Walking beside the River Sava in Belgrade in extreme heat, I noticed what a sign helpfully told me was the river monitor Sava, a heavily armed warship which began life in the Austro-Hungarian Navy as SMS Bodrog. Shortly after 01:00 on 29 July 1914, the day after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Bodrog and two other monitors opened fire on Serbian positions around Belgrade. These are generally regarded as the first shots of the First World War, so it is reasonable to say that the conflict rather noisily began from this boat. I’d note that the first shot was really the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, a location I might be visiting later on this trip, although I’ll add that this isn’t entirely a tour of the origins of global conflict.
After the war, the vessel passed to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and was renamed Sava in 1920 which feels nicer to me than Bodrog. Its subsequent career was perhaps a little sub-optimal as the crew scuttled it near Belgrade during the Axis invasion in April 1941, it was raised and placed in Croatian service, then scuttled again in September 1944 when its crew defected to the Yugoslav Partisans. It was raised once more, returned to Yugoslav naval service between 1952 and 1962 and later endured the less glamorous role of a gravel barge. Following two deliberate sinkings, several reconstructions and a substantial modern restoration, it is difficult to know precisely how much of this vessel remains from 1914, making it something of a heavily armed Ship of Theseus.
That complicated survival is precisely what gives Sava such heritage importance. It is one of only two surviving Austro-Hungarian river monitors known to have served during the First World War and the only surviving vessel from the group involved in the opening bombardment of Belgrade. Serbia’s Ministry of Defence and Military Museum acquired it in 2015, restored it and opened it as a floating museum in 2021. Visitors can now go aboard, which I might do on another visit although for the moment, I was content to admire it from the scorching hot riverside near to Belgrade Fortress.