Ottoman ironclad Avnillah

The Ottoman ironclad fleet in the Golden Horn; Avnillah is among the vessels present

The Ottoman fleet began mobilizing in September 1876 to begin preparations for a conflict with Russia, as tensions with the country had been growing for several years, an insurrection had begun in Ottoman Bosnia in mid-1875, and Serbia had declared war on the Ottoman Empire in July 1876. In December 1876, Avnillah and her sister ship Muin-i Zafer were transferred to Batumi owing to the increasingly active Russian naval forces in the area. The Russo-Turkish War began on 24 April 1877 with a Russian declaration of war.[7] Avnillah spent the war in the Black Sea squadron, with the bulk of the Ottoman ironclad fleet.[8] The eight ironclads of the Ottoman fleet in the Black Sea, commanded by Hobart, were vastly superior to the Russian Black Sea Fleet; the only ironclads the Russians possessed there were Vitse-admiral Popov and Novgorod, circular vessels that had proved to be useless in service,[9] owing to their very low speed and the difficulty in controlling them.[10]

The presence of the fleet did force the Russians to keep two corps in reserve for coastal defense, but the Ottoman high command failed to make use of its naval superiority in a more meaningful way, particularly to hinder the Russian advance into the Balkans.[11] Hobart Pasha took the fleet to the eastern Black Sea, where he was able to make a more aggressive use of it to support the Ottoman forces battling the Russians in the Caucasus. The fleet bombarded Poti and assisted in the defense of Batumi.[12] On 14 May 1877, an Ottoman squadron consisting of Avnillah, Muin-i Zafer, Necm-i Şevket, Feth-i Bülend, Mukaddeme-i Hayir, and Iclaliye bombarded Russian positions around the Black Sea port of Sokhumi before landing infantry and arming the local populace to start an uprising against the Russians. The Ottomans captured Sokhumi two days later. Over the course of the war, Russian torpedo boats made several attacks on the vessels stationed in Batumi, but Avnillah was not damaged in any of them.[13][14] The fleet continued to support the Ottoman garrison at Batumi, when held out against constant Russian attacks to the end of the war.[15]

Avnillah sunk in Beirut harbor, seen from the air during World War I

The ship was laid up in Constantinople in 1878; she did not see further activity for the next twenty years. During this period, the ship was underwent slight modernization. In 1882, a pair of 87 mm (3.4 in) breech-loading guns manufactured by Krupp were added.[4] At some point, she also received new Scotch marine boilers, and her brigantine rig was removed, with heavy military masts installed in its place.[2] The Ottomans planned to further strengthen the ship's armament with a pair of 63 mm (2.5 in) Krupp guns, two 37 mm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss revolver cannon, two 25.4 mm (1 in) guns, also manufactured by Hotchkiss, and a 450 mm (18 in) torpedo tube, but the plan came to nothing.[4]

At the start of the Greco-Turkish War in February 1897, the Ottomans inspected the fleet and found that almost all of the vessels, including Avnillah, to be completely unfit for combat against the Greek Navy, which possessed the three modern Hydra-class ironclads.[16][17] The ships' guns and armor were long obsolete, and their crews were poorly trained. Through April and May, the Ottoman fleet made several sorties into the Aegean Sea in an attempt to raise morale among the ships' crews, though the Ottomans had no intention of attacking Greek forces. The condition of the Ottoman fleet could not be concealed from foreign observers, particularly the British Admiral Henry Wood and the German Admiral Eugen Kalau vom Hofe, who led the inspection. The fleet proved to be an embarrassment for the government and finally forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to authorize a modernization program, which recommended that the ironclads be modernized in foreign shipyards. German firms, including Krupp, Schichau-Werke, and AG Vulcan, were to rebuild the ships, but after having surveyed the ships, withdrew from the project in December 1897 owing to the impracticality of modernizing the ships and the inability of the Ottoman government to pay for the work. By 1900, the contracts were finally awarded, but Avnillah was not included in the program.[18] After further negotiations, Gio. Ansaldo & C. received the contract to rebuild the ship in 1903, with work lasting until 1906. Her old muzzle-loading guns were replaced with new 150 mm (5.9 in) Krupp 40-caliber guns, and a new light battery consisting of six 75 mm (3 in) quick-firing (QF) Krupp guns, ten 57 mm (2.2 in) QF Krupp guns, and two 47 mm (1.9 in) QF Krupp guns.[4]

Long since obsolete, Avnillah was reduced to a stationary ship based in Beirut in 1910,[3] where she was tasked with providing local defense.[19] By this time, she was armed with only four 57 mm (2.2 in) quick-firing guns.[4] In September 1911, Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire, initiating the Italo-Turkish War. The Italian command was concerned that Avnillah or the torpedo boat Ankara, which was also in the harbor, would attack Italian troop transports passing through the Suez Canal, and therefore decided to neutralize the vessels. On the morning of 24 January 1912, two Italian armored cruisers, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Francesco Ferruccio arrived off the port and demanded that the two ships be surrendered. At 09:00, having heard no reply from the Ottoman Vali (Governor), the Italian vessels opened fire at a range of 6,000 meters (20,000 ft). In the ensuing Battle of Beirut, the Italians hit Avnillah and set her on fire; she returned fire against the Italian cruisers but scored no hits. The cruisers then entered the harbor, where Giuseppe Garibaldi fired two torpedoes at Avnillah, the first of which missed and sank six civilian vessels. The second struck her amidships and sank her in the shallow water. Casualty estimates range from two officers and forty-nine enlisted men killed to three officers and fifty-five men killed in the sinking. A further eight officers and a hundred men were injured.[20][21]