Immacolata Concezione was a screw corvette of the Papal Navy, built in the English shipyards of Thames Iron Shipbuilding Co. in Blackwall. It was delivered to Civitavecchia in 1859.
It was originally intended to be the papal yacht, in view of overseas voyages, and initially a pilgrimage to the Holy Land which, for reasons related to the political situation of time, was not fulfilled.[1] The ship then served in coastal waters again for the benefit of the papal authorities, and in 1860 transporting materials and ammunition to Ancona. Remarkable was a trip to the Mediterranean with scientific purposes made in 1865, in which father Angelo Secchi carried out some experiments on the transparency of water.[2]
After the Capture of Rome, the ship was registered in the rolls of the Royal Italian Navy, but left at the disposal of the Pope, who never used it due to voluntary confinement in the Vatican in 1871. Pius IX ordered his commander Alessandro Cialdi to bring the ship to Toulon, where she was laid up until 1877. Later it was sold to an ecclesiastical merchant marine academy, the Dominican School of Saint Elme in Arcachon, and used as a school ship for its cadets, until it was sold due to the economic difficulties of the school to the shipowner Gaillard in 1882 or 1883 and subsequently used as a cargo carrier or was simply scrapped. The United States Naval Institute claims that she was spotted in 1905 at Algiers registered under the name of French: Loire. The French: Loire would later allegedly be beached near Ajaccio after being near totally destroyed by a fire, though it is unclear if this was truly the original Italian: Immacolata Concezione or simply another ship mistaken for it.[3]