Federico Gravina
Spanish admiral
Captain general of the Navy Federico Carlos Gravina y Nápoli (born Federico Carlo Gravina y de Cruyllas; 12 August 1756 – 9 May 1806) was a Spanish Navy officer who served in the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He died of wounds sustained during the Battle of Trafalgar. Explorer Jacinto Caamaño named the Gravina Island in Alaska in his honor.
Origins and military career
Gravina was born in Palermo, capital city of the Kingdom of Sicily. His father was Don Giovanni Gravina Cruyllas Moncada, Prince of Montevago, Duke of San Miguel and Grandee of Spain, and his mother was Donna Eleonora Napoli Montaperto, daughter of the Prince of Resuttano, also a Grandee of Spain. He was the third of five brothers: the eldest son, Girolamo, inherited the titles; two others became prelates, Pietro, cardinal archbishop of Palermo, and Gabriele (born Berengario), bishop of Catania. The Gravina Cruyllas were a prominent Sicilian aristocratic family of Catalan origins settled in Catania and Palermo.
At that time the Salic law was in force, so the ultrogenous sons opted for either the ecclesiastical career, as in the case of the two brothers, or a military career, as was the case with Federico Carlo. With the help of his uncle, the Neapolitan and Sicilian Ambassador to Spain, he entered the Spanish Navy, as a naval cadet aged 12. He then served as midshipman on board the frigate Santa Clara in Brazil.
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This entry incorporates text from “Federico Gravina” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.