Libya

Libya appears as the site of a failed salvage venture in the account of Amerigo Dùmini’s efforts to profit from wartime surplus. The coastal search, which Dùmini undertook in person, turns a speculative business scheme into a physical encounter with the shallow seabed and the wrecks it holds: after days of investigation, nothing comes of it.

The Salvage Venture

The proposed recovery concerned an Italian merchant ship sunk during the war along the Libyan coast, in the waters around Derna, Brega, and Bomba, and south of Benghazi. Dùmini traveled to Cyrenaica to examine the business himself, rather than relying on reports from afar. The expedition was an attempt to determine whether the wreck could be made to yield a profit; the account records no successful recovery.

Coast and Material Failure

The search stretches across days of scouring shallow seabeds along what the narrative describes as an unvarying, barren coast. Its imagery of watery graveyards, deserts, and depressions gives the undertaking a landscape of impediment rather than opportunity. In the surrounding account, the venture belongs to Dùmini’s attempts to turn inert war remnants into money. Unlike the later prospect of a vast consignment of rifles and ammunition, the Libyan search ends without a return: the wreck remains a possible source of value that the expedition cannot realize.

Narrative Significance

Libya’s role is specific but consequential: it marks an early failure in Dùmini’s efforts to convert the material leftovers of war into personal gain. The episode contrasts the apparent promise of salvage with the practical limits imposed by a difficult coast and an unrecoverable wreck. In the narrative, the setting is not a backdrop to a successful transaction; it is where the proposed business comes to nothing.