Hamidiye (ship, 1903)
 Hamidiye
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The Hamidiye was a Turkish Navy cruiser that was used extensively during the Balkan Wars and World War I. Launched in England in 1903, it was originally called Abdül Hamid after Sultan Abdülhamid I and was the last classic Elswick cruiser . After the Young Turk Revolution and the ousting of Sultan Abdülhamid II , it was renamed Hamidiye in 1908 .
After the terms of the Peace of Sèvres in 1920, the ship had to be delivered to Great Britain. The Turkish War of Liberation replaced the Sèvres agreements with the Treaty of Lausanne , which left the Turkish Republic its fleet. Hamidiye then became a training ship. In 1947 she was finally decommissioned.
draft
General Information
The Hamidiye was launched on September 25, 1903, was 112 m long, 14.48 m wide and had a draft of 4.88 m. It displaced 3830 t. It had armor protection made of Krupp steel . The armored deck was 3.7 cm thick, the embankments on the side 10 cm. Hamidiye was powered by two standing 4-cylinder triple expansion steam engines, the steam of which was generated in cylinder boilers. The machines generated 12,500 hp on two screws and achieved a top speed of 22 knots.
Armament
The Hamidiye had a fairly mixed armament. The heaviest guns were two 152 mm L / 45 Armstrong rapid-fire cannons in single turrets at the front and rear. With an increase of 20 ° they reached a firing range of 13,350 m. Eight 120 mm L / 50 Armstrong rapid-fire cannons arranged on the sides formed the further main armament. There were also six 3 pounder (47 mm L / 50) and six one pounder (37 mm) guns. The Hamidiye had two directional 457 mm torpedo tubes at the foot of the bridge. The crew should be 302 men.
After the First World War, the Hamidiye was re- armed and the old main armament was replaced by two 150 mm L / 45 SK and eight 7.6 cm L / 50 SK Krupp guns.
Mission history
The Hamidiye's first military operation took place in 1908 against a Greek uprising on Samos . In April 1909, she cooperated with the army under Mahmud Şevket Pasha , which marched to Istanbul to suppress a counter-revolution. She anchored off Yeşilköy (part of Bakırköy ), Sevket Pasha's headquarters.
In 1911 she visited Yalta , and was visited by the Russian Tsar Nicholas II . During the Italo-Turkish War from 1911 to 1912 it was used as a fast transporter for the delivery of military goods to Tripolitania .
Balkan Wars
The Hamidiye was the only Turkish ship to fight with distinction in the Balkan Wars under the command of Captain Rauf Orbay . On October 22nd, during the First Balkan War , they shelled the Bulgarian coast near Emin for the first time and on November 12th together with the liner Turgut Reis positions of the Bulgarian troops in Derkosa .
On November 21, 1912, when they again shelled Bulgarian positions, the Hamidiye was 32 miles from Varna in the Black Sea by the four Bulgarian torpedo boats Drazki ("daring"), Latyashti ("flying"), Smeli ("brave") and Strogi ("Determined") and hit by the Drazki with a torpedo. Orbay claims to have sunk two other torpedo boats. The torpedo hit tore a three-meter hole in the bow on the starboard side and killed eight men. Although the bow was almost under water, the sea was absolutely calm and she was able to retreat and was brought in by the Turgut Reis to Istanbul for repairs . Thereafter there were no further Turkish operations against the Bulgarian coast. On January 14, 1913, the Hamidiye slipped through the Greek blockade of the Dardanelles at night and went to the Aegean Sea to wage a trade war. Their main objective was to pull in the Greek armored cruiser Georgios Averoff so that the Turkish fleet could attack the rest of the Greek navy in support of the Turkish land forces. The following day the Hamidiye sank the Greek auxiliary cruiser Makedonia off Syros and shelled the main town of Ermoupoli . From there she ran to Beirut until the 18th to load better coals and on to Port Said . Although Egypt was nominally still under Ottoman rule, the British only allowed 150 tons of coal to be taken over instead of the desired 700 tons. The ship then went through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea and from February 3 it was supplied in Cidde near Jeddah . After a boiler repair, a further advance into the Mediterranean took place in coordination with the Turkish high command. The Hamidiye's cruises and their ability to move around the Mediterranean, creating confusion, disrupting shipping, destroying ships and facilities, and escaping their pursuers, were of great moral importance to the Turks. On February 14th, Hamidiye stashed coal in Malta because the intended supply steamer was not hit. The Turkish captain managed to get more coal there than in "Ottoman" Egypt and to extend his stay. He left Malta on the 17th, went to the coast of Corfu and Crete without encountering enemy ships, and reached Gaza on the 22nd . The next day the cruiser took over 350 tons of coal from Haifa , which had been delivered by the Hejaz Railway , and then ran to Antalya . The Turkish High Command then ordered the Hamidiye to supply the Turkish Western Army . She took over coal and supplies from the missed supply ship in Beirut, took over 50 tons of ammunition and a large amount of money in gold at Ervat Island off the Lebanese coast to run to the Semeni River on the southern Albanian coast.
