excuse of a lunch invitation, the commander of the gendarmes was escorted to land and distracted, while the technicians continued to refloat the Saiya and the tugboats began towing. Without their commanding officer and precise orders, the French gendarmes on board weren’t able to do anything. But the gendarmes on land noticed the strange movements and urgently sent a war unit and a plane to intercept the Italians. Piero Neri immediately contacted the family patriarch Tito, informing him of the incident. The latter in turn informed the maritime authorities at La Maddalena, reporting abuse of power to the detriment of an Italian company. A patrol boat from our Navy reached the Saiya, coming between the ship under tow and the French pursuers and defending the convoy, which managed to reach Italian territorial waters.

This was one of the last operations performed by the Knight of Labor, Knight Commander and High Officer Tito Neri, who died in 1973, at the age of 85. It is a loss that involves the whole of Livorno. That little fellow, who dressed in black ever since losing his wife as a young man, was held close to the heart by the people of Livorno. Highly regarded in his homeland and abroad, from New York to London, from Rotterdam to Hamburg, he had earned respect and gratitude everywhere. He contributed to the construction of dry-docks and coastal petroleum depots, and created the most beautiful seaside bathing establishment in Livorno: Bagni Fiume. The Neris carried out hundreds of salvages and recoveries and realized dozens of maritime works throughout Italy (Loano, Piombino, Marina di Pisa, Marina di Carrara, Chiavari, Lavagna, Rapallo, Bari, Taranto, Naples, etc.). Now it was necessary to continue without him.

One of the most recent salvages took place in 1991 after the collision involving the oil tanker Agip Abruzzo. This ship was anchored offshore of Livorno waiting to unload crude oil when, for reasons that remain unclear, it was struck by the ferry Moby Prince. As a result of the violent collision, the bow ruptured a tank of combustible liquid and both ships caught fire. Although the ferry had gone quickly into reverse, the violent fire that developed on board wrought havoc: all the passengers and crew members perished, leaving only one survivor. That cursed night the Neris’ tugboats and men worked without pause to helped fight the fire. Today the wrecked Moby Prince, that still gave off the odor of burnt human flesh until recently, lies abandoned at a quay in the port of Livorno and is subject to continual technical evaluations. But today there’s very strong competition even in the field of maritime recovery. It’s enough to consider that for the recovery of the French ferry Monte Stello there was an international call for tenders (a recently established procedure) that interested recovery operators from Japan, Canada and South America. The 120-meter long ship had run aground in the Maddalena archipelago on New Year’s Day in 1994. Following an order for removal issued by the Italian government at the owners’ expense, the above-mentioned tender was awarded, needless to say, to the Neri company. Their leadership in the Mediterranean having been consolidated, the recovery was carried out with the precious help of the shears hulk Italia, the largest in the Mediterranean (1,100 tons and 74 meters in height). The work was completed in only 15 days, as opposed to the 45 days estimated in the contract, during which 85 leaks were repaired. When the work was finished, the shipowners didn’t want it anymore and sold it to the Neris for the symbolic sum of 1 dollar. The “Monte Stello” still sails today.

And so too the Neri Group of today sails in good waters, firmly in the hands of Tito’s grandsons: Tito and Piero (sons of Tito’s first son: Corrado) and their cousin Alfredo (son of Tito’s second son: Costante).

In memory of all their predecessors, their names live on today written on the stern of the tugboats moored in the Medicean Port. Standing out among them is the new and very modern ”Algerina Neri” When ill with diabetes and the doctor wanted to interrupt her first pregnancy, she replied: ”I don’t care about the risks. I must have the first of our sons, who will help Tito build his future”.