One of these guns was each mounted at the bow and stern and the remaining four at the corners of the central citadel in armored casemates. Marco Polo 's main armament consisted of six 40- caliber 152 mm (6.0 in) guns in single mounts. She had a cruising radius of about 5,800 nautical miles (10,700 km 6,700 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h 12 mph). Rated at 10,000 indicated horsepower (7,500 kW), her engines were designed to give Marco Polo a speed of 19 knots (35 km/h 22 mph), but the ship only reached a speed of 17.8 knots (33.0 km/h 20.5 mph) during her sea trials even though the engines produced 10,663 ihp (7,951 kW). Steam for the engines was supplied by four Scotch marine boilers and their exhausts were trunked into a pair of funnels amidships. She was powered by two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft. The ship had a complement of 22 officers and 372 enlisted men. Marco Polo displaced 4,583 metric tons (4,511 long tons) at normal load, and about 4,900 metric tons (4,800 long tons) at deep load. She had a beam of 14.67 meters (48 ft 2 in) and a draft of 5.88 meters (19 ft 3 in).
The ship had a length between perpendiculars of 99.65 meters (326 ft 11 in) and an overall length of 106.05 meters (347 ft 11 in). Marco Polo was begun as an improved Etna-class protected cruiser, but she was modified while under construction into an armored cruiser, the first such ship in Italian service. Right elevation and deck plan drawing from Brassey's Naval Annual 1902
MARCOPOLO ITALIA SERIES
After a series of renamings in 1920–21, the ship was stricken from the naval register in 1922 and subsequently sold for scrap. Due to her age, Marco Polo did not play a significant role in World War I, serving as an accommodation ship in Venice until she began conversion into a troopship in 1917. In between these operations, the ship provided naval gunfire support to the Royal Italian Army in Libya. After that affair Marco Polo was sent to Libya where she bombarded the towns of Homs, and Zuara and the defenses of the Dardanelles. Between deployments she participated in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12 during which she caused a diplomatic incident with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The ship spent the bulk of her career deployed in the Far East. Marco Polo was an armored cruiser built for the Royal Italian Navy ( Regia Marina) in the 1890s, the first of her type in Italian service. Regio Cantieri di Castellammare di Stabia, Castellammare di StabiaĢ shafts, 2 vertical triple-expansion steam enginesĥ,800 nmi (10,700 km 6,700 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h 12 mph)
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