SMS Helgoland was a Novara-class scout cruiser built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy right before World War I. Helgoland participated in several raids on the ships defending the Strait of Otranto, including the Battle of the Strait of Otranto in May 1917. She was transferred to Italy in 1920 in accordance with the peace treaties ending World War I and renamed Brindisi. After modifications, the ship was assigned to the squadron responsible for the Eastern Mediterranean until 1924. She spent the next five years based in Libya and Italy before Brindisi was disarmed and turned into a depot ship in 1929. The ship was stricken from the Navy List in 1937 and later broken up. Design and description The ship measured overall, with a beam of . Helgoland had a mean draft of and displaced at normal load. At deep load, she displaced . Her propulsion system consisted of two sets of AEG-Curtis steam turbines driving two propeller shafts. They were designed to provide and were powered by 16 Yarrow water-tube boilers. These gave the ship a top speed of . Helgoland carried about of coal that gave her a range of approximately at . The ship had a crew of 340 officers and men. Helgoland was armed with nine 50-caliber guns in single pedestal mounts. Three were placed forward on the forecastle, four were located amidships, two on either side, and two were side by side on the quarterdeck. A Škoda /50 K10 anti-aircraft gun and six torpedo tubes in twin mounts were added in 1917. The navy planned to remove the guns on the forecastle and quarterdeck and replace them with a guns fore and aft, but nothing was done before the end of the war. The ship was protected by a waterline armored belt that was thick amidships. The conning tower had 60 mm thick sides, and the deck was thick. Service history Helgoland was laid down at the Danubius shipyard in Fiume on 28 October 1911 and was launched on 23 November 1912. The ship was completed on 5 September 1914, a month after the start of World War I. One day after Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915, Helgoland and two destroyers engaged and sank the . On 17 August 1915, Helgoland, her sister ship , and four destroyers bombarded Italian forces on the island of Pelagosa which had recently been occupied by