 After the Austro @-@ Hungarian Empire collapsed in 1918 , the Austrians wanted to turn the fleet over to the newly created State of Slovenes , Croats and Serbs ( later to become a part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ) in order to prevent the Italians from claiming the ships as spoils of war . However , the victorious Allies refused to acknowledge the conversations between the Austrians and the south <unk> and , in due course , <unk> the ships . The ship had been boarded by a scratch Yugoslav crew on 10 November 1918 , one day before the Armistice , and had left Pola with her sister ship , Radetzky . They were soon spotted by heavy Italian ships , so the two battleships <unk> American flags and sailed south along the Adriatic coast to <unk> Bay near Spalato ( also known as <unk> ) . They appealed for American naval forces to meet them and accept their surrender , which a squadron of United States Navy ( USN ) submarine chasers in the area did . She had apparently been turned over to the fledgling south <unk> state , as it was a Croat naval officer , Korvettenkapitän Marijan <unk> , who presented the ship as a prize of war to representatives of the United States Navy on the afternoon of 22 November 1919 at Spalato ( <unk> ) in Dalmatia . Simultaneously she was commissioned as USS Zrínyi and Lieutenant <unk> <unk> , USN , assumed command . The initial American complement consisted of four officers and 174 enlisted men — the latter entirely composed of United States Navy Reserve Force personnel . The ship remained at anchor at Spalato for nearly a year while the negotiations that would determine her ultimate fate dragged on . Only once did she apparently turn her engines over , and that occurred during a severe gale that struck Spalato on 9 February 1920 . 
