The Ottoman Navy — Imperial Ottoman

The Ottoman fleet was, for a time, the most powerful naval force in the Mediterranean. Built up systematically from the early fourteenth century, expanded in the reign of Mehmed II after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and reaching its apogee under Suleiman the Magnificent in the sixteenth, the imperial navy played a central role in the conquest of the Aegean islands, the blockade of the Mamluk coast, the struggle for the western Mediterranean, and the long contest with the Spanish, Genoese, Venetian, and Hospitaller fleets.

A more general account of the Ottoman military is given in the article on Ottoman military and warfare, and the most famous admiral of the fleet is treated in his own article on Hayreddin Barbarossa. This article focuses on the institutional history of the navy itself — its ships, its commanders, its great campaigns, and its long decline.

Origins and the early fleet

The Ottoman navy had its origins in the small flotilla of the early Ottoman emirate on the Sea of Marmara, and it expanded rapidly after the conquest of the Gallipoli peninsula in 1354. The early fleet was built in local shipyards on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara, and it was used principally to transport troops across the Bosphorus and to support the Ottoman land campaigns in Thrace. The first major expansion of the fleet came under Bayezid I, and the Ottoman capture of Salonica in 1387 and of many Aegean islands in the early fifteenth century were made possible by a strong, if not always successful, fleet.

The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 was a naval as well as a military operation: the fleet carried the army across the Bosphorus, blockaded the Golden Horn, and prevented relief by sea. Mehmed II, recognising the importance of sea power, ordered the construction of a large new fleet in the Golden Horn, and the conquest of the Greek archipelago, the Emirate of Karaman, the Crimea, and the Dardanelles followed in the next decades.

The Golden Horn and the imperial arsenal

The principal shipyard of the Ottoman fleet was the Tersane-i Amire, the imperial arsenal, on the north shore of the Golden Horn at Kasımpaşa, in what is today the district of Beyoğlu in Istanbul. The arsenal was founded by Mehmed II and expanded by his successors; by the seventeenth century it was one of the largest shipyards in the world, with a labour force of several thousand shipwrights, caulkers, riggers, and ancillary workers. The arsenal also produced anchors, oars, sails, gun-carriages, and the cannon that were the standard armament of Ottoman warships.

The basic warship of the fleet was the kadırga, a galley around 35-40 metres long with a single bank of oars, a fore- and aft-castle, and a main armament of heavy cannon. The kadırga was fast, manoeuvrable, and well-suited to the calm waters of the Mediterranean. In the sixteenth century the fleet also built the larger mahmîye and the baştarde, capital ships with two or three masts and a heavier armament. The Ottoman shipwrights borrowed freely from Greek, Italian, and Iberian models, and the technical level of the fleet’s ships was high.

The kadırga was a complex piece of engineering. The hull was built of timber — typically pine, oak, and cypress, with the keel cut from a single great tree — and the seams were caulked with pitch and oakum. The oars, generally 25 to 30 per side, were manned by convicts, slaves, and volunteers; the kürekçi (oarsmen) sat in fixed benches and were organised into squads of three or four oars per squad, each with its own officer. The rowers were expected to keep time to the music of the davul and the zurna, the same instruments that marched the Janissary army on land, and the rhythm of the oars was, in this sense, a part of the same military-musical tradition. The fleet’s sails, in the larger ships, were lateen or square, depending on the design, and the rigging was the work of specialised shipwrights in the imperial arsenal.

The Kapudan Pasha

The admiral of the Ottoman fleet held the title of Kapudan Pasha (literally “Captain Pasha”), and the office was one of the most prestigious in the empire. The Kapudan Pasha commanded the fleet at sea, administered the imperial arsenal, and — from the late sixteenth century — governed the maritime provinces of the empire as a vizier. The early Kapudan Pashas were drawn from the devshirme; from the sixteenth century onwards, the post was frequently given to corsair captains from the western Mediterranean, and to members of the prominent families of the imperial court.

The most famous of the early Kapudan Pashas were the corsair brothers Oruç and Hayreddin, the sons of a Turkish potter from the island of Midilli, who were admitted to Ottoman service in the early sixteenth century. Oruç captured Algiers in 1516, and Hayreddin, after his brother’s death in 1518, became the basis of Ottoman power in the central Mediterranean. Hayreddin was appointed Kapudan Pasha in 1533, and he held the post until his death in 1546. His career is treated in the article on Hayreddin Barbarossa.

The sixteenth-century apogee

The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) was the great age of Ottoman naval power. Suleiman recognised that the conquest of the central and western Mediterranean required a fleet that could match those of Spain, the Italian states, and the Knights of St John, and he invested heavily in the arsenal at the Golden Horn. Hayreddin’s victory at Preveza in 1538, the conquest of Tripoli in 1551, and the long blockade of the Italian ports are the most striking episodes of the period.

