LAKE GARDA

When the First World War flared up, military events once again had a serious effect on the Benaco’s operations. Some of the company’s boats were painted grey, fitted with artillery and placed under the control of the Wartime Navy; the staff were militarized.
At the end of the war, the Italian government took direct control of managing navigation services. First it assigned them to the Ferrovie dello Stato (State Railways) on behalf of the Ministry of War, and later to the Ministry of Public Works. However, the services were managed rather poorly in that period.
A return to private management came in 1923, with the "Società Anonima per la Navigazione sul Lago di Garda", directed by the engineer Ernesto Cannobio. Its registered office was in Como and headquarters in Desenzano. From then on, the management proceeded well and there was increasing integration between lake transport and rail infrastructures on land, which were often integrated with the motorcoach service.

Then came the disaster of World War Two, which had a serious impact on the Società di Navigazione. On Lake Garda, more so than the other lakes, the war led to a large number of boats being sunk and damaged. Consequently by 25th April 1945, no boats were available. Once the Società Anonima’s licence had expired, the difficult situation was temporarily resolved by extending the same licence until 1948. Then the government temporarily took over, and immediately got the fleet back to normal. Indeed, in the years following the war, several units that had been sunk or destroyed by allied machine-gun fire were salvaged. In late 1949, the Commissarial Management was merged with that of Lake Maggiore. The Governmental Commissioner was now the engineer Ettore Parducci. However, formally, it was only in February 1967 that the curtain finally came down on the old public limited company for navigation on Lake Garda. This was due to the continuing aftermath, which led to a financial transaction whereby the State put the company into liquidation. Since then, the management of navigation services has been entirely state run.