Pisa-class armored cruiser (3f/2m). L/B/D: 462 × 69 × 24.7 (140.8m × 21m × 7.5m). Tons: 9,958 disp. Hull: steel. Comp.: 670. Arm.: 4 × 9.2 (2 × 2), 8 × 7.5, 16 × 76mm, 5 × 47mm; 3 × 18TT. Armor: 8 belt, 2 deck. Mach.: triple expansion, 19,000 ihp, 2 screws; 22.5 kts. Des.: Giuseppe Orlando. Built: Orlando & Co., Livorno, Italy; 1911. Laid down as a sister ship to the Italian armored cruisers Pisa and Amalfi, Averof was bought by the Greek Navy while still on the stocks. Named for a Greek millionaire who had bequeathed £300,000 for the improvement of the navy, Averof was commissioned as flagship of the Greek Navy in 1911. As such she played a crucial role in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, in which Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro tried to throw off Ottoman rule. As the strongest unit in either the Bulgarian or Greek fleets (the only two countries that possessed ships), she was instrumental in defeating the Turkish forces at the Battles of Helli (December 3, 1912) and Lemnos (January 5-6, 1913). The resulting containment of the Turkish fleet in the Dardanelles led to the transfer of five Aegean islands—Chios, Lesbos, Samos, Lemnos, and Thasos—to the Greek flag. The Averof underwent two refits during the 1920s, emerging from the second, at La Seyne, France, with new antiaircraft armament but minus her three torpedo tubes. Following the German invasion of Greece in the spring of 1941, she escaped to Alexandria and was thereafter employed as a convoy escort in the Indian Ocean until 1944. Decommissioned in 1946, she remained at Poros, forty miles south of Athens, as an accommodation ship and later a floating museum. Basch, "Historic Ship, the Giorgio Averoff." Gray, ed., Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships.