On 10th June 1918, the SMS Szent István was spotted and monitored by Italian motorboats after fumes of smoke were seen from the ship due to overheating in order to increase the ship's speed.
At 3:15am the SMS Szent István was hit by 2 torpedos by an Italian Motorboat while patrolling the area. The ship being ill-equipped and with little experience of its crew quickly began to sink. Over the next 3 hours, the ship began to slowly capsize as her crew hurriedly saved their own lives.
At 6:12am the SMS Szent István capsized off Premuda along with her 1,000 crew members. 4 officers and 85 sailors drowned 41 of them from Hungary. The 'low' death count can be attributed due to the fact that it took roughly 4 hours for the ship to sink and that Austro-Hungarian sailors were trained to swim.
The captain of the ship Heinrich Seitz was traditionally prepared to go down with her ship but was saved after being thrown off the bridge when she capsized.
Footage of the ship's last half an hour was filmed on another ship with an official film crew. And made into a short film. The money made from the film was used to feed children in Austria after the war.
SMS Szent István is the only battleship whose sinking was filmed during World War I. The wreck was found in 1976 by the Yugoslav Navy
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