Ottoman ship Mahmudiye

This article is about the Ottoman Navy ship-of-the-line Mahmudiye. For the town in Turkey, see Mahmudiye.
Ottoman Navy ship-of-the-line Mahmudiye (1829) in Constantinople
History
Ottoman Empire
Name: Mahmudiye
Owner: Ottoman Navy
Builder: Imperial Arsenal, Constantinople
Launched: 1829
Decommissioned: 1874
Honours and
awards:		 Title of Gazi awarded to the ship for her role during the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855)
Fate: Broken up
General characteristics
Displacement: unknown
Length: 76.15 m (249.8 ft)
Beam: 21.22 m (69.6 ft)
Armament: 128 guns on three decks

Mahmudiye was a ship of the line of the Ottoman Navy. She was a three-masted three-decked 128-gunned sailing ship, which could perhaps be considered to be one of the few completed heavy-first rate battleships. Mahmudiye, with a roaring lion as the ship's figurehead, was intended to serve to reconstitute the morale of the nation after the loss of the fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. The flagship was for many years the largest warship in the world.

Mahmudiye (1829)

She was constructed by the naval architect Mehmet Kalfa and the naval engineer Mehmet Efendi on the order of Mahmud II (reigned between 1808–1839) at the Imperial Arsenal, on the Golden Horn in Constantinople.

The 201 × 56 kadem (1 kadem = 37.887 cm) or 76.15 m × 21.22 m (249.8 ft × 69.6 ft) ship of the line carried 1,280 sailors on board.[1]

With the introduction of steam power at the end of the 1840s, the conversion of the pure sail-driven ship into a steamer was considered. However, the lack of the necessary space for the steam engine on board meant the idea could not be realized.

Mahmudiye participated in the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–55) during the Crimean War (1854–56) under the command of Admiral of the Fleet Kayserili Ahmet Pasha. She was honored with the title Gazi following her successful mission in Sevastopol.

She was decommissioned in 1874 and broken up at the Imperial Shipyard.

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Kadem, which translates as "foot", is often misinterpreted as equivalent in length to one imperial foot, hence the wrongly converted dimensions of "201 × 56 ft" or "62 × 17 m" in some sources.

Further reading

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