The Turkish Navy.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 23, 6 December 1911, Page 13

The Turkish Navy.

COLLECTION OF OBSOLETE VENBELS, NEVER A NAVAL POWER. (COMMANDER K HAMILTON CURREY, R.N., in the Pa’l Mall Gazeft#.)' When last year the Ottoman Empire purchased from their disinterested friends in Germany the two obsolete battleships Kurfurst Friedrich Wilhelm and Weissenburg, these vessels were rechristened Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarosso and Dragut Reis. It is to be imagined that the Committee of Union and Progress do not number many naval experts among its members; for, had such been the ease, the money of the Empire would hardly have been thrown away in so wanton a fashion, as there is probably at the present time nothing that can be bought which is so absolutely valueless as a battleship that is declasse. There are proably no more magnificent fighters in the world than are the Turks, but their genius in this direction has not run in the line of naval achievement, and, in spite of the fact that so much of their Empire impinges ou the sea at many points, the Turkish fighting man has never been at home on this element.

Those naval heroes after whom the second-hand German battleships were named, although servants of the Padishah, were not really Turks. In the days of Soliman the Magnificent, when Charles V. was “The Emperor,” when Henry VIII. sat on the throne of England and Francis I. on that of France, there was great lack of naval ability at the Golden Horn. There sailed the Mediterranean Sea at this epoch, however, one Moslem who was the terror of all who dwelt upon its littoral, Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, King of Algiers and Tunis, the greatest pirate of his own or any other time. Ibrahim, Grand Vizar to Soliman, that great statesman who was murdered by the Sultana Roxalana, out of sheer jealousy, told his master that they must lay their hands on some “veritable man of the sea” to contend with that Admiral who was the scourge of the Porte, the Genoese seaman, Andrea Doria, than in the service of “The Emperor.” Hie story of the arrival of Kheyr-ed-Din at the Golden Horn reads like some page from the Arabian Nights. The pirate Admiral received earte blanche from the Padishah, and all the resources of Constantinople were placed at his disposal. At Prevesa, which has lately come into prominence in our newspapers, in September, 153.9, the hosts of the Moslems and the Christians came into contact exactly 1569 years after the battle in the same place between Antony and Octavian, known as the battle of Actium. The action between Doria and Barbarossa was in reality indecisive, though the Moslems had the better of the struggle and claimed the victory; the honours of the day really resting with Alessandro Condalmiero, who fought “the Galleon of Y enice,” the Dreadnought of her day, till she was battered almost to matchwood. Dragut Reis, after whom the second of the German battleships was named, is more easily identified, perhaps, by English readers than Kheyr-ed-Din, as his name is so intimately associated with the siege Of Malta. Every one who enters the harbour of Malta passes Point Dragut, where the great corsair established his batteries from which he scourged those gallant knights who were defending Saint Elmo, all of whom perished at their posts, shortly after Dragut himself had been killed by a splinter of granite struck from a wall by a cannon shot.

Even as Dragut succeeded to Kheyr-ed-Din, so Ali Basha, or Occhiali, an Italian renegado, succeeded to Dragut. The Seigneur de Brantome, that delightful gossip of the period, says that he has often heard mariners and captains debate as to which was the better seaman of these two, the arguments ending as a

rub- indecisively, atlhouga vhosv who were contending for Drugut admitted of All Baaba that "il tit belle action" at Lepanto. In that memorable defeat of the Turkish fortes by Don John of Austria, Ali Basha, the pirate Admiral, was the only one among the Moslems who kept hi* equadron intact, and who sailed out of the bloodiest battle that ever was fought upon the sea in good order « ith credit to himself. Those, however, who sailed from out the Golden Horn to light for God, the Prophet, and his lineal descendant the Padishah, were as a rule soldiers embarked on board ship; of ‘veritable men of the sea,” as they were called by Ibrahim, the Grand Turk had to look to those pirates who hailed from the northern coasts of Africa, Tripoli and Je.rba, or Djerba, as the newspapers are now spelling it, being specially favoured lurking places for those who pursued their piratical career beneath the Urescent Flag of Islam. Although the Young Turk party inaugurated a Committee of Union and Propress, that progress does not seem to have included much on the naval side: and slipshod, go-as-you please methods of government are not favourable to the growth of a modern fleet. It is only to be imagined that it is the purely imitative faculty, which is aa strongly developed in men as in monkeys, that causes Turkey to waste money on ships of war. If we look back ten years we shall find that the most important unit in the Turkish fleet at that data was the Messndiyeh, of 10,000 tons, which was built at Blackball in th® year 1874. She was subsequently reconstructed in Ansaldo’s yards at Genoa in 1901-2; she still remains on the list of the navy, second only- to the German purchases, having practically represented almost the entire might of Turkey on the sea for a period of thirty live years, exclusive of some small craft, destroyers, and torpedo-boats of no lighting value. There are now on the list a venerable cruiser, the Feth-I-Bulend, of 2,806 tons, that was built in 1879 and reconstructed by Ansa Ido in 1904-7. The Avniliah, of 2,400 tons, is even more ancient, having been built at Blackwall in 1869, and rceomstrmited by the same Italian firnr. Teh Mnin-I-Zaffer is her sister ship, an 4 has undergone the same treatment. Th® Assar-I-Tewfik, of 5000 tons, was built at I.a Seyne in 1867 and reconstructed at Krupp’s Germania yard in 1903-7. It will be observed that in the matter of reconstruction no indecent haste was manifested. The Hamidreh (ex Abdul Hamid) and the Medjideh are protected cruisers of some 3,800 tons, built at Elswick and by the American llrm of Cramp, respectively, in 1903. There are in addition to the ships mentioned a number of email gunboats of no lighting value whatever; also eight modern destroyers, four built at the Schiehau yard in Germany and four at the Chantiers de la Loire, at Bordeaux. These should all be efficient vessels. There are also fourteen torpedoboats. From the foregoing it will be seen that Turkey is in no ease to contend for t.h< mastery of the Eastern Mediterranean with Italy; her fleet, if sent to sea* would be immediately sunk. What strikes the observer prim i pally with regard to such ships as are possessed by the Ottoman Porte is that they are emphatically a job lot. England, France, Germany, the United States, and' Italy have all had a hand in the building and arming of this collection of venerabl® relies; and those responsible for the provision of ammunition must spend a bewildering time in sorting oat the requisite shells and cartridges for guns from Elswick, Vickers, Krupp, gehnewlerCanet, Sehiehan, Bordeaux, Marseille?, and so on. It is said that. Turkey has two ships of the all-big-gun typo projected, of 17,000 tons, to be built at Palmer’s yards at Jarrow; even here we are faced with the fact that the artillery, consisting of eight I2in., ten bin., and ten 4.7 in. guns, is to bo provided by the Bethlehem llrm in the United States of America! Recently Turkey has attempted to set her house in order, as far as her naval forces are concerned, by the borrowing of English naval officers to attempt the task. Rear-Admiml Douglas Gamble was the first officer to bo lent, ami, upon his having to resign the post owing to illhealth, Vice-Admiral Sir P. Williams succeeded him as t'ommander-in-Chief. War has come suddenly and found the Turkish navy in such a state of nnpreparedness that it has had to take shelter in the Dardanelles, from which it is to bo presumed that, it will not emerge until hostilities are over.