The battle of Preveza, fought on 28 September 1538 off the coast of Epirus, was the apogee of Hayreddin’s command. The Holy League fleet, gathered by Venice, the Papal States, and Spain, was approximately equal in size to the Ottoman fleet, and it was commanded by the experienced Genoese admiral Andrea Doria. The battle was fought in a calm sea, with both fleets using their oars to manoeuvre, and the outcome was decided by the superior discipline and gunnery of the Ottoman galleys. The Christian fleet was driven back to its bases, and the eastern Mediterranean was, for the next two decades, an Ottoman lake. The victory is one of the most celebrated in Ottoman naval history, and it is commemorated, in modern Turkey, by the great monument to Hayreddin on the Bosphorus and by the naval base at Gölcük, named after the admiral’s hometown.

The fleet’s task was not limited to the Mediterranean. Ottoman naval power extended into the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, where the Ottomans contested Portuguese expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The conquest of Aden (1538), the occupation of Massawa and Suakin, and the long war with the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean are part of the same expansion. The Ottomans were a global naval power at the moment when the Portuguese and Spanish were also establishing their own global maritime empires.

The battle of Lepanto, 7 October 1571

The fleet’s heaviest defeat came at the battle of Lepanto, on 7 October 1571. The Holy League — the alliance of Spain, Venice, the Papal States, and several Italian powers — had gathered a fleet of some 200 galleys under the command of Don John of Austria, the half-brother of King Philip II of Spain. The Ottoman fleet, under Kapudan Pasha Müezzinzade Ali Pasha, was approximately the same size and sailed to intercept the Christians off the coast of Greece.

The battle was a decisive tactical defeat for the Ottomans. Ali Pasha was killed, some 200 Ottoman ships were lost, and the Holy League gained temporary control of the eastern Mediterranean. The strategic consequences of Lepanto were, however, much less than the Christian powers hoped. The Ottoman fleet was rebuilt within a year, often using the same shipwrights and the same timber, and by the early 1570s the Ottomans were again contesting the central Mediterranean. Lepanto is therefore a turning point in the symbolic history of the fleet — the “Great Day of Rage” in the phrase of Cervantes — but it is not, in the long run, the disaster it appeared to be.

The battle was fought in the Gulf of Patras, off the coast of western Greece, in three distinct engagements: a left wing commanded by the Venetian admiral Agostino Barbarigo, a centre commanded by Don John of Austria himself, and a right wing commanded by the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria. The Ottoman fleet, in roughly equal force, was organised in a single line of battle. The battle was decided in the centre, where the flagships of the two fleets grappled and the Christian infantry, supported by the heavy guns of the galleys, overwhelmed the Ottoman Janissaries on the benches of the oarsmen. The loss of the Ottoman flagship, the Sultana, and the death of Ali Pasha broke the Ottoman line, and the rest of the fleet was driven onto the shore. The battle was a striking tactical victory, but the Ottomans had resources in reserve, and the rebuilding of the fleet began at once.

The seventeenth century and after

The seventeenth century was a long period of relative naval decline. The wars with Venice (1645-1669) and the defence of the Cretan archipelago against the Venetians were expensive; the war with the Holy League (1683-1699) coincided with the disastrous siege of Vienna; and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the steady erosion of the Ottoman maritime position. The Russian annexation of the Crimea in 1783, the loss of the Dardanelles squadron at the battle of Sinop in 1853, and the progressive displacement of sail by steam left the Ottoman fleet in a defensive position by the end of the nineteenth century. The fleet, however, continued to play a central role in the new gunpowder siege warfare of the period, supporting amphibious operations and transporting the great siege trains across the Mediterranean.

The fleet’s most surprising late success came at the battle of Gallipoli in 1915, when the Ottoman naval forces, supported by German advisors, fought off an Anglo-French attempt to force the Dardanelles by sea. The land campaign that followed, in which the Ottoman army under Mustafa Kemal held the Gallipoli peninsula, is the better-known part of the operation, but the naval campaign of February and March 1915 was its necessary prelude. The defence of the straits in 1915, in which a handful of mines and a small force of Janissaries’ successors in the new army held the entrance to the Dardanelles, was a striking echo of the older defence of Constantinople.

Legacy

The Ottoman fleet left a deep mark on the Mediterranean world. The great shipyards of the Golden Horn, the network of naval bases from Tunis to Basra, the institution of the Kapudan Pasha, the corps of naval officers, and the long line of corsair-admirals are all part of a much larger story of Mediterranean and Indian Ocean power. The fleet’s apogee under Suleiman, its defeat at Lepanto, and its decline in the face of European industrialised navies are the three great acts of that history.

Ottoman military and warfare — A general overview of the Ottoman military institutions, of which the fleet was a major part.
The Janissary corps — The elite infantry that, alongside the fleet, formed the central striking force of the Ottoman army on campaign.
Hayreddin Barbarossa — The famous Kapudan Pasha of the 1530s and 1540s, the most celebrated admiral in Ottoman history.
The battle of Gallipoli — The 1915 naval campaign at the Dardanelles, the last great operation of the Ottoman fleet.
Ottoman gunpowder siege warfare — The Ottoman siege trains that depended on the fleet for transport and for the equipment of the great guns.