Mecidiye (ship, 1903)
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The protected cruiser Mecidiye (sometimes Medjidiye ) served the Ottoman Navy in the Balkan wars and the First World War . The Mecidiye was after the Sultan Abdülmecid I was named. In 1915 it sank off Odessa after a mine hit.
She was raised and used as a Prut by the Imperial Russian Navy before returning to Ottoman service in 1918 and being given its old name back. She served the Turkish Navy as a training ship until 1947 and was demolished in 1952.
Mission history
The Mecidiye , ordered in 1901 and named after the Sultan Abdülmecid I, was launched on July 25, 1903 in Philadelphia and entered service with the Ottoman Navy on June 6, 1904.
Balkan Wars
In October 1912, the Mecidiye shelled Bulgarian fortifications near Varna and other military targets. In December she was attacked by the Greek submarine Delfin after leaving the Dardanelles on a reconnaissance mission . The torpedo launched from a distance of 800 meters missed the cruiser. It was the world's first torpedo attack by a submarine.
Mecidiye took part in the two major naval battles of the war against the Greek Navy. It was slightly damaged in the Battle of Elli on December 16, 1912. The attempt undertaken by the ships of the line Barbaros Hayreddin , Turgut Reis and Mesudiye as well as the Mecidiye and three destroyers under Ramiz Bey failed on the armored cruiser Georgios Averoff under Rear Admiral Pavlos Koundouriotis and the destroyers Aetos , Ierax and Pantir , who moved away from his three old ships of the line Spetsai , Hydra and Psara parted. He focused his fire on the flagship Barbaros Hayreddin , which had seven dead and fourteen wounded. There were also eight dead and 20 wounded on the Turgut Reis and three dead and seven wounded on the Mesudiye .
The Mecidiye also took part in the second attempt by the Ottoman Navy on January 18, 1913 to break out of the Dardanelles, which failed in the battle of Lemnos . The attempt made again by the Barbaros Hayreddin , Turgut Reis , Mesudiye , the cruiser and five destroyers under Ramiz Bey failed about four hours after the breakout from the Dardanelles in the fire of the Greek squadron under Rear Admiral Koundouriotis with the Georgios Averoff , the old ships of the line Spetsai , Hydra and Psara as well as seven destroyers, since the Greek admiral did not, as expected by the Turks and ordered by his own government, which Georgios Averoff had sent to pursue the Hamidiye , which had broken out alone five days earlier . When they got within combat range of the Turks about three hours after passing the Dardanelles exit, the Mecidiye and the destroyers turned off immediately and the Mesudiye soon after hits by Hydra and Psara . After 20 minutes of fighting a volley which hit Georgios Averoff the Barbaros Hayreddin and destroyed its central tower, which she hove to. After a few minutes the Turgut Reis followed . The Georgios Averoff followed them for over two hours and, thanks to its higher speed, was able to bring itself into favorable positions for further hits. The Barbaros Hayreddin suffered over 20 hits, had destroyed large parts of its artillery and left 32 dead and 45 wounded. The Turgut Reis suffered a leak and further damage from seventeen hits, which left nine dead and 49 wounded. The Mesudiye had also received several hits and complained about 68 failures.
On February 18, 1913, the Mecidiye was part of the security forces at the Turkish landing at Şarköy , on the north bank of the Marmara Sea , where the Bulgarian army had been able to advance in December.
First World War
From the end of November 1914, the Mecidiye with the cruisers Midilli and Hamidiye belonged to the security forces that secured the transport of ammunition and other supplies to Trabzon . In December 1914 Hafiz Hakki Bey transported them there with instructions to the Chief of Staff of the 3rd Ottoman Army . On December 6th, together with the battle cruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim and the torpedo cannon boats Berk-i Satvet and Peyk-i Şevket , which were built in Germany , they secured a large convoy with troops and supplies to Trabzon, which could no longer be called because of a Russian minefield.
On April 3, 1915, the light cruisers Hamidiye and Mecidiye were used under the German commander Ernst Büchsel against Odessa with the four destroyers Muavenet-i Milliye , Yadigar-i Millet , Taşoz and Samsun . The Mecidiye ran into a mine and sank, killing 26 men. The Hamidiye rescued the Mecidiye's crew , while the accompanying destroyer Yadigar attempted to completely destroy the Mecidiye with a torpedo .
The Russians had already started securing the wreck in April. At the end of June, the Mecidiye, which lay at a shallow depth, was lifted by the Russians and repaired at the Ropit shipyard in Odessa and renamed Prut . On February 25, 1916, she was carrying ten new 130 mm cannons to the unfinished Imperator Alexander III. , later Volja for the Black Sea Fleet and first used in the Trabzon area. In December 1917 the Pruth became part of the Red Fleet .
In May 1918 the Germans occupied Sevastopol . The Hamidiye then visited with the Yavuz Sultan Selim , the former Goeben and dragged the Mecidiye back to Turkey.
Final fate of the ship
At the end of 1918 the cruiser was laid up and only after the stabilization of modern Turkey in 1925 was it restored as a training ship for the Turkish Navy in Gölcük . As the last stationary training ship for cadet training, it served until 1947. In 1952 the old cruiser was demolished.
literature
- Edward J. Erickson: Defeat in detail: the Ottoman Army in the Balkans. 1912-1913. Greenwood Publishing, 2003.
- Edward J. Erickson: Ordered to die: a history of the Ottoman army in the First World War. Greenwood Press, 2001.
- Robert Gardiner, Randal Gray, Przemyslaw Budzbon: Conway's all the world's fighting ships, 1906-1921. Naval Institute Press, 1985.
- Lawrence Sondhaus: Naval warfare, 1815-1914. Routledge, 2001.
Web links
- Article on Mecidiye on Turkey in the First World War