The early destroyer Abdulmecid moored in the Haliç, 1903.
The Torpedo Boat Destroyer (TBD), later shortened to "destroyer," was the classic underdog weapon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Developed to hunt and exterminate enemy Torpedo Boats (TBs), the destroyer soon became a sort of super-TB, taking on many of the torpedo craft's duties but with superior speed, power, and endurance. In countries with great navies, destroyers became a fast screening/scouting arm of the battle fleet. In countries like Turkey, whose resources were stretched to deploy a few cruisers and out-of-date ironclads, torpedoes and mines became the prime weapons to equalize their chances against a superior fleet.As with its larger warships, the Ottoman Empire was generally dependent on foreign shipyards to supply its destroyers; however, the resources demanded to build one being so much less than the requirements of a battleship, a number of destroyers were built domestically. The fleet torpedo-craft were one of the few exceptions to Sultan Abdulhamid's long ban on building, and some 36 TBs and destroyers were completed during the 1880s and 1890s. Fairly typical is the Abdulmecid, shown at top, built in Germany in 1899. For the sake of simplicity in this limited website, we will discuss mainly the later classes of destroyer, delivered 1909-1913, which fought in the First World War, and some of which covered themselves with glory. At left is a Schichau type destroyer from Germany, a powerful, turbine-engined 30-knotter. As Europe entered the vortex that would suck it into four years of devastating war, Germany worked to ingratiate itself with the Osmanli government, laying the groundwork for what was to be a formidable wartime alliance. As part of the deal, the Kaiser's government signed over four Schichau destroyers that had recently been completed for the German navy. During the war these small but deadly ships were generally crewed by Turks with a sprinkling of German officers. For key missions, the best-trained mixed crews took the speedy destroyers in to deliver their sting.
Such was the case with HMS Goliath. The Canopus-class British battleship was providing artillery support to the Allied landings in Gallipoli in the spring of 1915 when the Ottoman destroyer Muavent-i Milliye, identical to the ship at left, sneaked through her screen as night was falling In fog soon after midnight, they slipped through the Allied destroyer screen and approached an anchored British fleet including the Goliath and the Cornwallis, which had been supporting ANZAC landings at X Beach, Cape Helles. Aiming carefully, the destroyer launched two torpedoes, striking Goliath under the forward turret and abreast the Number One funnel. The forward end of the ship erupted in a shattering explosion and Goliath rapidly rolled on her beam ends. There she was caught by a third torpedo, wounding her under the after turret. After this last insult, she promptly capsized and sank by the bow. Capt. Thomas Selford and 570 of his crew went with her to the bottom. The Muavenet-i Milliye escaped unscathed. Her crew and commanders were showered with honors for their exploit.
While this was the most celebrated bit of torpedo-work by a Turkish destroyer, German U-boats dogged the Allies' big ships. U-20 skillfully bagged two battleships two days apart: HMS Majestic and HMS Triumph. Though neither was truly a front-line unit -- Majestic commissioned in 1895, Triumph in 1903 -- the stealthy sinkings damaged Allied morale and rendered the Gallipoli misadventure that much more painful. Allied subs in the Bosporus delivred stinging counterblows, sinking the old battleships Mesudiye and Hayreddin, and playing Old Harry with Turkish commerce.At right, a delightful postcard of the Schichau boat Gayret. Her claim to fame was her part in the opening bombardment that thrust Turkey into war with Russia. At Sevastopol, she torpedoed and sank the Russian gunboat Donietsk. But she was not a lucky ship. On October 28, 1916 she ran aground on rocks off the Bulgarian coast and had to be abandoned. But not all Osmanli destroyers were sourced in Germany. In fact, many destroyermen preferred the piston-engined Normand type destroyers Turkey had purchased from France at roughly the same time, and which were known in the Ottoman navy as the Samsun class. This quartet of TBDs was admired for seaworthiness and neat handling. Less than half the size of the German craft, they could manage 65% of the speed. Based on the French Durandal class destroyers of 1903-4, these little ships had an interesting and unique construction, with turtledeck along their mid and after run and a network of elevated flying bridges so the crew could get around without getting swept overboard. The double-deck flying bridges, plus the network of diagonal braces to support them and pylons for the small guns ("lead squirters"), are visible in several of the excellent photos we were able to acquire, and in the profile drawing of the Samsun below. Once again, your Armchair Admiral is indebted to the definitive work on the subject, The Ottoman Steam Navy by Bernd Langensiepen and Ahmet Güleryüz (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995), copyright © 1995 by the authors and James Cooper.
