The Elswick-built protected cruiser Hamidiye was one of the best Ottoman units -- here seen at Istanbul in 1913.
On August 1, 1914, the Ottoman Empire's navy consisted of:Two ex-German pre-dreadnought battleships (1893 vintage)
Two very old battleships (both launched before 1870)
Two middle-aged protected cruisers - Hamidiye and Medjidiye (1903)
Eight newish destroyers - four Schichau type, four Normand (Durandal) type
Nine older torpedo boats, plus a torpedo gunboat and a torpedo cruiser
One new minelayer
Five obsolete gunboats; three newish gunboats; seven new gunboats
Two river monitors built in 1870 (floating batteries) and two river gunboats
One submarine - French-built
Auxiliary craft - Tugs - Transports.
NOTE: It was the custom in the Ottoman navy to give the same name to different ships in commission at the same time. To avoid confusion, we have not defined the vessels by name above. In other parts of the site, they are distinguished by calling the ships "the ironclad Hamidiye" versus "the cruiser Hamidiye", or "the battleship Intibah" versus "the fleet tug Intibah", etc. The problem is enlarged when dealing with the scores of transports, armed steamers, and imperial yachts, all bearing identical names to more formidable warships of the Ottoman fleet and sailing the high seas at the same time!
With the arrival of the Germans on Aug. 11, 1914, one recent dreadnought battlecruiser and one new light cruiser were added to the above.
A NOTE on TURKISH SPELLING: In the early 1930s the Founder of the Turkish Republic, Müstafa Kemal Atatürk, mandated that the Turkish script be replaced nationwide with Roman letters, and that the new script be taught in all the schools. In order to accurately render the sounds of Turkish, the linguists steering this project called upon a font-case full of umlauts, accents, diacritical marks, and tails. In our attempt to reproduce this script as accurately as possible online, the authors have been stymied by the partial lack of correct characters in Web character scripting. So, when reading Turkish names in this site, the visitor is urged to imagine a dot floating over all instances of the capital "I" (as in Istanbul); and a soft-sound mark (the ) on its side, with the open side up) over the "G"s. The letter "Ç" as in Haliç has a sound like the English CH in church or the "C" in Italian vermicelli. Another commonly-occurring consonant in Turkish is rendered "SH" throughout (pasha); it is normally spelt with "S" with a small tail like the second C in Curaçao, but the character is not available in our Web toolbox. With a small hijacking of the creative imagination, the visitor should thus be able to understand our history in quasi-authentic Turkish. Our apologies to native Turkish speakers for any unintended lapses in our transliteration of their noble tongue. See you in Gölçük!-- The Authors.
SPELLING/TRANSLITERATION USED in THIS SITE: Since there are a number of ways to render Turkish and geographical names in the region, we have chosen particular spellings to use as our standard in this article. This is done purely in the interest of consistency, casting no aspersions on alternate spellings which are also recognized as correct. Thus the waterway that joins the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea is spelt Bosporus throughout, not Bosphorus; the cruiser is rendered Mejidiye and not Mecidiye; the capital is Istanbul, not Stambul, Istambul, or Constantinople. Where possible we have rendered Turkish spelling correctly (see Note above).
Some Pertinent Weblinks
- Back to Turkish Navy Front Page
- The Turkish Navy in World War I
- The Nusret Replica Today - at Çanakkale Naval Museum
- Blog on the Battle of the Straits, March 18, 1915 - Graveyard of Old Battleships
- The U-Boat War in the Mediterranean - WWI History from Uboat.net
- Lay In a Course for Global Site Nav
- Top of Page
