12. Leon Gambetta was sunk by a man who became famous for music
Leon Gambetta was an armored cruiser built for the French navy at the turn of the twentieth century, which saw most of its pre-war service in the Atlantic. Functionally obsolete by the time of World War I, the ship served as an escort vessel in the Mediterranean during the early war years. The French fleet in the Mediterranean was involved in blockading the Austro-Hungarian fleet in the Adriatic while also showing the flag to the Italians, in the hope that Italy would enter the war on the side of the Allies. On April 27, 1915, Leon Gambetta was at sea without escorts, steaming at a relatively slow speed in the Adriatic near the Otranto Straits.
Leon Gambetta was hit by at least two torpedoes, quickly capsized, and sank beneath the waves in less than ten minutes. Of its crew of 821, only 137 survived. All of the officers aboard died in the sinking, including Rear Admiral and commander of the cruiser division Victor Senes. The submarine which sank the French cruiser was the Austro-Hungarian U-5, commanded by Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp, an Austrian baron who became famous as the husband of Maria von Trapp and father of the children which together became the Trapp Family Singers, the subject of the musical play and subsequent film, The Sound of Music.
