Emir Yener

The naval campaign of the Dnieper Liman, fought from the autumn of 1787 to the end of 1788, was one of the most decisive maritime confrontations in the modern history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Fought in conjunction with two major siege operations, the campaign between the naval forces of the Ottoman and Russian empires decided the fate of the key Turkish fortress of Özi (Ochakov), which controlled the mouth of the Dnieper. Russia's much trumpeted but in reality barren victory at Chesma in 1770 pales in comparison regarding the strategic results of the Liman campaign. The incident also serves as a perfect case study to reassess the Age of Sail in the Mediterranean.

Following the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War, a combination of financial insolvency, changing priorities in imperial defense and personal preferences led Sultan Abdülhamid II to execute a radical shift in Ottoman naval policy. The battle fleet was mothballed and the revolutionary new naval weapons system, the torpedo boat, was embraced as the new backbone of the imperial navy. This paper aims to analyze both the internal and the international context of the Hamidian naval policies, present an accurate technological panorama of the first Ottoman torpedo flotilla and summarize the operations of these vessels. Full plans of the three different classes of Ottoman torpedo vessels are provided for the first time in historiography, scale drawings of all vessels mentioned and numerous photographs, some published for the first time.

My article (in Polish language) about the Ottoman sailing navy and naval technology during the Russo-Turkish wars of Catherine II "The Great". The final synthesis of my two previous articles in English and French languages, it is my attempt to make a case about the real state of Ottoman naval architecture in 18th century against the traditional narratives of indifference and inferiority. I tried to demonstrate, backed with visual documentation from various archives, that the Ottoman Navy closely followed developments in the warship building all through the 18th century and its defeats at the hands of Russians were rather due to shortcomings in the administration, personnel and doctrine.

Russian state archives are probably one of the richest and most important, yet the most underscored sources of information about the late Ottoman era (1700-1914). This enormous collection of documents which is very little used outside Russia contain a mountain of written evidence as well as a matchless reservoir of visual material. This article tries to present a short introduction into the Russian primary sources of Ottoman history from the point of naval matters.

Presentation made during the Third International Congress of Eurasian Maritime History - Istanbul, 10/05/2018

The last quarter of the 17th century witnessed the transformation of the Ottoman navy from an oared into a sailing battlefleet. That mutation had happened under visionary and able seamen, first and foremost Mezzo Morto Hüseyin Pasha and his immediate successors. By that time, sailing warships, which were products of the West European maritime powers, were already standardized into well regulated classes. However, the Ottoman navy was an institution which served in very different strategic conditions. As a result, despite the inevitable technology transfer from Western Europe to initiate the building of sailing warships, Ottoman warship design rapidly differentiated from their Western counterparts in many crucial respects. This differentiation also found its way in terminology as well; and the Ottoman navy developed its idiosyncratic classification system. Unfortunately, even the current level of completed research from the available Ottoman archival material is not satisfactory to present a clear cut definition of that terminology. Another important problem encountered in the study of Ottoman naval technology is, the question of standardized designs and building practices in the age of sail. Ottoman archives do not yield any clear orders, regulations or set of plans for the standardization of shipbuilding before the reforms of Selim III. Fortunately, archives of foreign countries which had intense contact with the Ottomans at sea -chiefly Venice, Russia, Malta and France- yield a significant amount of both written and visual material which help us to fill the gaps in our knowledge. This presentation aims to offer a new and clear cut classification of Ottoman navy warships before Selim III and argues that well before the Nizam-ı Cedid era; more or less standardization was achieved in the Ottoman naval shipbuilding.