Ottoman ironclad Osmaniye

Type

Ironclad

Period

19th Century

Nation

Ottoman Empire

Overview: Osmaniye was the lead ship of the four-vessel Osmaniye-class ironclads, the first ironclad warships built for the Ottoman Navy, and was constructed in the 1860s by Robert Napier and Sons of the United Kingdom. She was named for Osman I, founder of the Ottoman dynasty. Specifications: A broadside ironclad of roughly 6,400 metric tons displacement, she measured 91.4 m in length overall with a 16.9 m beam and 7.9 m draft. Her main battery comprised fourteen 203 mm (8 in) RML Armstrong guns and ten 36-pounder Armstrongs arranged broadside-fashion, plus a single 229 mm (9 in) RML chase gun in the bow; a compound steam engine driving one screw propeller, fed by six coal-fired box boilers, gave a trial speed of 13.5 knots, and a supplementary three-masted barque rig was also fitted. Service History: Considered one of the more powerful Ottoman ironclads, she was deliberately kept out of combat during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 to preserve the vessel, and spent much of the following decade out of service. She was refitted at the Imperial Arsenal in the early 1890s with a strengthened main battery and modernized machinery, briefly served with the 1st Squadron during the 1897 Greco-Turkish War but was judged unfit for combat, and was ultimately decommissioned in July 1909 and broken up in 1923. Notable Facts: By 1891, decades of poor maintenance had reduced her speed from a trial best of 13.5 knots to just 6 knots, illustrating the general decline of the late Ottoman ironclad fleet. In 1884 her light battery was upgraded with quick-firing Hotchkiss and Nordenfelt guns, reflecting incremental modernization efforts typical of aging ironclads of the period.