Ottoman ironclad Osmaniye

Line-drawing of the Osmaniye class

Osmaniye was 91.4 m (299 ft 10 in) long overall, with a beam of 16.9 m (55 ft 5 in) and a draft of 7.9 m (25 ft 11 in). The hull was constructed with iron, incorporated a ram bow, and displaced 6,400 metric tons (6,300 long tons; 7,100 short tons) normally and 4,211 t (4,144 long tons; 4,642 short tons) BOM. She had a crew of 26 officers and 335 enlisted men as completed, but only 250 after 1894.[2][3]

The ship was powered by a single horizontal compound engine which drove one screw propeller. Steam was provided by six coal-fired box boilers that were trunked into a single, retractable funnel amidships. The engine produced a top speed of 13.5 knots (25.0 km/h; 15.5 mph) on sea trials, though by 1891, decades of poor maintenance had reduced the ship's speed to 6 knots (11 km/h; 6.9 mph). Osmaniye carried 750 t (740 long tons; 830 short tons) of coal. A supplementary barque rig with three masts was also fitted.[2][3]

The ship was armed with a battery of one 229 mm (9 in) rifled muzzle-loading (RML) Armstrong gun and fourteen 203 mm (8 in) RML Armstrongs. These were supplemented with ten 36-pounder guns, also manufactured by Armstrong. The 229 mm gun was placed on the upper deck, forward, and the rest of the guns were mounted on each broadside. The ship's wrought iron armored belt was 140 mm (5.5 in) thick, and was capped with 76 mm (3 in) thick transverse bulkhead at either end. Above the belt were strakes of armor 127 mm (5 in) thick that protected the battery, transverse bulkheads 114 mm (4.5 in) connected the battery armor.[2][3]

Osmaniye was ordered from the Robert Napier and Sons shipyard in Glasgow in 1862. Her keel was laid down in March 1863 and she was launched on 2 September 1864, originally under the name Gazi Osman. She began sea trials on 27 June 1865, by which time she had been renamed Osmaniye, and she was commissioned into the Ottoman fleet in November that year.[2][3]

The Ottoman fleet began mobilizing in September 1876 to prepare 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. The Russo-Turkish War began on 24 April 1877 with a Russian declaration of war,[4] but unlike many of the other, smaller Ottoman ironclads, Osmaniye and her sister ships remained in the Mediterranean Fleet.[5] The Navy feared losing the largest ships of its fleet, and so kept them primarily in port for the duration of the conflict.[6] The wooden warships of the Mediterranean Fleet sortied in April 1877 to patrol the coast of Albania, but Osmaniye and the rest of the ironclads remained in Souda Bay. In January 1878, as Russian forces approached the Ottoman capital through the Balkans, several vessels began transporting a reserve army from Dedeagac to Gelibolu; Osmaniye and the royal yacht Sultaniye joined the operation and carried the last elements of the army on 31 January.[7]

Osmaniye after her reconstruction

After the conclusion of the war in 1878, Osmaniye was laid up in Constantinople. In 1884, the 36-pounder gun were removed and a light battery of four 47 mm (1.9 in) quick-firing (QF) Hotchkiss guns and two 4-barreled 25.4 mm (1 in) Nordenfelt guns were added. She was refitted at the Imperial Arsenal, with work lasting from 1890 to 1894. During the refit, she received two vertical triple-expansion engines in place of her original machinery, and six coal-fired Scotch marine boilers replaced the box boilers; the new propulsion system allowed her to steam at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). Her armament was radically revised; all of the old muzzle-loaders were removed and a battery of new Krupp breech-loading guns were installed. Two Krupp 240 mm (9.4 in) K L/35 guns were added in individual barbettes, one forward and one aft. Eight 150 mm (5.9 in) L/25 Krupp guns and six 105 mm (4.1 in) L/25 Krupp guns were installed on the broadside. Two of the 47 mm guns were removed and three more Nordenfelt guns were added. She was again placed out of service in 1897 in Çanakkale.[3]

That year, with the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish War in February 1897, Osmaniye was mobilized into the 1st Squadron. The Ottomans inspected the fleet and found that almost all of the vessels, including Osmaniye, to be completely unfit for combat against the Greek Navy, which possessed the three modern Hydra-class ironclads.[8][9] Despite the fact that Osmaniye and her sisters had been refit just three years previously, the inspectors discovered that many of the pistons on their Krupp guns were bent, rendering the guns useless. 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. On 15 May, Osmaniye took part in a training exercise that only served to highlight the poor training of the crews. With no possibility left to use the fleet in an active way, the Navy withdrew Osmaniye from service and removed her guns.[10]

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 due to its weak finances. Following a lengthy process of negotiations, Krupp received the contract to rebuild Osmaniye on 11 August 1900, along with several other warships. By December 1902, however, Krupp withdrew from the deal, and Osmaniye was ultimately not reconstructed.[11] In 1908, Osmaniye was towed back to Constantinople, where on 31 July 1909 she was decommissioned. She remained in the Navy's inventory until 1923, however, when she was sold to ship breakers.[3]

• Gardiner, Robert, ed. (1979). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1860–1905. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-133-5.
• Greene, Jack & Massignani, Alessandro (1998). Ironclads at War: The Origin and Development of the Armored Warship, 1854–1891. Pennsylvania: Combined Publishing. ISBN 0938289586.
• Langensiepen, Bernd & Güleryüz, Ahmet (1995). The Ottoman Steam Navy 1828–1923. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 978-0-85177-610-1.
• Sondhaus, Lawrence (2014). Navies of Europe. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-86978-8.