On March 8, the Hamidiye left the Lebanese coast and on the 12th shelled a Greek military camp near Durazzo . Captain Orbay continued on the Albanian coast to San Giovanni di Medua (Turkish: Şingin) and sank six Greek merchant ships there on March 12, 1913 and damaged another one. An Austrian steamer put herself on the beach. 120 Serbs lost their lives when a military camp was bombarded.
The Hamidiye dodged the Greek destroyers in the Strait of Otranto in search of her , only one of which came near her. In a brief skirmish, the latter suffered an oar damage and the Hamidiye escaped to Egypt. On March 16, she reached Alexandria , the Khedive made it possible to take over coal outside the port. Due to a lack of coal and necessary repairs, it was not possible to call at the Albanian coast again and the Hamidiye crossed between Beirut, Gaza and Haifa before calling at Antalya again. From there, on March 29, an advance was made to the south coast of Crete, where a Greek steamer with a load of bricks could be brought up and brought to Antalya. The Greeks stopped their shipping in the eastern Mediterranean and concentrated warships near Rhodes and Beirut to provide the cruiser. The speed of the Hamidiye was severely hampered because of boiler damage and was aware of the Greek preparations, so she avoided Beirut and ran via Gaza to Port Said and then through the Red Sea again to Cidde, where she arrived on April 6th. A necessary extensive boiler repair of the estimated two months was not possible there, the necessary visit to a neutral port was ruled out for legal reasons. Should the Greek fleet run into the Red Sea, the Turkish high command decided that the Hamidiye should call at a neutral port in order to be interned.
The Greeks expected a new advance of the cruiser into the Mediterranean and stationed the ship of the line Psara and four destroyers 3.5 miles from Port Said, which waited 45 days for the cruiser. Hamidiye did not pass Suez until August 19, 1913 on the way home after the peace agreement. On September 7, 1913, she was received in Istanbul with great sympathy by the population.
First World War
During the First World War, the Hamidiye was used in the Black Sea against the Imperial Russian Navy and supported the former German cruisers Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli in the battle for control of the sea routes. She was involved in many skirmishes and was hit several times. Most of the Hamidiye missions took place together with Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli . On September 23, 1914, she and Yavuz Sultan Selim escorted three transporters to Trabzon . On October 29, 1914, the Hamidiye shelled Feodosiya and sank two Russian vehicles off Yalta. On November 20, 1914, they shelled Russian facilities in Tuapse and on December 25, Batumi .
On January 9, 1915, she met the Midilli on the Russian fleet off Yalta. In the short battle, the Midilli scored a hit on the Russian ship of the line Yevstafi and both cruisers evaded the Russians with superior speed. On January 27, the Hamidiye was pursued in vain for hours by the artillery superior Russian cruisers Pamiat Merkurija (ex Kagul ) and Kagul (ex Ochakov ). The ship was then overhauled in Istanbul. On April 3, 1915, the Hamidiye ran out with the cruiser Mecidiye to attack Odessa . The Mecidiye was hit by a mine and sank. The Hamidiye was largely able to save the crew.
