Background
Thaon di Revel was born in Turin from a family of the Savoyard and Niçard nobility of Scottish descent, a minor son of Marquess and Count Ottavio Thaon di Revel.
Thaon di Revel was born in Turin from a family of the Savoyard and Niçard nobility of Scottish descent, a minor son of Marquess and Count Ottavio Thaon di Revel.
Revel received his commission in the Italian navy in 1877. He served as aide-de-camp to King Umberto (1896-1900), distinguished himself in rescue operations following the Sicilian earthquake of 1908, and, during the Libyan War, was decorated for his exploits while in command of the Second Naval Squadron.
In April 1913, as a rear admiral, Revel became the navy's chief of staff. In the period before World War I, he wisely built up the Italian navy's force of destroyers and submarines, seeing them as the weapons most likely to dominate Italian operations in a future war.
Admiral di Revel remained at his post of chief of staff during the course of World War I and, in February 1917, also assumed the duties of naval commander in chief. During the negotiations leading to the Treaty of London (May 1915), Revel successfully advocated that Allied naval operations in the Adriatic be left under Italian control. He coupled this insistence on Italian naval autonomy with firmly held defensive ideas. By early 1918 this Italian naval posture roused bitter hostility among British and American naval leaders, concerned with the possibility of a German sortie from the Dardanelles using the ships that had formed the Russian Black Sea fleet. Revel was willing to transfer some Italian naval units to Corfu to help guard against this danger, but he firmly rejected calls to place them under a non-Italian commander.
Promoted admiral in November 1918, Revel remained on active duty and entered Mussolini's Cabinet in 1922 as minister of marine. He held this post for over two years before retiring to private life. He died in Rome in March 1948.
On one hand, Thaon di Revel was "energetic and autocratic", a tireless defender of perceived allied indifference towards Italian needs and merits and of Italian independent command, and the major reason as to why a unified Mediterranean naval command never came to be (which would have led to dangerous ambiguity had a combined fleet action been imminent), which led to a less than optimal relationship with the allied navies and officers; however, he was also "thoroughly realistic", having a picture of the Adriatic theater that discouraged aggressive actions to lure out the Austrian fleet, and which led to his decision not to risk his battleships and to fight the war with smaller ships and insidious means such as the MAS (which would score several successes in the conflict, notably the sinking of the battleship SMS Szent István. After the Italian rout at Caporetto in November 1917, he secured the coastal area. In the late days of the war he led the bombardment of Durazzo and the quick occupation of the coasts of Istria and Dalmatia.