Giovan Maria Salati
Italian soldier who crossed the English Channel (1796–1879)
Giovan Maria Salati (1796–1879) was a Napoleonic soldier.
Biography
Giovan Maria Salati was born to Domenico and Anna Maria Salati of Malesco, Piedmont, Italy in 1796.
Giovan initially worked in Malesco as a chimney sweep, but enlisted with the Grand Army of Napoleon in 1812 as a rifleman. He was taken prisoner by the British after the Battle of Waterloo, and held on a prison barge moored at Dover, England.
Giovan subsequently claimed that on the night of 16 August 1817 he made his escape by jumping off of the barge so he could attempt to cross the English Channel, using a bundle of straw as a buoyancy aid. The escape attempt was successful as, the following day, he managed to land at Boulogne. He survived to marry, have children, and lived in France until his death in 1879.
Recognition
A permanent exhibition dedicated to Giovan Maria Salati now exists in the town of Malesco, near Domodossola, Italy.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3766139. VIAF identifies the subject as 26297969. The Library of Congress control number is n94095156. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1796, 1879, 1812 and 1817.
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This entry incorporates text from “Giovan Maria Salati” 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.