On August 10, 1915, the Russian submarine Tyulen succeeded in sinking a freighter from a formation of five coal freighters on the way from Zonguldak to the Bosporus, which was secured by the Hamidiye , the Yavuz Sultan Selim and three destroyers. Further attacks by other Russian submarines on the warships on the following day failed. When three coal freighters and two destroyers were escorted from Zonguldak to Istanbul on September 5, the Hamidiye had a battle with the Russian destroyers Bystry and Pronzitelni . Since the 15 cm guns failed, she was unable to defend the transports, which sat down on the beach to avoid falling into Russian hands. The Yavuz Sultan Selim arrived too late to rescue the much-needed coal freighters.
On May 2, 1918, she entered the German-occupied Sevastopol with the Yavuz Sultan Selim . She took the Prut found there , the former Mecidiye , in tow and brought it back to Turkey.
Hamidiye was launched in Istanbul on October 30, 1918 . According to the Sèvres agreements of August 10, 1920, which ended the war between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire, the Hamidiye with the Yavuz and several other warships had to be delivered to Great Britain as reparations. The Turkish Liberation War, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk , led to the establishment of modern Turkey and a new agreement in Lausanne, which largely left the Turkish republic the fleet. The Hamidiye was the first ship of the Navy of the Ottoman Empire, which came into service for the new Turkish Navy in 1925 after being overhauled in Gölcük . From 1940 she was used as a cadet training ship and decommissioned in 1947. From 1949 to 1951 she was a museum ship in Istanbul. In 1964 it was then scrapped.
Hamidiye medal
The Ottoman military only received one commemorative medal for the Balkan wars. This cruiser Hamidiye Medal 1913 received each of the 394 crew members.
literature
- Robert Gardiner, Randal Gray: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1906-1922 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1984, ISBN 0-87021-907-3 .
- Robert Gardiner, Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1860-1905 . Conway Maritime Press, London 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 .
- Richard C. Hall: The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913: prelude to the First World War . Routledge, 2000, ISBN 978-0-415-22946-3 .
- Richard Hough: The Big Battleship . Periscope Publishing Ltd., 1966, ISBN 978-1-904381-14-3 .
- Tevfik İnci: Hamidiye's Raids During The Balkan Wars (Balkan Harbinde Hamidiye Kruvazörünün Akın Harekâtı) . Deniz Basımevi, Istanbul 1952.
- David Nicolle , Raffaele Ruggeri, The Ottoman Army 1914–1918. Osprey Publishing Ltd., 1994.
- A Cemaleddin Saraçoğlu: Rauf Orbay and Hamidiye: Veteran Hamidiye's Glory and Adventures (Rauf Orbay ve Hamidiye: Gazi Hamidiye'nin şanlı maceraları) . Yeditepe, Istanbul 2006.
- Lawrence Sondhaus: Naval warfare, 1815–1914 . Routledge, 2001, ISBN 978-0-415-21478-0 .
Web links
- Tony DiGiulian: Navweaps.com: Naval Weapons, Naval Technology and Naval Reunions . Retrieved January 2, 2011.
- ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: turkeyswar.com )
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d e Gardiner, Chesneau, Kolesnik: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1860–1905. P. 392.
- ↑ Hough: The Big Battleship. Pp. 66-67.
- ↑ Sondhaus, S. 219th
- ↑ Hough: The Big Battleship. P. 67.
- ^ Gardiner, Gray: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1906-1922. P. 389.
- ^ Hall: The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913: prelude to the First World War. P. 200, p. 65.
- ↑ Hamidiye . In: Turkey in the First World War . Archived from the original on February 25, 2010. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 23, 2010.
- ↑ Halpern, p. 228.
- ↑ Halpern, pp. 228-229.
- ^ A b Gardiner, Gray: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1906-1922. P. 388.
- ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives: turkishmedals.net )
