The massive admiral's anchor, made of cast steel with a retractable shaft and weighing 4.75 kg, was recovered from a depth of approximately 30 m in the Gulf of Maderno on Lake Garda on September 18, 2011.
The late 19th-century anchor, originally intended for a sailing ship of at least 100–400 tons, a type suitable for the Bay of Maderno, had dominated the landscape of the Bay of Maderno for decades.
The anchor and buoy were positioned by the Royal Italian Navy in 1918 during its landing in front of the Austro-Hungarian Brigade.
The anchorage was used for one of the three small speedboats (MAS) stationed in Maderno after the Lake Garda Fleet Command relocated its headquarters there from Peschiera.
The steel buoy, dating from the early 20th century, is a 0.97 m high, 1.29 m diameter hollow cylinder made of 4 mm thick calendered sheet steel. Displacement is achieved by 615 Nl/kg of a new type of plastic in a removable cylindrical casing with a pneumatic hub: the so-called bootspring. Its buoyancy is 63.67 kg. The original fenders are made of chestnut wood.
The anchor and buoy, of exceptional quality and in excellent condition, are the only surviving maritime finds of the strategic role Maderno played on Lake Garda during the events of the First World War.