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Ottoman Navy - 1900s

By 1905 the Turkish navy was of little or no value. It was composed largely of rebuilt old ironclads; and the few modern war-ships that had been built for Turkey at Philadelphia and Elswick had been stripped of everything portable and sold as old iron by unpaid naval officers. Hardly any of her war-vessels can be used, because their engines, boilers, and machinery have not been kept in repair.

A handsome marble building in Constantinople serves as headquarters for the admiralty and more than three million dollars are annually appropriated for the navy; but the Ottoman admiralty was the most extraordinary marine morgue in existence. Hassan Pasha, the secretary of the navy, is one of the richest men in Turkey, and he was also probably one of the most corrupt men in the empire.

The navy was recruited in the same way as the army, partly by conscription and partly by voluntary enlistment, the time of service being twelve years. The nominal strength of the Ottoman navy (on paper) is six vice-admirals, eleven rear-admirals, 208 captains, 289 commanders, 228 lieutenants, 187 ensigns, 30,000 sailors, besides about 9,000 marines.

During the Old Regime the Ottoman fleet - such as it was - remained anchored in the Golden Horn from one year's end to another. Soon after the establishment of the Constitution, however, the Turkish Government obtained the services of Admiral Sir Douglas Gamble and those of about half a dozen British officers to assist in the reorganisation of the Turkish fleet. Gamble reorganized and rejuvenated the Ottoman navy. Some sixty-five old hulks of varying degrees of rottenness have been sold for old junk; and the really available ships of war have made a cruise in the AEgean Sea, indulging in maneuvers which made the marines feel that they were not merely a joke. Admiral Gamble was compelled by ill-health to retire, but the navy began to feel itself a power.

On the retirement of Sir Douglas Gamble early in 1910, Admiral H. P. Williams - also of the British Navy - took his place, in which he not only acts as a general naval adviser to the Turkish Government, but also flies his flag as an Admiral in the sea-going Turkish fleet, over which he exercises a considerable amount of direct authority. Under his supervision the many much-needed reforms were making undoubted progress.

In addition to the Haireddin Babarossa and the Torgut Reiss - two battleships of the Brandenberg class, purchased from Germany in August, 1910 - the Turks had a fairly efficient old battleship, the Messoudieh, which has been re-armed as a cruiser, besides two small modern cruisers and about twenty serviceable torpedo craft. Of the latter, two torpedo gunboats and four destroyers were large enough to accompany the fleet to sea, while the remainder could effect a mobile defence of the Dardanelles and of the Bosphorus, for which they were probably intended when they were purchased. On paper, there were a good many other ships in the Turkish Navy, but none of these were of any value for the purposes of war. By 1910 a small cruiser was being built for the Ottoman Government at Genoa, and two destroyers (nearly completed) were under construction in Germany.

To estimate the true value of the re-organised and strengthened Turkish fleet as a factor in Eastern politics, it is necessary to bear in mind the work it was intended to perform. The value of a ship is always relative, and depends a good deal upon whether she be intended as a provision to meet all political emergencies, or only for a special purpose. In the situation existing in 1910, it may be said that, though the two battleships purchased in Germany were of no practical value for the first of these categories, they were of great importance for the second. That is to say, that as ships in the line of battle of a maritime Power, prepared to meet any other Power in war, they would be quite out of date ; but as vessels specially obtained with a view of possible trouble with Greece, they answered their purpose very well, and, being immediately available, were, under the circumstances, quite worth the £900,000 paid to Germany for them.

Before the acquisition of these two ships, the Turkish fleet could never have dared leave the Dardanelles if the Greeks had been bent upon destroying it. In other words, the Turks could have done nothing to prevent free communication between Greece and Crete, unless by invading Greece and advancing as far as Athens. Moreover, in the event of war, the whole coast of Asia Minor, Syria, and even Turkish Arabia, with all the Turkish islands in the Levant, would have been helplessly exposed to bombardment or raid by Greek ships. As a result of these purchases in Germany all this was changed in Turkey's favor, for the aggregate Turkish armament, although rather less than the aggregate Greek, was tactically more effective. Not only were the Turkish ships better armored than those of Greece, but, having all their armaments mounted on the center line, they can bring all their guns into action in a line of battle simultaneously, whereas in the Greek battleships they were so mounted that one-third must always remain disengaged in any formation whatever.