Against this force, the Austrian Navy counted three frigates of 44 to 50 guns, two corvettes of 18 and 20 guns, eight brigs of six to 16 guns, 34 gunboats with three guns each, and two steamers of two guns. Despite its relatively large size for navies in the Adriatic, the Austrian Navy lacked experience against the combined Italian forces and Gyulai decided to withdraw his ships to Pola. After the Austrians moved back to Trieste due to the fact that Pola's small and undeveloped dockyards could not handle the size of the Austrian fleet, a stalemate ensued in the Adriatic. The Austrian fleet was too small to go on the offensive against the Italians, while the Italian naval commander, Rear Admiral Giovanbattista Albini, was under orders not to attack the port of Trieste as its location within the German Confederation may draw in other powers in central Europe against Sardinia. Austrian efforts to purchase additional warships from the United Kingdom, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and from Egypt, all ended in failure as the funds to purchase the ships were instead used to fight Austria's many land battles with Hungarian and Italian nationalists, as well as the war with Sardinia. Early experimentation on the use of a self-propelled explosive device—forerunner to the torpedo—to attack the Italian ships also failure due to the technological constraints of the time. Additional proposals to break the Italian fleet by using fire ships was rejected as an "inhumane" way of fighting. The stalemate in the Adriatic came to an end as the Papal States and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies pulled out of the war. Austrian reinforcements bolstered Radetzky's forces in the Italian peninsula and following the Battle of Custoza in July 1848, the tide of the war turned in Austria's favor. On 9 August, an armistice was signed between Sardinia and Austria, and a month later, Admiral Martini was released in a prisoner exchange and returned as head of the Navy. While Martini unsuccessfully lobbied for the purchase of new steam ships to re-establish a blockade of Venice, Sardinia resumed the war with Austria on 12 March 1849. This led to the disastrous Sardinian defeat at the Battle of Novara ten days later. The decisive defeat forced King Charles Albert of Sardinia to abdicate the throne of Sardinia in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel II and brought the First War of Italian