In 1802 Archduke Charles of Austria, acting in his role as "Inspector General of the Navy" ordered the formation of a naval cadet academy in Venice (Cesarea regia scuola dei cadetti di marina), which would move to Trieste in 1848 and eventually - under its later name of "Imperial and Royal Naval Academy" (k.u.k. Marine-Akademie) - to Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), where it remained until World War I.
The navy gained its first influential supporter when Archduke Charles' third son Archduke Friedrich entered the service in 1837. The young archduke introduced many modernizing reforms, aiming to make his country's naval force less "Venetian" but more "Austrian". This was considered necessary as it was felt that the force officially styled the "Austrian Navy" was in practice little more than Venetian crews and ships sailing under the Austrian flag.

In 1849 the Dane Hans von Dahlerup was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian Navy. He introduced many personal and other reforms and imposed in the Navy the replacement of the Italian language by the German language. In the following years the strength of the Navy reached 4 frigates, 6 corvettes, 7 briggs, and smaller ships.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Hungarian_Navy