OTTOMAN NAVY

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 12, 15 January 1914, Page 8

OTTOMAN NAVY

BIG REORGANISATION SCHEME BRITISH INDUSTRIAL SUCCESS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, sth December. A great victory for. British industry and prestige has just been secured in Turkey. The authorities decided upon a thorough reorganisation of the Admiralty, and invited the films of Armstrong and Vickers to send representatives to discuss the question with the Minister of Marine. , Eear-Admltal Sir Charles Ottley, in the name of Meeavg. Armstrong, and Sir Vincent Caillard, for a long time President of the Ottoman Public Debt, in the name of Messrs. Vickers, arrived there in October with a large staff of engineers. Very important negotiations followed, resulting in an agreement which has just been sanctioned by Imperial trade. The Government instructs Messrs. Armstrong and Vickers to proceed with a radical reorganisation of the arsenals and dockyards at the Golden Horn, and with the establishment of a naval base at Ismid, together with the installation of a floating dock, capable of taking the largest units. The capital necessary for this enterprise wfll be obtained by means of the notation of an Ottoman company, with a mixed Ottoman and English board of administration, the English directors being in a majority. The company will bo granted for a period of thirty years the exclusive right of carrying out all naval repair* for the Ottoman Government, and will in return undertake to reorganise th* shipbuilding yards and workshops m such a manner that at the end of twelve years the > dockyards at the Golden Horn and Ismid will be capable of building hulls and engines of all types and sizes. It is stipulated in the agreements that the whole of the non-Ottoman personnel, whether • technical or administi-ative, is to be exclusively English, and m shipbuilding and engineering establishments of the united Kingdom or the Dominion of Canada. It is further laid down that for the first five years Ihe president of the board "of adnnnistratin shall be an Englishman. The sinking fund and interest on the capital of this naval reorganisation company is guaranteed by a charge on the "tenths" administered by the Dette Publique.