Ivan Blaž Lupis

Ivan Blaž Lupis, whose name is given in some sources as Ivan Vukić, was born in Rijeka on January 27, 1813 in a family of sailors from Pelješac. Ivan showed that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and that’s how he became a sailor himself. He advanced in his career to become an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy where he spent his working life.

Over the years, he progressed in his career to become the captain of a frigate. In 1857, he became captain of a frigate and in that position participated in several specific war operations. It was during one such operation when, together with the rest of the navy, he was protecting the coast of Croatia from possible Italian attacks that he came up with the idea of ​​inventing an efficient and high-quality long-range naval weapon.

After his retirement in 1861, he returned to his native Rijeka and continued to work actively on the invention he had conceived earlier, which would later become what he is most famous for in the world. For a long time, he developed the idea of ​​a small boat without a crew that could effectively attack an enemy ship from a safe distance.

He created several mock-ups of his initial idea, presented the functionalities of the Austro-Hungarian navy, whose experts assessed the idea as good and high-quality, but with room for progress and solving certain problems.

Lupis accepted their suggestions and joined forces with Robert Whitehead, a British engineer who at the time was the head of the Rijeka Technical Institute. In 1864, Lupis and Whitehead concluded a cooperation agreement and work began on upgrading Ivan Lupis’s invention.

Lupis had several initial ideas and forms of torpedoes. He envisioned it in the form of a boat about a meter long that would be steered from the shore. The second model he presented had a clock mechanism as a drive, however these solutions were not ideal.

The collaboration with Robert Whitehead, with whom he was introduced by a mutual friend, was a good decision for Lupis’s invention, as it finally resulted in a functional solution and what we know today as a torpedo.

After several years of work and development, the torpedo was created. On the basis of Lupis’ idea and initial idea, with Whitehead’s upgrades, construction and a slightly different concept, a very effective naval weapon was created that spread with lightning speed among all the world’s naval powers. The contract between Lupis and Whitehead acknowledges the originality of the original idea to Lupis, which legally confirms the greatest credit for this invention, although the British ultimately benefited more financially from the torpedo.

A torpedo is an underwater missile that has its own drive and device for changing direction and depth. Today there are several types of torpedoes, even an aircraft torpedo, and the first torpedo produced according to the idea of ​​the Croat Lupis weighed 136 kilograms (of which 8 kilograms were explosives), developed a speed of six knots (approximately 11 kilometers per hour) and had a range of 900 meters.

The first torpedoes were named Lupis-Whitehead, and the first torpedo factory in the world, where torpedoes were produced for all world powers in the early years, was precisely in our Rijeka, which became, at least for a while, the center of the world’s naval powers.

For his inventive merits, Lupis was awarded a high imperial decoration, and he also received the noble title of von Rammer, and a noble coat of arms that shows, in honor of his invention, a torpedo sinking an enemy ship.

Finally, it is necessary to refer to the fact that Lupis sometimes signed himself as Giovanni Luppis, but, according to the available historical sources, it is not disputed that he is a Croat. At that time, it was customary to naturalize the name, if necessary, according to the place where a person currently resides, or the language that is official there, and from the origin of that surname from his regions, his origin and nationality can be clearly clarified.

Ivan Blaž Lupis is originally from Pelješac. His grandfather is His grandfather is Jakov Lupis (he has a Croatian name) from the village of Nakovana on Pelješac, and Ivan himself often visited that village. Jakov Lupis’ parents were called Frana and Luka (also Croatian names), and his wife’s name was Antonija. Likewise, the namesake and surname of our inventor, Ivan Lupis Vukić, the first Croatian emigrant journalist and the first reporter from the USA, in the 19th century, was born in the nearby village of Viganj, also in Pelješac. Given that these are small towns with a small number of inhabitants, there was probably a mutual kinship connection, but that is less important, the important thing is that the bearers of that surname from the place where Lupis has its roots, are undeniably Croats.