Aside from Gayret, as noted above, none of the destroyers listed was lost in the Great War, but many came through it in beat-up shape. In the flurry of invasion, dynastic collapse, and civil war that followed defeat in WWI, some of them were disarmed or listed as war reparations. Yet once the Republic of Turkey had been founded in 1923, amazingly, most of the prewar destroyers were restored to form the core of the new, downsized republican navy. As shown vividly in the photos below, Turkey's tin cans continued to serve their country with a grace and efficiency not always evident in the contracting process elsewhere in the service.
Specifications for the Samsun class destroyers:
Dimensions: 191' x 20'8" x 9'3" Displacement: 284 tons. Armament: (1) 2.6"/50, (6) 47 mm/50; (2) 18" TT. Propulsion: 2 coal-fired Normand boilers; (2) Schneider VTE developing 5,950 ihp, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 28 kts trials; 17 kts 1915. Crew: 67 (1907), 74 Turks, 17 Germans (1915).
Ships in class: Samsun · Yarhisar · Tashoz · Basra
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 58.2m x 6.3m x 2.8m Displacement: 284 tons. Armament: (1) 65 mm/50, (6) 47 mm/50; (2) 45 cm TT. Propulsion: 2 coal-fired Normand boilers; (2) Schneider VTE developing 5,950 ihp, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 52 km/hr trials; 31.5 km/hr 1915. Crew: 67 (1907), 74 Turks, 17 Germans (1915).
Inboard profile of the Basra shows how cramped these craft were. Once engines, boilers, coal, ammo and torpedoes were loaded, there was precious little room for the human needs of her crew, a fact which seems to have been cheerfully accepted by Turkey's "tin can" sailors. Enlarge
Specifications for Schichau class destroyers:
Dimensions: 242'9" x 26' x 9'10" Displacement: 765 tons. Armament: (2) 3"/50, (2) 57 mm/50 QF guns; (3) 18" TT. Fuel capacity: 116 tons of coal, 74 tons of oil. Propulsion: (2) Schichau marine boilers; (2) Schichau type tubine engines developing 17,700 shp, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 32 kts on trials, 26 kts 1912. Crew: 90 (1911), 89 Turks and 23 Germans (1915).
Ships in class: Muavenet-i Millye · Yadigar-i Millet · Nümune-Hamiyet · Gayret-i Vataniye
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 74m x 7.9m x 3m Displacement: 765 tons. Armament: (2) 75 mm/50, (2) 57 mm/50 QF guns; (3) 45 cm TT. Fuel capacity: 116 tons of coal, 74 tons of oil. Propulsion: (2) Schichau marine boilers; (2) Schichau type tubine engines developing 17,700 shp, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 59.26 km/hr on trials, 48.2 km/hr in 1912. Crew: 90 (1911), 89 Turks and 23 Germans (1915).
The Basra shows the characteristic hull shape of the Normand-style destroyer, or Durandal class.
This pre-WWI view of Izmir destroyer base shows a gaggle of the French-made vessels, with their whaleback afterdeck and extensive network of flying bridges for the crew to get about on. Despite the awkward-looking arrangement, the Normand boats were highly regarded in the Ottoman navy. They performed well and proved durable, with many vintage 1903 boats serving until the mid-1930s.
