Alessandro Cialdi

Alessandro Cialdi (Civitavecchia, 9 April 1807 – Rome, 26 June 1882) was an Italian naval commander and engineer, and commander of the Papal navy. He took an active part in the First Italian War of Independence and in the government of Pellegrino Rossi. He was later President of the Accademia dei Lincei and corresponding member of the Institut de France.

Early life He was born to Luigi Cialdi, of Tuscan origin, and Plautilla Gandini, in a modest family of merchants. He undertook his early studies in his hometown before moving to the Nautical School in Genoa from 1828-31. He made two trips to America on Sardinian ships, with the Sardinian flag, first as a ship's clerk, then as captain of a merchant ship that sailed to Rio de Janeiro. In the late 1830s he was taken into the government service of the Papal States, initially as a pilot on the San Pietro while it patrolled the Mediterranean for cases of cholera that was causing many deaths in a Rome at the time. After this he led a mission on the La Madonna delle Grazie to convey 119 political prisoners to Bahia as part of a plan to establish a new colony in Brazil. - until then this had been done using oxen. Cialdi however maintained that near the coast, the impact of the molecules of the lower layers of water against the bottom produced a true movement of the mass of water, directed towards the shore and increasingly rapid as it approaches it. He called this phenomenon “fluttocorrente” (“indraught”). Although this proposition was widely discussed in learned societies at the time, the phenomenon Cialdi described does not in fact exist.

Later life After Pius IX was restored, all officials who had agreed to work for the Republican government were removed from office. Cialdi went to Florence where he remained for some six years, writing and taking part in hydrological studies to understand how the flow of the river Serchio. could be controlled. In 1856 he was invited back by the Pope to travel to England and deliver three new coastguard vessels that had been ordered. He was restored to the command of these ships and undertook a number of specialist nautical and hydrological studies for the pontifical government in the following years. When the Papal States were absorbed into the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, Cialdi remained in command of the single paddle-steamer, the Immacolata Concezione, retained for the Pope’s use, although he never in fact set foot on it.

He retired shortly afterwards, declining the many offers of positions and roles offered to him, preferring to work privately on his scientific studies.

Upon his death in 1882, he left many of his writings to the Biblioteca Vallicelliana and to the Library of Civitavecchia, which adopted his name.

Selected works Sopra le ultime disposizioni date ai lavori nel porto canale di Fiumicino (On the latest updates to the works in the Fiumicino canal port), Tipografia delle Belle Arti, Rome 1848 Le dighe di Portosàido ed il loro insabbiamento sino al giorno della solenne apertura del Bosforo di Suez (The dykes of Port Said and their silting up until the day of the solemn opening of the Suez Canal), Tipografia delle Belle Arti, Rome 2869 Sul moto ondoso del mare e su le correnti di esso specialmente su quelle littorali (On the wave motion of the sea and it currents, particularly coastal ones), Tipografia delle Belle Arti, Rome 1866